Three Maps for the Trojan Cycle

Reading Troy — atlas · the geography of all four epics

The Matter of Troy moves across three landscapes. The Trojan plain itself — beach, river, walls — is the smaller world of the Iliad and the Posthomerica. The Mediterranean basin is the wider world of the Odyssey and the Aeneid — two ten-year voyages out of the same fallen city, going opposite directions. Latium is the smallest geography but the politically loudest: every place on it would be famous Roman ground by Virgil's day.

These three maps are pinned to the top of the publication so they can be opened alongside any canto, at any moment. Save the post; the geography is the easiest thing to lose track of.

I. Troy and the Aegean

Covers: Iliad, Posthomerica. The arena of the Trojan War from the gathering of the Greek host to the sack of the city.

What this map shows

This map covers the eastern Aegean and the Greek mainland — the geographical world of the Iliad and Posthomerica. Two regions are joined: the Troad (the immediate scene of the war) and the wider Aegean (the homelands of the besieging Achaean kings).

The Troad

At the centre-right of the map sits Troy (Ilios, Ilium) on the citadel-hill of Hissarlik, a few miles inland from the Aegean coast of north-west Asia Minor. The city is a walled fortress with its great gates — the Scaean Gate on the western side facing the plain, the Dardanian Gate to the north-west. Inside the walls, the citadel of Pergamum rises with the temples of Apollo, Athena, and Zeus, and the palace of Priam.

To the west and south of the city stretches the Trojan plain, the killing-ground of the Iliad. The plain is bisected by two rivers running down from Mount Ida: the Scamander (also called Xanthus) and the smaller Simois. The rivers meet near the city before flowing into the Hellespont. The Scamander becomes a character in the Iliad — it rises up and tries to drown Achilles in Book 21.

South of the plain rises Mount Ida, the long forested ridge from which Zeus watches the war (and from which the Judgement of Paris was held in his youth as a shepherd). Ida's springs feed the Trojan rivers; Ida's oaks supply the wood for ships and pyres.

On the coast to the west, opposite the mouth of the Scamander, lies the Greek camp — a long beach where the thousand ships have been pulled up and where the Greek host has lived in temporary huts for nine years. The huts of Achilles are at the camp's far western end (he keeps his Myrmidons apart), Agamemnon's command tent at its centre, Ajax's at the eastern end. Offshore in the Hellespont, the small wooded island of Tenedos — the island behind which the Greek fleet hides at the end of the war to set up the Wooden Horse ruse. Further out, the island of Lemnos — where Philoctetes is marooned with his snake-bitten foot for ten years until Posthomerica's embassy retrieves him.

The Aegean

To the west, across the Aegean, lie the homelands of the Achaean kings. Mycenae in the Argolid, on a rocky citadel commanding the Argive plain, is Agamemnon's capital — the great cyclopean walls and the Lion Gate. Sparta (Lacedaemon) lies further south in the Eurotas valley, home of Menelaus and Helen before her elopement. Pylos is on the south-west coast of the Peloponnese, Nestor's sandy city of nine generations of rule. Ithaca sits in the western Ionian Sea — Odysseus's rocky island kingdom, off the western coast of mainland Greece, with its neighbours Same, Dulichium, and Zacynthus. Argos on the Argive plain is Diomedes's kingdom. Salamis is Ajax's small island home off the Athenian coast. Phthia in Thessaly is Achilles's homeland under his father Peleus.

The cycle also touches Skyros, a small island east of Euboea where Achilles was hidden in girls' clothing as a boy by his mother to escape the war's call, and from where his son Neoptolemus is fetched in Posthomerica 7 after his father's death. Chios in the central Aegean is one of the seven cities that claimed Homer's birth — included in this map as a witness rather than an actor.

The journey lines

The map shows the great north-eastward crossing of the Achaean fleet from Aulis (on the Boeotian coast facing Euboea) to the Trojan beach — the formal point of departure from which the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad 2 numbers the host. After the war, the map will be the starting point for both the Odyssey's western wandering and the Aeneid's south-westward refugee voyage — neither is on this map; each has its own.

The historical anchor

The Troy of Hissarlik was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s; the level the Iliad fits best (Troy VII) was destroyed by fire around 1180 BCE, in the late Bronze Age. The traditional ancient date for the war (Eratosthenes) was 1184 BCE. The map is the eastern Mediterranean as the Greeks remembered it three or four centuries later, when the Iliad took the form we have it.

