Editing Evander of Pallantium (section)

==In the ''Aeneid''==
Evander plays a major role in Virgil's ''Aeneid'' Books VIII-XII. Previous to the [[Trojan War]], Evander gathered a group of native Latins to a city he founded in Italy near the [[Tiber]] river, which he named Pallantium.<ref>''[[Aeneid]]'', viii</ref> Virgil states that he named the city in honour of his Arcadian ancestor, Pallas, although [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]], [[Livy]]<ref>''Ab Urbe Condita'', 1.5.1</ref> and [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]]<ref>''Roman Antiquities'', i. 31</ref> say that originally Evander's birth city was Pallantium in Arcadia, after which he named the new city. The reasons for Evander's fleeing his homeland are unclear; Ovid states that Evander had angered the gods and had been sent into exile by way of a trial{{Citation needed|date=April 2023}}; Dionysius describes a civil unrest in Arcadia which led to Evander and his people being forced to leave; the commentator Servius, however, recounts that Evander's mother persuaded him to murder his father, [[Hermes]], leading to the pair being banished from Arcadia, although other commentators have it that Evander killed his mother. Evander settled in [[Pallantium]] where it is said he killed the three-souled [[Erulus]], the king of Italy, three times in one day, prior to becoming the most powerful King of Italy. 

The oldest tradition of its founding ascribes to Evander the erection of the [[Great Altar of Hercules]] in the [[Forum Boarium]]. In ''[[Aeneid]]'', VIII, where [[Aeneas]] and his crew first come upon Evander and his people, they were venerating [[Hercules]] for dispatching the giant [[Cacus]]. Virgil's listeners would have related this scene to the same Great Altar of Hercules in the Forum Boarium of their own day, one detail among many in the Aeneid that Virgil used to link the heroic past of myth with the [[Caesar Augustus|Age of Augustus]]. Also according to Virgil, Hercules was returning from [[Cádiz|Gades]] with [[Geryon]]'s cattle when Evander entertained him. Evander then became the first to raise an altar to Hercules' heroism. This archaic altar was destroyed in the [[Great Fire of Rome]], AD 64.

Because of their traditional ties, Evander aids [[Aeneas]] in his war against [[Turnus]] and the [[Rutuli]]: the Arcadian had known the father of Aeneas, [[Anchises]], before the Trojan War, and shares a common ancestry through [[Atlas (mythology)|Atlas]] with Aeneas's family.  In the Aeneid, it is said that Evander took possession of the country Italy by force, murdering king Herilus, the king of [[Praeneste]].