Ανχισης
The father of Aeneas and son of Capys and Themiste (Table 7). He was loved by Aphrodite who saw him looking after his flocks on Mount Ida, near Troy. She approached him claiming to be the daughter of Otreus, king of Phrygia, and to have been abducted by Hermes and carried off to the pastures of Ida. By this device she married him. Later, she told Anchises who she really was and predicted that she would bear him a son (Aeneas), but begged him not to tell anyone that his son was the child of a goddess, for if Zeus should come to hear of it he would strike the child with lightning. But Anchises drank too much wine one feast day and boasted of his love affairs. Zeus punished him by making him lame with a blast from a thunderbolt or, in other traditions, blind. Anchises is said to have been the father of Lyrnus. A hazy tradition gives Anchises a mortal wife named Eriopis, by whom he is said to have had several daughters, the eldest being Hippodamia.
On one occasion Zeus sent Tros some divine stallions; Anchises had these mated with his mares and obtained six colts, two of which he gave to Aeneas.
When Troy had been captured Aeneas snatched his father form the fire and slaughter and made him his companion on his wanderings. The place of Anchises' death (he was eighty years old when he left Troy) is attributed to different sites by various writers. Sometimes his grave is said to be on Ida itself where he had once looked after the flocks; alternatively it is placed near the peninsula of Pallene in Macedonia, in Arcadia, in Epirus, in southern Italy, and on Cape Drepanon in Sicily. Aeneas, according to Virgil, established in his honour the funeral games that were the origin of the Trojan Games that were held in Rome until the beginning of the Empire. Other writers make Anchises live on until Aeneas arrived in Latium, at the time of the war against Mezentius (see also Aegestes).
{E2 DICTIONARY OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY}
Table of Sources:
- Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite
- Hom. Il. 22, 239
- schol. on Hom. Il. 13, 249
- Apollod. Bibl. 3, 12, 2ff.
- Hyg. Fab. 270
- Virgil, Aen. 1, 617; 2, 687; etc.
- See also Aeneas.