proud to wear the tawny hide of the wolf that nursed him, Romulus, who will take up the sceptre, and build a new city, the city of Mars, and give the people his own name of Roman. To them I assign no limit, no date of empire: my grant to them is dominion without end. Nay, Juno, 5 thy savage foe, who now, in her blind terror, lets neither sea, land, nor heaven rest, shall amend her counsels, and vie with me in watching over the Romans, lords of earth, the great nation of the gown. So it is willed. The time shall come, as Rome's years roll on, when the house of 10 Assaracus[o] shall bend to its yoke Phthia[o] and renowned Mycenæ,[o] and queen it over vanquished Argos.[o] Then shall be born the child of an illustrious line, one of thine own Trojans, Cæsar, born to extend his empire to the ocean, his glory to the stars,[o]—Julius, in name as in blood the heir of 15 great Iulus. Him thou shalt one day welcome in safety to the sky, a warrior laden with Eastern spoils; to him, as to Æneas, men shall pray and make their vows. In his days war[o] shall cease, and savage times grow mild. Faith with her hoary head, and Vesta,[o] Quirinus,[o] and Remus his 20 brother, shall give law to the world: grim, iron-bound, closely welded, the gates of war shall be closed; the fiend of Discord a prisoner within, seated on a pile of arms deadly as himself, his hands bound behind his back with a hundred brazen chains, shall roar ghastly from his throat of blood." 25
So saying, he sends down from on high the son of Maia,[o] that Carthage the new, her lands and her towers, may open themselves to welcome in the Teucrians, lest Dido,[o] in her ignorance of Fate, should drive them from her borders. Down flies Mercury through the vast abyss of 30 air, with his wings for oars, and has speedily alighted on the shore of Libya. See! he is doing his bidding already: the Punic[o] nation is resigning the fierceness of its nature at the god's pleasure; above all the rest, the queen is admitting into her bosom thoughts of peace towards the 35 Teucrians, and a heart of kindness.
But Æneas the good, revolving many things the whole night through, soon as the gracious dawn is vouchsafed,
