The destructive invasion of Troy by the Greeks, the subject of Book II, occurs at the chronological beginning of the Aeneid and is the first crucial event of the epic, the one from which all others follow in sequential order. Aeneas’s personally narrating the Trojans’s adventures gives an intimacy to his story that would be lacking if it were told by a third-person narrator. The vivid scenes witnessed by Aeneas, some depicting legendary characters like Helen, Cassandra, Priam, and Pyrrhus, provide great visual impact: We see everything that takes place in the burning city by the light of the flames that are destroying it. Also, Aeneas’s recounting these past events enhances our sense of his tale being about a stage in the lives of the hero and his companions that is over and done with, that can only be looked back upon. What lies ahead is the unknown future that awaits the Trojans in their new homeland. The meeting with Dido takes place at a dividing line, a watershed in time, but before Aeneas can sail forth to encounter his future, he must first love and then abandon the Carthaginian queen.
To his description of catastrophic incidents, Virgil adds psychological and spiritual dimensions that give his narrative a particularly human relevance and reveal the compassionate awareness of suffering and the tragic side of life for which he has been justly celebrated. These humane qualities are all the more noteworthy because they are expressed by Aeneas himself, who is thereby presented not only as a man of action but also as a man of feeling, as he was in Book I.
Aeneas is a warrior and a goddess’s son, who will lead his people to safety and prepare for the establishment of a new Troy in Italy; but, first of all, he is a human being, at times prone to fear and indecision. Like everybody else in Troy that fateful night the city fell, he went to bed without suspicion, duped like the rest by Sinon and unaware that the city shortly would be in flames. Notably, however, Aeneas is never directly involved in the scenes in which Sinon convinces the Trojans to move the horse within their city’s walls. Instead, King Priam himself questions the trickster.
Priam’s presence at Sinon’s inquisition and his actions later in the book show him to be an ineffectual leader of his people. A symbol of all that has gone wrong in Trojan society, he is duped by the lying Sinon, which suggests that he has succumbed to complacency in his rule. Worse, Virgil describes Priam as an “old man” who “uselessly / Put on his shoulders, shaking with old age, / Armor unused for years.” Remembering that the Trojan War has been raging for ten years, Virgil’s description of Priam’s military prowess strongly suggests that the king’s physical skills have waned during this time span.
Additionally, our last view of King Priam is not a very flattering one. Hecuba, his wife, questions—perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not—his mental acumen when she asks him what “mad thought” drove him to think he could fight the Greeks. She acknowledges what Priam cannot, that Troy’s destruction and his approaching death symbolize the passing of a generation and a way of life. Unfortunately, the new, reigning generation will include individuals like Pyrrhus, who irreverently kills Priam’s son in front of the king and then brazenly mocks Priam. When Priam recalls how Pyrrhus’s father once nobly showed mercy to the Trojan king, Pyrrhus’s response to the memory of his own father is cold, calculated, and inhumanely cruel: “You’ll report the news / To Pelidës, my father; don’t forget / My sad behavior, the degeneracy / Of Neoptolemus. Now die.” In Book III, we learn that even the barbaric Pyrrhus is not invincible; he too becomes a victim of revenge when he is slaughtered by Orestes.
Immediately following this scene, Aeneas remembers his family in their home and worries about their safety. His concern for them, following as it does Pyrrhus’s comments about his own father, increases our respect for Aeneas and highlights Pyrrhus’s depravity. Lest we fear that Aeneas, as a member of this new generation of leaders, will act as vilely as Pyrrhus, Virgil emphasizes the Trojan hero’s independence and honorable character by having him say of himself, “It came to this, / That I stood there alone.” This comment recalls Virgil’s describing Aeneas in Book I as “a man apart, devoted to his mission.”
In Book I, Aeneas showed himself to be a competent leader of his people and a responsible father to his son. Here, in Book II, he demonstrates the appropriate pietas—devotion to one’s family, country, and mission—for his father and again for his son.
When Anchises refuses to vacate his house, nobly choosing instead to commit suicide, Aeneas breaks down in tears and cries out that he could never leave his father. Aeneas is unwilling to abandon him, knowing that Greek warriors could break into the house at any moment and slaughter the man who gave him life. His deep respect for Anchises is best demonstrated by his physically carrying him through Troy’s streets to the rendezvous point.
