Virgilian Models of Colonization in Shakespeare's Tempest

The age of discovery, the age of reconnaissance, was also a great age of classical scholarship. This is probably not a coincidence: colonization is one of the leading themes in ancient history, and figures prominently in literary texts like the Aeneid. The colonization of Italy, as narrated in the second half of Virgil's poem, has been characterized as "the founding legend of Western civilization." But there were other models, as well. In particular, there was the ancient colony at Carthage, Virgil's description of which, in the Aeneid, provided Shakespeare, in The Tempest, with a setting, a situation, and some of his characters.