II. The Mediterranean Wanderings

Covers: Aeneid, Odyssey. The two long sea-voyages — Odysseus westward to Ithaca, Aeneas westward to Italy — overlaid on the same Mediterranean basin.

What this map shows

This map covers the entire Mediterranean from the Troad in the east to the Pillars of Heracles in the west, overlaid with the parallel ten-year journeys of two refugees from the same fallen city: Odysseus the Greek victor going home, Aeneas the Trojan survivor going to a future home. Both leave Troy at the same moment in the cycle. Both spend ten years on the sea. Their routes touch at several points.

Odysseus's route

Twelve numbered way-points trace the wanderings of Odyssey 9–13, all told by Odysseus to the Phaeacian court in the great inset narrative:

Ismaros (Thracian coast, just west of the Hellespont) — the Ciconian city Odysseus raids on first leaving Troy. His men get drunk, refuse to leave, are routed in counter-attack.
Land of the Lotus-eaters (most ancient identifications: the Libyan coast, Djerba) — the men who eat the lotus forget home.
Cyclops Island (traditionally Sicily, the slopes of Etna) — Polyphemus blinded.
Aeolia (the floating island, Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, perhaps Lipari or Stromboli) — the bag of the winds.
Land of the Laestrygonians (often placed on the Sardinian coast or in the heel of Italy) — eleven of twelve ships destroyed.
Aiaia (Circe's island; later tradition identifies it with Monte Circeo on the western Italian coast) — Circe's swine, one year stay.
The River Ocean / Land of the Cimmerians (the western edge of the world, beyond all geography) — the Nekyia, descent to the dead.
The Sirens (the rocks south of Naples, often Capri) — the song bound to the mast.
Scylla and Charybdis (the Straits of Messina between Italy and Sicily) — six men eaten by Scylla.
Thrinacia (the Cattle of the Sun; Sicily again, or a nearby small island) — the men kill and eat the forbidden cattle; the ship is destroyed at sea; Odysseus alone survives.
Ogygia (Calypso's island, somewhere in the western ocean, far west of all the rest) — seven years with the goddess.
Scheria (Phaeacia, often identified with Corfu) — the brief hospitable kingdom that sends him home.

Then home to Ithaca in the western Ionian Sea.

Aeneas's route

Aeneas's parallel route, traced through Aeneid 1–7, makes seven main stops:

Troy — the city falls; he leads the refugees out.
Antandros at the foot of Mount Ida — the new fleet is built.
Thrace — the first attempted settlement; abandoned after the prodigy of Polydorus's bleeding bush.
Delos — the oracle of Apollo; instructed to seek their "ancient mother".
Crete — the settlement attempt that fails (Anchises misinterprets the oracle); plague forces them off.
The Strophades (small islands south-west of the Peloponnese) — the Harpies harass them.
Buthrotum (on the Epirote coast, in modern Albania) — the half-Troy of Andromache and Helenus; warm welcome, advice, prophecy.
Sicily — long stop on the eastern Sicilian coast; Anchises dies at Drepanum.
Carthage (the Tunisian coast) — the storm wrecks them onto Dido's harbour; one year detained.
Sicily again — return for the funeral games for Anchises.
Cumae (the Bay of Naples) — the Sibyl; descent to the underworld.
Latium (the mouth of the Tiber) — arrival at the future site of Rome.

The overlay

Both routes cross the central Mediterranean. They touch at Sicily (Odysseus's Cyclops, Scylla-Charybdis, Thrinacia all in or around Sicily; Aeneas's long Sicilian stop and the funeral games). They touch at Italy (Odysseus skirts the Italian coast at Circe's island; Aeneas lands at Cumae and Latium). They never overlap in time — Aeneas reaches the western Mediterranean only after Odysseus has passed through. Virgil makes this temporal layering explicit in Aeneid 3, where the Trojans rescue Achaemenides, the crewman Odysseus accidentally abandoned on the Sicilian shore in his panic of escape from Polyphemus.

The historical anchor

Both routes are mythic, not historical. Ancient and modern attempts to identify the Odyssey's places have produced rival itineraries from the seventh century BCE to the present. Aeneas's route is more historically grounded — most of its stops are real Mediterranean ports — but his timeline (Bronze Age refugee reaching central Italy) is mythic. The map shows the imaginative geography of the cycle, not a verifiable journey.

