No More Learning

Thine
eyes shall see the city Lavinium, their promised home; thou shalt exalt
to the starry heaven thy noble Aeneas; nor is my decree reversed. He
thou lovest (for I will speak, since this care keeps torturing thee, and
will unroll further the secret records of fate) shall wage a great war
in Italy, and crush warrior nations; he shall appoint his people a law
and a city; till the third summer see him reigning in Latium, and three
winters' camps pass over the conquered Rutulians. But the boy Ascanius,
whose surname is now Iulus--Ilus he was while the Ilian state stood
sovereign--thirty great circles of rolling months shall he fulfil in
government; he shall carry the kingdom from its fastness in Lavinium,
and make a strong fortress of Alba the Long. Here the full space of
thrice an hundred years shall the kingdom endure under the race of
Hector's kin, till the royal priestess Ilia from Mars' embrace shall
give birth to a twin progeny. Thence shall Romulus, gay in the tawny
hide of the she-wolf that nursed him, take up their line, and name them
Romans after his own name. I appoint to these neither period nor
boundary of empire: I have given them dominion without end. Nay, harsh
Juno, who in her fear now troubles earth and sea and sky, shall change
to better counsels, and with me shall cherish the lords of the world,
the gowned race of Rome. Thus is it willed. A day will come in the lapse
of cycles, when the house of Assaracus shall lay Phthia and famed
Mycenae in bondage, and reign over conquered Argos. From the fair line
of Troy a Caesar shall arise, who shall limit his empire with ocean, his
glory with the firmament, Julius, inheritor of great Iulus' name. Him
one day, thy care done, thou shalt welcome to heaven loaded
[290-321]with Eastern spoils; to him too shall vows be addressed. Then
shall war cease, and the iron ages soften. Hoar Faith and Vesta,
Quirinus and Remus brothers again, shall deliver statutes. The dreadful
steel-riveted gates of war shall be shut fast; on murderous weapons the
inhuman Fury, his hands bound behind him with an hundred fetters of
brass, shall sit within, shrieking with terrible blood-stained lips. '

So speaking, he sends Maia's son down from above, that the land and
towers of Carthage, the new town, may receive the Trojans with open
welcome; lest Dido, ignorant of doom, might debar them her land.
Flying
through the depth of air on winged oarage, the fleet messenger alights
on the Libyan coasts. At once he does his bidding; at once, for a god
willed it, the Phoenicians allay their haughty temper; the queen above
all takes to herself grace and compassion towards the Teucrians.

But good Aeneas, nightlong revolving many and many a thing, issues
forth, so soon as bountiful light is given, to explore the strange
country; to what coasts the wind has borne him, who are their habitants,
men or wild beasts, for all he sees is wilderness; this he resolves to
search, and bring back the certainty to his comrades. The fleet he hides
close in embosoming groves beneath a caverned rock, amid shivering
shadow of the woodland; himself, Achates alone following, he strides
forward, clenching in his hand two broad-headed spears. And amid the
forest his mother crossed his way, wearing the face and raiment of a
maiden, the arms of a maiden of Sparta, or like Harpalyce of Thrace when
she tires her coursers and outstrips the winged speed of Hebrus in her
flight. For huntress fashion had she slung the ready bow from her
shoulder, and left her blown tresses free, bared her knee, and knotted
together her garments' flowing folds. 'Ha! my men,' she begins, 'shew me
if [322-355]haply you have seen a sister of mine straying here girt
with quiver and a lynx's dappled fell, or pressing with shouts on the
track of a foaming boar. '

Thus Venus, and Venus' son answering thus began:

'Sound nor sight have I had of sister of thine, O maiden unnamed; for
thy face is not mortal, nor thy voice of human tone; O goddess
assuredly! sister of Phoebus perchance, or one of the nymphs' blood?
Be thou gracious, whoso thou art, and lighten this toil of ours; deign
to instruct us beneath what skies, on what coast of the world, we are
thrown. Driven hither by wind and desolate waves, we wander in a strange
land among unknown men. Many a sacrifice shall fall by our hand before
thine altars. '

Then Venus: 'Nay, to no such offerings do I aspire. Tyrian maidens are
wont ever to wear the quiver, to tie the purple buskin high above their
ankle. Punic is the realm thou seest, Tyrian the people, and the city of
Agenor's kin; but their borders are Libyan, a race unassailable in war.