Ascanius

Ascanius ( ; Ancient Greek: Ἀσκάνιος) was a legendary king of Alba Longa (traditional reign: 1176 BC to 1138 BC) and the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas and of Creusa, daughter of Priam. He is a significant figure in Roman mythology because of his family connections: as the son of the Roman ancestor-figure Aeneas (himself the son of the goddess Venus and the Trojan prince Anchises), and as a forebear of the Roman people. Under his additional name Iulus, he was claimed as the particular ancestor of the gens Iulia, the family of Julius Caesar, and therefore a progenitor of the first line of Roman emperors, the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Some Roman genealogies also make him an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the founders of the city of Rome itself. Like his father, Ascanius appears as a major character in Virgil's Aeneid.