Reluctantly accepting Dido's invitation to tell his story, Aeneas sorrowfully begins with an account of the fall of Troy. He describes how, in the tenth year of the Trojan War, the Greeks constructed an enormous wooden horse, which they then rumored was intended as an offering to the goddess Minerva in order to gain her protection on their voyage home. In truth, they filled the horse with nine of their best warriors, including Ulysses, and then hid themselves in their ships behind the offshore island of Tenedos.
Fooled by this stratagem, Troy's citizens believed that the Greeks had indeed sailed home. Some wanted to bring the wooden horse into the city; others, rightly suspicious, wanted to destroy it. Laocoön, a priest of Neptune, warned the Trojans that the wooden horse was either full of soldiers or a war machine. Defiantly hurling a spear into the horse's side, he implored his countrymen to remember the last time the Greeks gave a gift to Troy without deception being involved. Of course, the Trojans could not.
At this point, shepherds came to the crowd gathered around the wooden horse. With them was a Greek captive, Sinon, who said that he had deserted Ulysses's army after learning that he was to be sacrificed in order to guarantee a favorable homeward wind for the Greeks. In reality, he was lying: He had been left behind by his fellow Greeks to deceive the Trojans and prepare for the Greek invasion of Troy.
