Characters
- Aeneas — son of Anchises; warrior and future survivor of Troy
- Anchises — father of Aeneas by Aphrodite
- Assaracus — son of Tros; founder of the junior royal branch
- Capys — son of Assaracus; father of Anchises
- Eros — mother of Aeneas (background of union on Ida)
- Laomedon — senior kingship line (contrast)
- Tros — common ancestor with Ilus’s line
Places
- Ilium — ruled by the senior line; Assaracus branch subordinate
- Troy — Anchises’s herding ground; site of Aphrodite’s visit
Themes
Narrative
While Ilus’s line held the kingship of Ilium—Laomedon, then Priam—the junior branch from Tros’s son Assaracus kept a lesser lordship. Assaracus begot Capys; Capys begot Anchises. Anchises, herding on Ida, became the beloved of Aphrodite and the father of Aeneas (Homeric Hymn 5; *Iliad*). Homer has Aeneas recite this double stemma to Achilles: from Assaracus down is his own blood; from Ilus down is Priam’s—both houses from Zeus via Dardanus, yet one wears the crown and the other fights as ally and potential heir if Priam’s line should fall (Poseidon’s prophecy in *Iliad* 20).
Catalogue the Assaracus–Capys–Anchises sequence as the genealogical atom that explains Aeneas’s Dardanid rank without making him Priam’s son. It is handbook stemma and Homeric self-identification, not a battle narrative.