After these things were past, exalted Jove, from his ethereal sky surveying clear the seas all winged with sails, lands widely spread, and nations populous from shore to shore, paused on the peak of heaven, and fixed his gaze on Libya . But while he anxious mused, near him, her radiant eyes all dim with tears, nor smiling any more, Venus approached, and thus complained: “O thou who dost control things human and divine by changeless laws, enthroned in awful thunder! What huge wrong could my Aeneas and his Trojans few achieve against thy power? For they have borne unnumbered deaths, and, failing Italy , the gates of all the world against them close. Hast thou not given us thy covenant that hence the Romans when the rolling years have come full cycle, shall arise to power from Troy 's regenerate seed, and rule supreme the unresisted lords of land and sea? O Sire, what swerves thy will? How oft have I in Troy 's most lamentable wreck and woe consoled my heart with this, and balanced oft our destined good against our destined ill! But the same stormful fortune still pursues my band of heroes on their perilous way. When shall these labors cease, O glorious King? Antenor, though th' Achaeans pressed him sore, found his way forth, and entered unassailed Illyria 's haven, and the guarded land of the Liburni. Straight up stream he sailed where like a swollen sea Timavus pours a nine-fold flood from roaring mountain gorge, and whelms with voiceful wave the fields below. He built Patavium there, and fixed abodes for Troy 's far-exiled sons; he gave a name to a new land and race; the Trojan arms were hung on temple walls; and, to this day, lying in perfect peace, the hero sleeps. But we of thine own seed, to whom thou dost a station in the arch of heaven assign, behold our navy vilely wrecked, because a single god is angry; we endure this treachery and violence, whereby wide seas divide us from th' Hesperian shore. Is this what piety receives? Or thus doth Heaven's decree restore our fallen thrones?” Smiling reply, the Sire of gods and men, with such a look as clears the skies of storm chastely his daughter kissed, and thus spake on: “Let Cytherea cast her fears away! Irrevocably blest the fortunes be of thee and thine. Nor shalt thou fail to see that City, and the proud predestined wall encompassing Lavinium . Thyself shall starward to the heights of heaven bear Aeneas the great-hearted. Nothing swerves my will once uttered. Since such carking cares consume thee, I this hour speak freely forth, and leaf by leaf the book of fate unfold. Thy son in Italy shall wage vast war and, quell its nations wild; his city-wall and sacred laws shall be a mighty bond about his gathered people. Summers three shall Latium call him king; and three times pass the winter o'er Rutulia's vanquished hills. His heir, Ascanius, now Iulus called (Ilus it was while Ilium 's kingdom stood), full thirty months shall reign, then move the throne from the Lavinian citadel, and build for Alba Longa its well-bastioned wall. Here three full centuries shall Hector's race have kingly power; till a priestess queen, by Mars conceiving, her twin offspring bear; then Romulus, wolf-nursed and proudly clad in tawny wolf-skin mantle, shall receive the sceptre of his race. He shall uprear and on his Romans his own name bestow. To these I give no bounded times or power, but empire without end. Yea, even my Queen, Juno, who now chastiseth land and sea with her dread frown, will find a wiser way, and at my sovereign side protect and bless the Romans, masters of the whole round world, who, clad in peaceful toga, judge mankind. Such my decree! In lapse of seasons due, the heirs of Ilium 's kings shall bind in chains Mycenae 's glory and Achilles' towers, and over prostrate Argos sit supreme. Of Trojan stock illustriously sprung, lo, Caesar comes! whose power the ocean bounds, whose fame, the skies. He shall receive the name Iulus nobly bore, great Julius, he. Him to the skies, in Orient trophies dress, thou shalt with smiles receive; and he, like us, shall hear at his own shrines the suppliant vow. Then will the world grow mild; the battle-sound will be forgot; for olden Honor then, with spotless Vesta, and the brothers twain, Remus and Romulus, at strife no more, will publish sacred laws. The dreadful gates whence issueth war, shall with close-jointed steel be barred impregnably; and prisoned there the heaven-offending Fury, throned on swords, and fettered by a hundred brazen chains, shall belch vain curses from his lips of gore.” These words he gave, and summoned Maia's son, the herald Mercury, who earthward flying, should bid the Tyrian realms and new-built towers welcome the Trojan waifs; lest Dido, blind to Fate's decree, should thrust them from the land. He takes his flight, with rhythmic stroke of wing, across th' abyss of air, and soon draws near unto the Libyan mainland. He fulfils his heavenly task; the Punic hearts of stone grow soft beneath the effluence divine; and, most of all, the Queen, with heart at ease awaits benignantly her guests from Troy . But good Aeneas, pondering all night long his many cares, when first the cheerful dawn upon him broke, resolved to take survey of this strange country whither wind and wave had driven him,—for desert land it seemed,— to learn what tribes of man or beast possess a place so wild, and careful tidings bring back to his friends. His fleet of ships the while, where dense, dark groves o'er-arch a hollowed crag, he left encircled in far-branching shade. Then with no followers save his trusty friend Achates, he went forth upon his way, two broad-tipped javelins poising in his hand. Deep to the midmost wood he went, and there his Mother in his path uprose; she seemed in garb and countenance a maid, and bore, like Spartan maids, a weapon; in such guise Harpalyce the Thracian urges on her panting coursers and in wild career outstrips impetuous Hebrus as it flows. Over her lovely shoulders was a bow, slender and light, as fits a huntress fair; her golden tresses without wimple moved in every wind, and girded in a knot her undulant vesture bared her marble knees. She hailed them thus: “Ho, sirs, I pray you tell if haply ye have noted, as ye came, one of my sisters in this wood astray? She bore a quiver, and a lynx's hide her spotted mantle was; perchance she roused some foaming boar, and chased with loud halloo.”