Unreal Cities. Troy Is not Troy and Carthage Is Destroyed

The analysis of the allusions to Ennius’ and Euripides’ Trojan tragedies in Aeneid II (often via the brief and already 'tragic' Ilioupersis of Lucr. I 471-477) provides us with an altogether surprising image of Virgil’s Troy. The all-important fire imagery, ultimately deriving from Euripides’ Trojan trilogy, creates, as it were, a counterpoint of sustained metaphors that enriches our vision of Troy in the Aeneid and provides a new coherent and properly 'dramatic' meaning for the entire account of Virgil’s Ilioupersis and, moreover, for the symbolic correspondences between Book II and Book IV.