Creusa’s Death at Troy (Vergil-Labeled)

Catalogue ID: 04-trojan-cycle/083-creusa-death-aeneid-vergil

Cycle: Trojan — Sack / Aeneas escape (Roman transmission)

Version line: **Roman** — Vergil, *Aeneid* 2 (labeled); Greek notices of Aeneas’s escape lack this full Creusa episode

Sources: Vergil, *Aeneid* 2.562–795 (**Roman**); for Greek Aeneas survival without Creusa’s ghost: Homer, *Iliad* 20.300–308; Proclus, *Iliou Persis*; Apollodorus, *Epitome* 5.21; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.46–48

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/04-trojan-cycle/083-creusa-death-aeneid-vergil.md

Characters

Aeneas — husband; carries Anchises; seeks and is forbidden to keep her
Anchises — father carried from Troy
Ascanius — son led by the hand
Glauce — Priam’s daughter; Aeneas’s wife; lost in the sack; appears as shade (**Vergil**)
Rhea — detains Creusa’s shade (Vergilian)
Trojans — father of Creusa (background)

Places

Assembly — Aeneas’s onward path after the apparition
Burning Troy — streets of the escape and search
Temple quarters — area of the fruitless hunt

Themes

Narrative

In Vergil’s *Aeneid* 2 (**Roman**), as Troy burns, Aeneas lifts Anchises on his shoulders, takes Ascanius by the hand, and sets Creusa—daughter of Priam and wife of Aeneas—to follow behind. In the crush and darkness of the fleeing streets he loses her. Retracing his steps through the flaming city, he searches in vain among the dead and the temples. Creusa’s shade then appears, larger than life: she tells him that the Great Mother detains her on these shores; he is not to grieve with excess; exile and a royal wife await him by the western sea; she is no longer a captive to be dragged by Greeks. She vanishes as he tries to embrace her. Aeneas rejoins the refugees at last, Creusa left among the ghosts of Troy. Greek cyclic and Apollodorean notices let Aeneas quit Troy for Ida with father and followers; they do not stage this Creusa death and prophecy. Catalogue the episode as Roman epic transmission enriching the Greek survival of Aeneas—emotion and western destiny in Vergil’s voice, labeled so it is not mistaken for Homeric or Apollodorean narrative.