beneath our home-gods’ hospitable shelter,” and gave his hand in welcome, and clung to the hand he clasped. They advance under the shade of the grove, and leave the river behind. 35 Then Æneas addresses the king with friendly courtesy: “Best of the sons of Greece, to whom it has pleased Fortune that I should make my prayer and stretch out boughs wreathed with fillets, I felt no fear for that you were a Danaan leader, an Arcadian, allied by lineage with the two sons of Atreus: I felt that my own worth, and the gods’ hallowed oracles, and the old connection of our ancestry, and your world-wide fame, had linked me to 5 you, and brought me before you at once by destiny and of my own will. Dardanus, first father and founder of the town of Ilion, born, as Greeks tell, of Electra, daughter of Atlas, came among Teucer’s people: Electra’s father was mighty Atlas, he that bears up on his shoulders the 10 spheres of heaven. Your progenitor is Mercury, whom beauteous Maia[251] conceived and brought forth on Cyllene’s chill summit; but Maia, if tradition be credited, is the child of Atlas, the same Atlas who lifts up the stars of the firmament. Thus our two races part off from one 15 and the same stock. Trusting to this, I sent no embassy, nor contrived the first approaches to you by rule and method: in myself, in my own person, I have made the experiment, and come to your gate as a suppliant. The same tribe which persecutes you, the Daunians, is 20 now persecuting us with cruel war: should they drive us away, they foresee nought to hinder their subduing all Hesperia utterly to their yoke, and mastering either sea, that washes it above or below. Take our friendship and give us yours. On our side are hearts valiant in war, 25 and a gallant youth approved by adventure.”