III. Latium and the Site of Future Rome

Covers: Aeneid (Books 7–12). The political geography of the Italian war, with the future Rome at its centre.

What this map shows

This map covers the small region of central Italy where the second half of the Aeneid takes place — a compact landscape stretching from the mouth of the Tiber inland to the foothills of the Apennines, bordered on the south by the country of the Rutuli around Ardea and on the north by the Etruscan cities. The whole geography is roughly the area of modern Lazio. This is the smallest of the cycle's three maps but the most historically loaded: every place on it would, in Virgil's own day, have been famous Roman ground.

The Tiber and the river-mouth

The Tiber flows out of the Apennines south-westward and reaches the Tyrrhenian Sea at a long sandy delta-mouth, the point at which Aeneas's fleet first arrives in Italy in Aeneid 7. He sails a little way upstream to make camp on the river's southern bank. The Trojan camp on the Tiber — palisaded, ditch-walled, the new harbour for the fleet — is where Turnus attacks in Book 9 while Aeneas is upriver seeking alliance.

Lavinium and the Latin heartland

A short distance inland on the southern Latin coast, Lavinium is the city Aeneas will found and name for his bride Lavinia. To the south-east, Laurentum is King Latinus's capital — the royal palace of the Latins, with the sacred laurel of Faunus, the bee-prodigy, the altar of the flame-prodigy on Lavinia's head. The country between Laurentum and the sea is the immediate scene of the Italian war.

Further inland and slightly north, Alba Longa is the city Ascanius will found after his father's death — the parent city of Rome, the seat of the Silvian dynasty for the next three centuries until the founding of Rome itself. Virgil's poem foretells this in Anchises's underworld vision (Aeneid 6) and in Jupiter's prophecies.

Pallanteum on the Palatine

Upstream on the Tiber, on the small hill-cluster that will one day be the centre of Rome, sits Pallanteum — King Evander's Arcadian-Greek settlement. The settlement is small, wooden, modest: a few thatched huts on the slope, a single rough gate, a sacred grove. But the topography is the great moment of Aeneid 8: each modest landmark Evander shows Aeneas is, in Virgil's Roman present, world-famous. The thicket where the cattle of Cacus were stolen is the Lupercal, the cave where the she-wolf will one day suckle Romulus. The clearing where they sit to feast is the future Forum Romanum. The hill on which Evander's huts stand is the Palatine, where Augustus's own house stood when Virgil wrote. The next hill across is the Capitoline, "now all gold, then thick with wild forest". The Aventine, Quirinal, and Caelian rise around them. The Greek shepherd-king is living in the future centre of the world.

Ardea and the Rutulian south

South of the Latin heartland, Ardea is the capital of Turnus's Rutulian kingdom. Ardea is a real Latin town — by Virgil's day a small obscure place, but in the Aeneid the seat of the great rival prince. The country around it is open Italian coast and rolling plain.

Caere and the Etruscan north

North of the Tiber, Caere (Agylla) is the Etruscan city the deposed tyrant Mezentius has been driven out of. The Etruscans send a great force south to ally with the Trojans, in order to come and kill their old king. The map marks Caere and beyond it the broader Etruscan country; the Tiber itself is the political boundary between Latium and Etruria.

The journey

The map traces three small but consequential journeys: Aeneas's sail up the Tiber from his beach-camp to Pallanteum (Aeneid 8), his ride back down with Evander's Arcadians and the Etruscan cavalry to relieve the besieged camp (Aeneid 10), and the funeral procession returning Pallas's body upstream to Pallanteum after his death (Aeneid 11). All take place within a day's ride or sail of the future centre of Rome.

The historical anchor

Every place on this map was real in Virgil's day. Lavinium was an active Latin town; Alba Longa was a famous archaic ruin; Pallanteum's hills were the seven hills of Rome itself; Ardea and Caere were both real if obscure; the Tiber was the city's lifeline. Virgil's reader could have walked any of these in an afternoon. The whole Aeneid's political force depends on this layering: the second half of the poem takes place on the very ground the reader is standing on.

This post is part of Reading Troy, a slow daily readalong through the four canonical Trojan-cycle epics — Homer's Iliad, Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, Virgil's Aeneid, and Homer's Odyssey — read in chronological narrative order.