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.
