“A preliminary study suggests that writing on the side of the urns probably refers to a family that was called the Aneis.”
Does that family name sound familiar to anyone? Remember the oral tradition that the Trojans under Aeneas fled to Italy?
How many Archeologists and historians pooh-pooh the oral traditions of a culture, labeling them myths and legends, instead of accepting them as part of a living ethos, handed down over centuries.
Then someone with faith in the oral tradition as based on history goes out and finds Troy or the Lion Gate or in this case an actual relic with a reference to Aeneas or the Aeneid clan.
Call me a romantic, but I’m a believer that strong oral traditions, passed down over generations in a pre-history environment, accurately record events and heroes whose attributes and achievements have a basis in truth
Like all good tales, told and repeated over fires at night for entertainment and instruction of the young, these stories, enhanced by the desire of a culture for an ethos that confirms their worth, they become legendary and mythical over time with a strong overlay of religious intervention of the gods as an explanation of the unknown.
Not unlike the belief in American exceptionalism.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I agree. It could be a coincidence, but it could also be a common family name, or it could be the one, the only, family of that protagonist. It’s unlikely that Vergil’s tale would have been accepted had it not been woven from existing threads. :’)