Norton Anthology

In the very vintage Mediterranean world, feminine attractiveness comes to its zenith in Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Greece. Her wondrous face and body are without flaw. She is perfect. Even the goddess of love, Aphrodite, admires her. When Aphrodite strives against with other goddesses in an attractiveness contest—in which a golden apple crop is to be bestowed as the prize—she bribes the referee, a juvenile Trojan entitled Paris, undertaking him Helen in exchange for his vote. After Paris chooses Aphrodite, the goddess directs him to the house of Menelaus, where he woos Helen, and absconds with her to Troy, a walled town in Asia Minor (in present-day Turkey).

The time is the Twelfth Century, BC. The activity takes location in countries in the Mediterranean district, encompassing Troy (in flashback), Carthage, Sicily, Italy, and diverse islands. Troy was in to the north Anatolia, a district in Asia Minor that is part of modern-day Turkey. Anatolia is east of Greece (across the Aegean Sea) and north of Egypt (across the Mediterranean Sea) (Saupe 25). Carthage was on the to the north seaboard area of Africa in present-day Tunisia. In the dialect of the Phoenicians, who founded Carthage, the town was Kart-hadasht, significance New Town. Sicily, an isle off the southwestern seaboard area of Italy, is about 100 miles northeast of Tunisia. In the completing episodes of The Aeneid, most of the activity takes location in Latium, a district in west-central Italy through which flows the Tiber River. Its inhabitants were renowned as Latins.

One episode in The Aeneid takes location in the Underworld, the house of the spirits of the dead in the afterlife. This location is called Hades (also mentioned to as Dis and Orcus). The smallest part of the Underworld, booked for the wicked, is Tartarus. The Underworld furthermore comprises ...