Friday, August 6, 2010

Myths and Legends: Aeneas and Turnus

Aeneas and Turnus. To find out more about Aeneas and his rival Turnus, see this Wikipedia article: link; for information about the image: image source.

Many people focus on the wandering adventures of Aeneas in Books 1-6 of the Aeneid, but the scene in today's image is from the second half of the Aeneid, when Aeneas goes to war in Italy, with Turnus, the king of the Rutuli, as his greatest foe. Turnus had been courting Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus, but when Lavinia is betrothed to the newly-arrived Aeneas instead, Turnus declares war. Aeneas finally kills Turnus in the climactic fight which you can read about in Book 12 of the Aeneid.

You can also find more myths and legends for the week of August 5 - August 11 here. For more information and links to the actual javascript code, see the Myths & Legends Widget Reference Page.