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Aeneid · Book II

The Fall of Troy

Fate and Free WillDutyWarHome, Exile, and Return

Chapter summary

Aeneas, at the request of Dido at the banquet in Carthage, begins to tell the last night of Troy. The Greek chiefs, defeated after ten years of war, build a wooden horse the size of a mountain, pretend to offer it as a votive gift for their return, shut chosen warriors inside its belly, and hide the fleet behind Tenedos, a nearby island. The Trojans, convinced the Greeks have left, go out to see the deserted camp and split apart before the horse: Thymoetes wants to take it inside the walls, while Capys and the more prudent ones want to throw it into the sea, burn it or pierce its belly.

Laocoön, priest of Neptune, runs down from the citadel, warns that no Greek gift is without a trick, and drives his spear into the flank of the horse. The belly rings hollow, and the narrator says that, had the minds of the Trojans not been turned aside by the fates, the spear would have forced the hiding place. Shepherds then bring a young Greek with his hands bound: Sinon, who let himself be captured on purpose. He weeps, says the Greeks wanted to sacrifice him and tells how Odysseus was hunting him. Priam, moved, orders him freed and asks what the horse is. Sinon swears it is an offering to Minerva, and that the seer Calchas had it made so huge that it could not pass through the gates: if the Trojans wounded it, ruin would fall on Priam, and if they took it into the city, Asia would bring the war to Greece.

The story is believed. Then two sea serpents come out of Tenedos and kill Laocoön and his two sons while he sacrifices a bull, and the frightened people conclude that he was punished for wounding the sacred wood. The Trojans open the wall and drag the horse in, and it stumbles four times on the threshold with a clatter of arms. Cassandra prophesies, but by the god's order she is never believed, and the city celebrates. At night the fleet returns from Tenedos, and Sinon opens the horse's belly: the chiefs come out, kill the sentries and open the gates.

In the deepest sleep, Hector appears to Aeneas, wounded as he had been after being dragged, and tells him to flee and carry away the Penates, to found walls with them after crossing the sea. Aeneas wakes, climbs to the roof, sees the fire and takes up arms without reason, simply because it occurs to him that it is beautiful to die fighting. He gathers Rhipeus, Iphitus, Hypanis, Dymas and Coroebus, who had come to Troy for love of Cassandra and had ignored her warnings, and convinces them that, abandoned by the gods, all they have left is to die in the midst of arms. They kill Androgeus, who took them for allies, and Coroebus proposes to put on the arms of the dead, because against an enemy no one asks whether it is a trick or valor. Dressed as Greeks, they kill many, until they see Cassandra dragged by the hair from the temple of Minerva. Coroebus, beside himself, hurls himself at her captors; the Trojans are struck from above by their own companions, who take them for Greeks, and many die, among them Coroebus and Panthus. Aeneas runs to the palace of Priam.

In the palace, Aeneas climbs a tower and topples it onto the Greeks. Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, breaks down the door, and Hecuba and her daughters huddle at the altar like doves in a storm. Priam puts on the armor of his youth, but Hecuba makes him sit down beside the altar. Polites, wounded, flees from Pyrrhus and falls before his parents. Priam accuses Pyrrhus, recalls that Achilles respected the suppliant, throws a spear without strength, and Pyrrhus drags him through his son's blood and kills him. Aeneas freezes and thinks of his father, of Creusa and of Ascanius.

Alone, he sees Helen hiding by the temple of Vesta and wants to kill her to avenge his homeland. Venus, his mother, appears, takes him by the hand and rebukes him: he has forgotten his father, his wife and his son, surrounded by Greeks, and the blame belongs neither to Helen nor to Paris but to the gods. She clears the mist from his eyes and shows him Neptune overturning the walls, Juno guarding the Scaean Gate, Pallas on the citadel, and Jupiter giving strength to the Greeks.

At home, Anchises refuses exile, thinking the gods would have spared him if they wanted to. Aeneas takes up arms again, and Creusa, clinging to his feet, holds out the boy to him and begs him to take them along or defend the house. A harmless flame then appears above Ascanius's head; Anchises prays to Jupiter for a sign, thunder sounds on the left and a star falls, streaking to the forest of Ida. Anchises agrees to leave.

Aeneas carries his father on his shoulders, and the father carries the Penates, because Aeneas, stained with blood, may not touch them before he washes. Ascanius goes by the hand, Creusa behind, and all are to meet in an ancient temple outside the city. Near the gates they hear footsteps, and Aeneas, disturbed, turns off through unknown streets. Creusa gets lost, and he notices her absence only at the meeting point. He leaves father, son and Penates in a valley and goes back alone to call his wife through the streets. Creusa's shadow comforts him: it is the will of the gods, he cannot take her, and a long exile awaits him as far as Hesperia, where he will have a kingdom and a royal wife. He tries three times to embrace her, and three times she slips away. At dawn he finds a great crowd of newcomers ready for exile, lifts his father and goes up the mountain.

Analysis

The book shows a city that chooses what to believe. Laocoön is right and is read the wrong way after he dies, Cassandra is right and, by the god's order, is not heard, Sinon lies and is believed, and each wrong judgment appears before the first sword enters the walls. The same event can be read another way: the Trojans do not believe out of pure naivety, they believe because ten years of siege have left them ready to accept any story that promises the end of the war. The text holds both readings, and Aeneas, in narrating, does not exclude himself: he says "we insisted."

The scale shrinks with each movement: first a city decides badly, then a family (Anchises refuses to flee), and at last a man loses his wife in a moment of panic. Aeneas's piety stops being an epithet and becomes a gesture: who carries whom and who holds whose hand. The gods appear as the visible cause, which takes from Troy any chance of having acted differently and returns to the reader the question of Book I about the proportion between guilt and punishment. Aeneas, who takes up arms in fury, ends as the one who carries his father and the gods of the city, without having chosen the task.

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