No More Learning

Straightway the prophet cries: 'I see a foreigner draw nigh, an army
from the same quarter seek the same quarter, and reign high in our
fortress. ' Furthermore, while maiden Lavinia stands beside her father
feeding the altars with holy fuel, she was seen, oh, horror! to catch
fire in her long tresses, and burn with flickering flame in all her
array, her queenly hair lit up, lit up her jewelled circlet; till,
enwreathed in smoke and lurid light, she scattered fire over all the
palace. That sight was rumoured wonderful and terrible. Herself, they
prophesied, she should be glorious in fame and fortune; but a great war
was foreshadowed for her people. But the King, troubled by the omen,
visits the oracle of his father Faunus the soothsayer, and the groves
deep under Albunea, where, queen of the woods, she echoes from her holy
well, and breathes forth a dim and deadly vapour. Hence do the tribes of
Italy and all the Oenotrian land seek answers in perplexity; hither the
priest bears his gifts, and when he hath lain down and sought slumber
under the silent night on the spread fleeces of slaughtered sheep, sees
many flitting phantoms of wonderful wise, hears manifold voices, and
attains converse of the gods, and hath speech with Acheron and the deep
tract of hell. Here then, likewise seeking an answer, lord Latinus paid
fit sacrifice of an hundred woolly ewes, and [94-127]lay couched on the
strewn fleeces they had worn. Out of the lofty grove a sudden voice was
uttered: 'Seek not, O my child, to unite thy daughter in Latin
espousals, nor trust her to the bridal chambers ready to thine hand;
foreigners shall come to be thy sons, whose blood shall raise our name
to heaven, and the children of whose race shall see, where the circling
sun looks on either ocean, all the rolling world swayed beneath their
feet. ' This his father Faunus' answer and counsel given in the silent
night Latinus restrains not in his lips; but wide-flitting Rumour had
already borne it round among the Ausonian cities, when the children of
Laomedon moored their fleet to the grassy slope of the river bank.

Aeneas, with the foremost of his captains and fair Iulus, lay them down
under the boughs of a high tree and array the feast. They spread wheaten
cakes along the sward under their meats--so Jove on high prompted--and
crown the platter of corn with wilding fruits. Here haply when the rest
was spent, and scantness of food set them to eat their thin bread, and
with hand and venturous teeth do violence to the round cakes fraught
with fate and spare not the flattened squares: _Ha! Are we eating our
tables too? _ cries Iulus jesting, and stops.
At once that accent heard
set their toils a limit; and at once as he spoke his father caught it
from his lips and hushed him, in amazement at the omen. Straightway
'Hail, O land! ' he cries, 'my destined inheritance! and hail, O
household gods, faithful to your Troy! here is home; this is our native
country. For my father Anchises, now I remember it, bequeathed me this
secret of fate: "When hunger shall drive thee, O son, to consume thy
tables where the feast fails, on the unknown shores whither thou shalt
sail; then, though outwearied, hope for home, and there at last let
thine hand remember to set thy house's foundations and bulwarks. " This
was [128-162]the hunger, this the last that awaited us, to set the
promised end to our desolations . . . Up then, and, glad with the first
sunbeam, let us explore and search all abroad from our harbour, what is
the country, who its habitants, where is the town of the nation. Now
pour your cups to Jove, and call in prayer on Anchises our father,
setting the wine again upon the board. ' So speaks he, and binding his
brows with a leafy bough, he makes supplication to the Genius of the
ground, and Earth first of deities, and the Nymphs, and the Rivers yet
unknown; then calls on Night and Night's rising signs, and next on Jove
of Ida, and our lady of Phrygia, and on his twain parents, in heaven and
in the under world. At this the Lord omnipotent thrice thundered sharp
from high heaven, and with his own hand shook out for a sign in the sky
a cloud ablaze with luminous shafts of gold. A sudden rumour spreads
among the Trojan array, that the day is come to found their destined
city. Emulously they renew the feast, and, glad at the high omen, array
the flagons and engarland the wine.

Soon as the morrow bathed the lands in its dawning light, they part to
search out the town, and the borders and shores of the nation: these are
the pools and spring of Numicus; this is the Tiber river; here dwell the
brave Latins.