Summary of Aenied Book 2 403ff.

their towers and walls to crush the Greeks below them, while the men on the ground were trying to defend doorways with their swords drawn. Aeneas remembers that there was a secret passage used by Andromache and decides to use this to enter the palace. Virgil uses the mention of this name to again introduce a mood of nostalgia. Once in the palace they loosen one of the towers and push it down, “crushing great columns of Greeks.” We are then told about the rampaging Pyrrhus and he is compared to a snake. Pyrrhus then hacks his way into the heart of Priam’s palace where the women and children are, and the Greek continued to press on with similar brute force to his father Achilles killing everything in his path as he was soon followed by the Greeks soldiers who butchered the guards in their way. We are then told of the sacrilegious killing of Priam. The Trojan king put on his armour and took his sword in a feeble effort to protect his palace. His wife Hecuba tries to reason with him as the King tries to remember his glories as a warrior in youth. Polites the son of Hecuba and Priam is then seen and is brutally butchered down by Pyrrhus in front of his parent’s eyes. A distraught Priam then questions Pyrrhus by saying that even Achilles would not have treated his enemy like this as he had nobly restored Hectors body to Troy. The King feebly throws his spear at him as the Greek replies by saying that Priam can soon tell Achilles of his wrong doing when he joins him in the underworld. Priam is then killed with his head hacked from his body lain upon the shore.Aeneas then immediately thinks of his father, his wife and his son, not knowing their fate.Aeneas then catches sight of Helen in the temple of Vesta and is infuriated by her. He runs towards her but is distracted by the appearance of his mother before his eyes. She holds him back and tells him to consider his family.Venus then reveals that the gods are at work at the destruction of Troy, and she tells him that even “Jupiter himself who is rousing the gods against the armies of Troy.” Aeneas then compares the falling of Troy to that of an ancient ash tree and this simile again shows how Virgil uses beauty in vegetation to illustrate the loss of something that was once so great.Anchises then refuses to leave and he refers to the sack of Troy by Hercules. He also refuses to have a tomb which shows that he is full of self-pity as an appropriate burial is needed to enter the underworld. Also how once Jupiter threw down a thunderbolt which was deflected and scorched Anchises rather than killing him. Aeneas, Creusa and Iulus all try to persuade him to move but to no immediate avail.It seems that nothing will persuade Anchises until a portent of fire appears around Iulus’ head and Anchises is transformed and prays to Jupiter for help. Then they are given a sign as a peal of thunder rang out from the left and a star fell from the sky which buried itself in the woods of Mount Ida. This sign truly convinced Anchises.Aeneas takes Anchises on his shoulders, Iulus by his side and Creusa trails behind him in an attempt to get to the temple of Ceres who was the goddess of agriculture.When Aeneas reaches the temple of Ceres he realises that he had lost his wife as he did not look back as they were escaping. He puts on his armour and goes back into Troy. When back in Troy he looks around and checks the city for his wife before going back to the palace of Priam and the citadel which was being guarded by Ulixes who had put the Greek loot in the porticos of the shrine of Juno.Aeneas then calls out his wife’s name but to no answer and he continues to search for her. He is confronted by the phantom of his wife who tells him that “these things do not happen without the approval of the gods.”She tells him that he will be exiled for a long time before he goes to the land of Hesperia where he will have a kingdom and a royal bride, and she then fades away into the air as Aeneas is left in tears unable to reply.Three times he had tried to embrace the phantom of his wife and three times it had disappeared as the night had almost ended.Aeneas then returns to his family whom have been joined by many other refugees from all directions and are ready to follow him.  The Greeks took guard of the city and the remaining Trojans then set off into the mountains led by Aeneas.