Book 20% in

Aeneas

Troy (Hisarlik), the city that burns

Book 2

The poem's great flashback is the night Troy falls to the wooden horse, and Aeneas carries his father on his back out of the flames with his son at his side. Everything that follows is the search for a second home to replace this lost one. Its likely site is the ruin-mound of Hisarlik above the Dardanelles.

Book 2

disputedThe fall of Troy is the fixed backstory Aeneas flees; Troy is most widely identified with the mound of Hisarlik in northwest Turkey, though the identification is debated. Marked outsideSetting: it lies far east of Italy, off the map's frame.

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Books 1, 425% in

Dido

Carthage, the Byrsa hill (Dido's city)

Books 1, 4

Shipwrecked on the African coast, Aeneas is taken in by Dido, the queen building Carthage, and the two fall into a love that nearly ends his mission. When the gods order him on, she kills herself on a pyre and curses his descendants, seeding the enmity of Rome and Carthage. The pin marks the Byrsa, the hill her city rose around.

Books 1, 4

inferredCarthage is a real ancient city on the coast of modern Tunis, and the Byrsa is the citadel hill at its heart where Dido's legend places her palace; the poem's Carthage is legendary but the place is real. Marked outsideSetting: it lies across the sea in North Africa, off the map's frame.

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Book 650% in

Aeneas

Cumae and the Sibyl's cave

Book 6

At Cumae, Aeneas seeks out the Sibyl, who leads him down into the underworld to meet the shade of his father and see the parade of unborn Romans who will spring from his line. It is the hinge of the whole poem, where the past he is fleeing turns into the future he is founding. The site above the bay is real and still walked.

Book 6

explicitCumae is a real Greek colony on the coast north of Naples, and the poem names it as the Sibyl's seat; the rock-cut gallery at the site is shown as her cave. This is a genuine, visitable archaeological place, not a legendary siting.

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Books 7-1275% in

Turnus

Lavinium, the landfall in Latium

Books 7-12

Reaching Latium at last, Aeneas is promised Lavinia, the local king's daughter, and the promise ignites the war that fills the poem's second half. Turnus, her other suitor, leads the Latin and Rutulian resistance, and the fighting decides who will father the Roman people. Lavinium, the town Aeneas founds and names for her, survives as a site south of Rome.

Books 7-12

inferredThe poem has the Trojans land at the mouth of the Tiber and settle in Latium, where the city of Lavinium is founded and named for Lavinia. Lavinium is a real archaeological site at Pratica di Mare, traditionally identified with the legend; the pin marks it as the inferred landing-ground, not a named coordinate in the text.

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Book 8100% in

Aeneas

The Palatine, the future site of Rome

Book 8

Evander walks Aeneas over the low hills where cattle graze and points out the places that will one day be the Forum and the Capitol, and the poem lets the reader see empire in a field. The Palatine, where Evander's poor town stands, is the hill Rome's own founding legend puts Romulus on. It is the poem's true destination, the ground the whole voyage was for.

Book 8

explicitIn Book 8 Aeneas is shown the site of the future Rome by Evander, whose settlement stands on the Palatine; the hill is a real, named place at the centre of Rome. The vision is legendary but the ground is exact.

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