Intaglio with Scene of Aeneas and his Family Escaping from Troy (Front)

The gem captures the moment when Aeneas, son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the goddess Venus, escapes with his family from Troy at the end of the Trojan War. Aeneas climbs up the steps to a waiting ship, with his father over his right arm and his son, Ascanius, holding his left hand. Aeneas wears a corselet but no other armor; his father wears robes with a mantle pulled over his head. Ascanius, shown just at the moment of leaving the gates of the city, wears a Phrygian cap, a chiton, and cloak while holding a pedum (a hunter's throwing stick) over his left shoulder. Anchises holds a cylindrical box with an X pattern on the side. Behind them, the walls of Troy rise up, and a Greek solider in a crested helmets looks towards them from the battlements while holding a lit torch aloft in his raised right arm, a spear upright in his left. Three Trojans await them on the ship, all wearing Phrygian caps: one works the rudder, another the still-furled rigging of the ship, and the third raises a trumpet or other horn-shaped object. Above them, a single star.