As Aeneas tells the story of Troy to Queen Dido, the city is soon to fall. Laocoon has already rightly warned the Trojans to have nothing to do with the wooden horse: now the Goddess Minerva takes a horrifying revenge. Mistakenly thinking that the portent shows that Laocoon’s warning was wrong, the Trojans will soon seal their fate by bringing the horse inside the city walls.
See the illustrated blog post here.
You can now also hear the German poet Friedrich Schiller’s fine version, with a translation, here.
To follow the story of Aeneas in sequence, use this link to the full Pantheon Poets selection of extracts from the Aeneid. See the next episode here.