lofty turret, and makes great cities afraid; as apt to cling to falsehood and wrong as to proclaim the truth. So then she was filling the public ear with a thousand tales—things done and things never done alike the burden of her song—how that Æneas, a prince of Trojan blood, had 5 arrived at Carthage, a hero whom lovely Dido deigned to make her husband, and now in luxurious ease they were wearing away the length of winter together, forgetful of the crowns they wore or hoped to wear, and enthralled by unworthy passion. Such are the tales the fiendlike goddess 10 spreads from tongue to tongue. Then, in due course, she turns her steps to King Iarbas, and inflames him with her rumours, and piles his indignation high. He, the son of Ammon, from the ravished embrace of a Garamantian nymph, built within his broad realms a hundred temples 15 to Jove, and in each temple an altar; there he had consecrated an ever-wakeful fire, the god's unsleeping sentry, a floor thick with victims' blood, and doors wreathed with particoloured garlands. And he, frenzied in soul, and stung by the bitter tidings, is said, as he stood before the 20 altars, with the majesty of Heaven all around him, to have prayed long and earnestly to Jove with upturned hands:—"Jove, the Almighty, to whom in this my reign the Moorish race, feasting on embroidered couches, pour out the offering of the vintage, seest thou this? or is our dread 25 of thee, Father, when thou hurlest thy lightnings, an idle panic? are those aimless fires in the clouds that appal us? have their confused rumblings no meaning? See here: a woman, who, wandering in our territories, bought leave to build a petty town, to whom we made over a strip of 30 land for tillage, with its rights of lordship, she has rejected an alliance with us, and received Æneas into her kingdom, to be its lord and hers. And now that second Paris, with his emasculate following, a Mæonian[o] cap supporting his chin and his essenced hair, is enjoying his prize, while we, 35 forsooth, are making offerings to temples of thine, and keeping alive an idle rumour."
Thus as he prayed, his hands grasping the altar, the
