Articles

Sparta, the mythological birthplace and home of the Homeric heroine, was alleged to have worshiped her at two sites, at a shrine within the polis and at a shrine several kilometers outside the polis.8 We know very little about the former shrine, but the latter has been archaeologically attested; the partial walls and foundations of a fifth-century BCE monument to Helen of Sparta and her husband Menelaos, known as the Menelaion, have been recovered on a ridge near the west ban

The Iliad and the Odyssey are the oldest surviving works of Greek poetry, indeed of the whole of Western literature, and they deal with certain events in the lives of two Greek heroes involved in the Trojan War: Achilleus and Odysseus.

The chronological distribution of the naval triumphs supports the assertions of Polybius and other ancient sources that the Romans only undertook serious naval combat from the First Punic War.