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in book 2, Aeneas begins to narrate for his Carthaginian hosts, his own past

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Trojan War has ended

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he experienced the fall of his beloved city

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in a customary twist, modifies and extends Homer's story, tells of Sinon

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Sinon was a Greek warrior during the Trojan War

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near end of war, Aeneas is leaving the city, sees this Sinon who says he had been abandoned

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standing next to him is a giant wooden horse

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said they built the horse because Athena was angry with them for stealing the Palladium

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said that they built it so big so it could not be brought into Troy since if it was, Troy would never be able to be conquered

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Laocoon [lay-AHK-oh-wahn]

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a Trojan who warns that this is a lie, but serpents come up out of the sea and bite and kill him

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Trojans see this and now redouble their urgency of bringing this horse into the city

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Odysseus lies quite a bit in the Odysseus and Homer admires him for doing it, Athena egging him on to lie, humans like it when he does, everyone is entertained

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Virgil plays on this and has the Greeks, here Sinon, lie again

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so this is the definitive account of what happened after the Trojan war

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Greeks come out of the horse, annihilate the city

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Virgil describes in great detail

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with great concern of what is happening to his city

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Aeneas is hero figure, but ironically the first thing that he has to do is "abandon his ship", i.e. leave Troy

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so Virgil has to start a story of abandonment of his home city

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but plenty of good reasons:

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humans, gods and ghosts come and tell him to leave

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even his wife begs for him to leave

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e.g. the way Venus tells Aeneas to go is very Virgilian

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*** Venus peels back what is happening so he can see the gods dismantling the walls of Troy, deeply sinister

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*** for Homer there is an anger and rage, but for Virgil there is a kind of existential menace operating behind the scenes

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Virgil's world has depths of sinister forces operating compared to Homer's more two dimensional world

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we thus see Tory engulfed in flames not only literally but in this broad, existential sense

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Aeneas is carrying his father out of the city, a symbol of his past and tradition

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he's also guiding his son by the hand, his future

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Virgil's world is characterized by shifting surfaces, whereas Homer is often brightly lit most of the time, we can see the obvious connections between people and events

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with Virgil it's hard to get at what is basically happening

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this is also happening to Aeneas, he is not going to be in command of all the things happening around him

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he is being pulled along to meet this grand destiny but there will be lots of pain, troubles, and suffering along the way