from his body.[1] They did but wait to pay due honours to the shade of Polydorus, and then hastened from the accursed coast. Landing next on the sacred isle of Delos, they consulted the oracle there as to their future home. Apollo was as enigmatical as his wont—he bade them "seek out their ancient mother." They understood this to be spoken of the ancient cradle of their race; Anchises thought the phrase pointed to Crete, the birthplace of their ancestral hero Teucrus, and where stood the ancient Mount Ida, from which the mountain in the Troad derived its name. And Idomeneus, the king of Crete, who had joined the war against Troy, had been driven from his kingdom, and left a vacant throne.[2] To Crete they sailed, and there began to build a city, to be called Pergamia, after the citadel of Troy. But a year of deadly pestilence fell on man and beast; and in a dream Æneas saw the angry gods of Troy standing by him "in the full moonlight that streamed through the windows," and warning him that the promised land, the ancient home of their race, is not in Crete, but Hesperia—the "Land of the West"—whence came their forefather Dardanus. Then Anchises too re-
- ↑ Horrible as the legend is, Spenser thought it worth adopting. The Red-Cross Knight, to make a garland for Fidessa, tears branches from the tree that had once been Fradubio.—'Faery Queen,' I. ii. 30.
- ↑ The story of Idomeneus, according to the old annotators upon Virgil, has a curious similarity to that of Jephthah. He had vowed that if he escaped from a storm at sea, he would offer in sacrifice the first thing that met him on lauding. It was his son. A plague followed, and his subjects expelled him.
