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Although Virgil's description of the Libyan harbor at Aeneid 1.159-69 is generally thought to be a poetic invention, some readers in antiquity, according to Servius's commentary, believed the harbor to be modeled after the port of Carthago Nova in southern Spain. This paper argues for the merit of this reading by exploring how a topographical allusion to Carthago Nova, the site of a famous siege during the Second Punic War, activates historical memories that have rich implications for the narrative and thematic concerns of Books 1 and 4 of the Aeneid. early in the first book of the aeneid, the storm-battered and depleted Trojan fleet takes refuge in a natural harbor near Carthage (Aen. 1.159-69). 1 It was a moment that, according to Servius's commentary, prompted divergent opinions even in antiquity. In Servius's view, the harbor is a product of Virgil's imagination, a topothesia. However, he also mentions-and seems to accept as reasonable-a traditional interpretation that

In Fam. 13.1 Cicero, visiting Athens en route to Cilicia in the summer of 51 b.c., writes to C. Memmius L.f., praetor in 58 but by the time of Cicero's communication an exile in Athens after the shambolic consular elections for 53; Memmius was (temporarily, one assumes) absent from Athens in Mytilene, hence the need for Cicero to write to him. This letter, along with Att. 5.11.6 and 19.3, is our focus in the argument that follows, but, to summarize the situation in the very broadest terms, Cicero's concern in it is with Memmius’ intentions regarding a plot of land in Athens occupied by a house of Epicurus, and with the objections to Memmius’ plans that had been raised with Cicero by the scholarch of the Epicurean community in Athens, Patro.