The prophecy that is made by the god Poseidon here about the descendants of Aeneas as heirs to eternal rule over the Trojans—but not in Troy—is a basic theme that pervades Ionian epic traditions. The identity of Aeneas as an Ionian depends ultimately on the idea that he must be relocated from ancient Troy, since that city simply must be destroyed completely. There are four points that now need to be made about this idea:
Point 1. A starting point is the city of Scepsis in its Ionian phase of existence. As we have already seen in Point 1 of the anchor comment at I.20.209, this Ionian city claimed control over the territory of Troy. Essentially, Scepsis now became the new Troy for the Ionians in this region. Meanwhile, the ancient city of Troy was supposedly never rebuilt and never again amounted to anything more than a simple village that was located within the territory of Scepsis. Such Trojan connections of Scepsis were not limited to this city’s claim that ‘the village of the people of Ilion’, which was under its control, had once been the sacred ground of the real Troy of the Trojan War. The city also claimed as its own the hero Aeneas. From the anchor comment at I.20.209 about Aeneas the Ionian, part I, I repeat here two relevant details reported by Demetrius of Scepsis by way of Strabo (13.1.52 C607): (A) The city of Scepsis, after being founded by Aeneas, was later ruled jointly by Ascanius (Askanios) son of Aeneas and Scamandrius (Skamandrios) son of Hector; and (B) the population of Scepsis was augmented at a later period by immigrants from the Ionian city of Miletus I also repeat here the fact that Scepsis claimed to be the original site of the basileion ‘royal palace’ of Aeneas, as reported by Demetrius of Scepsis by way of Strabo (13.1.53 C607). By implication, it was this palace that became the stronghold of the dynasty of Aeneas that survived the Trojan War.
Point 2. The descendants of Aeneas in the city of Scepsis represented the Ionians not only generally, in the sense that Scepsis eventually became an Ionian city. More specifically, as I have just reiterated on the basis of reportage originating from Demetrius by way of Strabo, Scepsis as an Ionian city was closely connected to the Ionian city of Miletus. So, the connection here is not only Ionian in general but also Milesian in particular. Such a connection is most significant in view of the fact that the Ionian city of Miletus once dominated the federation of Ionian cities known as the Ionian Dodecapolis, as we see from Herodotus 1.142.3 and other sources (HPC 216–217).
Point 3. And this Milesian connection of Scepsis is represented not only by the status of Aeneas as an adoptive dynastic hero of the city’s Ionian population but also by his prominent status as an epic hero who fought in the Trojan War. Here I return to the Ionian epic tradition about Aeneas that became part of the epic Cycle and was known as the Iliou Persis, an epic attributed to Arctinus of Miletus. As we have seen earlier, this Milesian epic narrates how Aeneas and his followers withdrew from Troy before its total destruction and moved back to his home in the highlands of Mount Ida (Proclus summary p. 107.24–26 ed. Allen 1912).
Point 4. There is a clear sign of this Ionian epic tradition in the overall Homeric narrative about the rescue of Aeneas by the god Poseidon in I.20.290–352. This god, although he is generally pro-Achaean in the Iliad, has a special link to the figure of Aeneas. That is because Poseidon also has a special link to the Ionians belonging to the federation of the Ionian Dodecapolis headed by Miletus: as Poseidon Helikōnios, he was the chief god of the Panionion, the sacred site of the festival of the Panionia, which expressed the communality of the twelve cities of the Ionian Dodecapolis as headed by the city of Miletus (Pausanias 7.24.5, scholia bT for I.20.404). See also anchor comment at I.20.209 on: Aeneas the Ionian, part 1; and anchor comment at I.20.302–308 on: Aeneas the Aeolian.