Seated on her heavenly car the goddess was speeding on her way from Carthage, full of ambitious schemes for the rising city, when, turning her eyes earthward, she saw the fleet of Æneas putting out from the shore of Sicily and heading for the Italian coast. At this unwelcome sight she checked the flight of her airy steeds, and communed thus with her heart: “There goes the Prince of Troy, the child of fortune, and thinks to thwart my purpose, and bring all my plans to naught. Powers less august than I can work their will, and vindicate their insulted majesty; Ajax blasphemed against Pallas, and in the midst of his boastings was blasted by Jove’s fiery bolt—and I, the high Queen of Heaven, the consort of heaven’s king, must war in vain for years against this broken remnant of a ruined race.” VENUS SENDS ÆNEAS TO QUEEN DIDO By Alfred J. Church Not many days after Æneas and his companions set sail. But scarce were they out of sight of the land of Sicily when Juno had espied them. Very wroth was she that they should be now drawing near to the end of their journey, and she smote the ship with the thunderbolts of Jupiter.… Then Æneas and his companions, being sore wearied with the storm, made for the nearest shore, even Africa, where they found a haven running far into land, into which the waves come not till their force be spent.… Now it came to pass on the next day that Æneas, having first hidden his ships in a bay that was well covered with trees, went forth to spy out the new land whither he was come, and Achates only went with him. And Æneas had in each hand a broad-pointed spear. And as he went there met him in the middle of the wood his mother, but habited as a Spartan virgin, for she had hung a bow from her shoulders after the fashion of a huntress, and her hair was loose, and her tunic short to the knees, and her garments gathered in a knot upon her breast. Then first the false huntress spake, “If perchance ye have seen one of my sisters wandering hereabouts, make known to me the place. She is girded with a quiver, and is clothed with the skin of a spotted lynx, or, may be, she hunts a wild boar with horn and hound.” To whom Æneas, “I have not seen nor heard sister of thine, O virgin—for what shall I call thee? for, of a surety, neither is thy look as of a mortal woman, nor yet thy voice. A goddess certainly thou art, sister of Phœbus, or, haply, one of the nymphs. But whosoever thou art, look favorably upon us and help us. Tell us in what land we be, for the winds have driven us hither, and we know not aught of place or people.”