The Baobab Tree & The Oak-Born

The Aeneid, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, is a monumental work of classical literature. It follows the journey of Aeneas, a Trojan hero, as he navigates from the ruins of Troy to Italy, where he is destined to found the city of Lavinium, a precursor to Rome. The poem is divided into 12 books, with the first six detailing Aeneas' wanderings and the second six describing the war in Italy against the Latins. The epic incorporates various legends and mythological elements, glorifying traditional Roman virtues and legitimizing the Julio-Claudian dynasty. It explores themes such as duty, fate, and the relationship between the individual and society, and has had a profound influence on Western literature.

Ptolemy's 'Geography' is a seminal work that includes a treatise on cartography, a gazetteer with longitude and latitude coordinates for approximately 8,000 locations, and instructions for creating maps of the known world. The work is divided into eight books, covering methods of cartography, a gazetteer of the world known to the ancient Romans, and detailed instructions for map projections. Ptolemy's innovations included the use of a grid system to plot latitude and longitude and the development of map projections that anticipated later cartographic techniques. Despite some inaccuracies, such as miscalculating the Earth's size, the work was highly influential in both the Islamic world and Renaissance Europe.

In this book, Joseph Campbell explores his theory of the 'monomyth', a universal pattern found in the mythological narratives of various cultures. He details the stages of the 'hero's journey', which include departure from the ordinary world, initiation into a supernatural world, and return with a boon. Campbell draws on a wide range of mythological sources and integrates insights from psychology, particularly from Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, to illustrate the common elements of heroic myths across different cultures.