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.
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Mythology
In Greek and Roman mythology, Ascanius was the son of the Trojan prince Aeneas and Creusa, daughter of Priam. After the Trojan War, as the city burned, Aeneas escaped to Latium in Italy, taking his father Anchises and his child Ascanius with him, though Creusa died during the escape.
According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ascanius's original name was Euryleon and this name was changed to Ascanius after his flight from Troy. According to Virgil, Ascanius was also called Iulus or Julus. The gens Julia, the clan to which Julius Caesar belonged, claimed descent from Ascanius/Iulus, his father Aeneas, and, ultimately, the goddess Venus, the mother of Aeneas in myth, his father being the mortal Anchises.
Dionysius however, identified Julus as a son of Ascanius who disputed the succession of the kingdom of Alba Longa with Silvius, upon the death of Ascanius.