The Trojans have just set sail from Sicily on the last leg of their voyage to Italy when the goddess Juno commands Aeolus, god of the winds, to raise a storm, which drives the Trojan fleet to the coast of Libya, site of Carthage. Dido, the city's ruler, welcomes them. She gives a banquet in honor of their leader, Aeneas, at which she asks him to narrate the Trojans's adventures to date.
Aeneas tells how Troy fell to the Greeks on the night they invaded it by means of a wooden horse. Among other incidents, he describes the murder of Troy's King Priam by the Greek warrior Pyrrhus; the death of his own wife, Creusa; and his own escape with his father, Anchises, his son, Ascanius, and a band of fellow warriors.
On their westward sea voyage, Aeneas continues, the Trojans stopped first at Thrace, where they began to establish a settlement. However, because the ghost of Priam's youngest son, Polydorus, who was killed by Thrace's king, warned Aeneas to flee Thrace, the Trojans left the region and sailed to the island of Delos. There, Aeneas consulted an oracle of Apollo, who told him to seek his ancient homeland, which Anchises understood to be the island of Crete. Unfortunately, when the Trojans reached Crete, they realized that their rightful goal was Italy, so they again set sail. On an island in the Strophadës, they were tormented by Harpies, vicious bird-women, whom they escaped by sailing to Actium and then to Buthrotum.
