In the recital of the fall of Troy, which occupies the second book, Virgil is said by Macrobius to have adhered almost verbally(485) to the work of a Greek poet, Pisander, the author of a poetical history of the world from the marriage of Jupiter and Juno down to the events contemporary with the poet himself. There seem to have been three Greek poets of that name, and the only one of them who was likely to have treated at any length of the events of that single night recorded in the second Aeneid is said to have lived after the time of Virgil. It seems impossible that any earlier poet could have assigned so much space as that demanded by the statement of Macrobius to the personal adventures of Aeneas. We are on surer ground in recognising the debt which Virgil owed to the account of the wooden horse in the Odyssey, to some of the lost plays of Sophocles, which told the tale of the treachery of Sinon and of the tragic fate of Laocoon, and to some of the lost Cyclic poems and the { ~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH TONOS~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~} { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH TONOS~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} of Stesichorus. The vision of Hector to Aeneas reminds us of that of Patroclus to Achilles; but in this resemblance we recognise also the difference between the poem founded on personal and that founded on national fortunes. The care which summons the shade of Patroclus to the couch of his friend is the care for his own burial; the care which brings Hector back to earth is the care for the salvation of the sacred relics of Troy in view of the great destiny which awaited them. There is more of human pathos in the vision of Patroclus; more of a stately majesty in that of Hector. And as in other passages where Virgil wishes to produce this effect, we note that he avails himself here of the language of Ennius,--
So too, near the end of the book, where the shade of Creusa gives to Aeneas the first intimation of his settlement in a western land,--
Et terram Hesperiam venies, ubi Lydius arva Inter opima virum leni fluit agmine Thybris(486),--