Aeneas’s Journey
Virgil’s Aeneid follows the Trojan hero Aeneas from the fall of Troy to Italy. The poem does not tell the voyage in the order in which it happened. Book I opens with the Trojans already at sea, near the end of their travels, and Aeneas himself narrates the earlier stages at the court of Dido in Books II and III.
The Stops in the Poem’s Order
Book I begins after a seven years’ voyage. A storm raised by Aeolus at the request of Juno sinks one ship and scatters the rest. Aeneas reaches an African port with his own ship and six more, and is brought to Carthage, where Queen Dido receives him and asks for the history of his adventures since the siege of Troy.
In Book II Aeneas relates the capture of Troy after a ten years’ siege, by the treachery of Sinon and the stratagem of a wooden horse. Advised by the ghost of Hector and by the appearance of his mother Venus, he leaves the city carrying his father on his shoulders and leading his young son, with his wife following behind. At the place appointed for the general rendezvous he finds that his wife is missing; her ghost later appears to him and names the land designed for him.
Book III continues the narrative with the fleet’s first voyage, which reaches Thrace. Aeneas then sails to Delos and asks the oracle where the gods have appointed his home. He mistakes the oracle’s answer and settles in Crete, until his household gods give him the true sense of it in a dream.
After leaving Crete, Aeneas is cast on several shores and meets surprising adventures. He lands at last on Sicily, where his father Anchises dies. Sicily is the place from which he was sailing when the tempest of Book I threw him on the Carthaginian coast.
Book IV is set at Carthage. Dido’s passion for Aeneas leads to a hunt, a storm, and a union in a cave. Jupiter sends Mercury to warn Aeneas to leave, and he prepares his departure in secret. Dido, unable to stop him, contrives her own death.
Leaving Africa, Aeneas is driven by a storm to Sicily, where Acestes, king of part of the island and of Trojan parentage, receives him. Aeneas holds funeral games in honor of his father. Trojan women, urged by Juno’s messenger Iris, set fire to the ships; the fire burns four, and a shower sent by Jupiter extinguishes the rest. Aeneas builds a city for those unfit for war or weary of the voyage and sails for Italy. Venus obtains from Neptune a safe passage for all except the pilot Palinurus, who is lost.
In Book VI the Sibyl foretells the adventures awaiting Aeneas in Italy and accompanies him to the underworld. There he meets his father Anchises, who instructs him on the soul of the world and on transmigration, and shows him the line of heroes who are to descend from him and his posterity.
The final six books are set in Italy. In Book VII King Latinus entertains Aeneas and promises him his daughter Lavinia, but Turnus, with the support of Juno and Alecto, breaks the agreement Latinus had made with Aeneas and gathers allies. In Book VIII Aeneas seeks help from Evander and the Tuscans, and Vulcan makes arms for him at the request of Venus. Book IX shows Turnus attacking the Trojan camp in Aeneas’s absence. Book X describes the battle on his return, in which Turnus kills Pallas, and Aeneas kills Lausus and Mezentius. In Book XI a truce is granted for burying the dead, and Camilla is killed in a cavalry engagement. In Book XII Aeneas, after being wounded and cured by Venus, forces a duel with Turnus, and the poem ends with his death.