great Iulus. Him thou shalt one day welcome in safety to the sky, a warrior laden with Eastern spoils; to him, as to Æneas, men shall pray and make their vows. In his days war[76] shall cease, and savage times grow mild. Faith with her hoary head, and Vesta,[77] Quirinus,[78] and Remus his 20 brother, shall give law to the world: grim, iron-bound, closely welded, the gates of war shall be closed; the fiend of Discord a prisoner within, seated on a pile of arms deadly as himself, his hands bound behind his back with a hundred brazen chains, shall roar ghastly from his throat of blood.” 25 So saying, he sends down from on high the son of Maia,[79] that Carthage the new, her lands and her towers, may open themselves to welcome in the Teucrians, lest Dido,[80] in her ignorance of Fate, should drive them from her borders. Down flies Mercury through the vast abyss of 30 air, with his wings for oars, and has speedily alighted on the shore of Libya. See! he is doing his bidding already: the Punic[81] nation is resigning the fierceness of its nature at the god’s pleasure; above all the rest, the queen is admitting into her bosom thoughts of peace towards the 35 Teucrians, and a heart of kindness. But Æneas the good, revolving many things the whole night through, soon as the gracious dawn is vouchsafed, resolves to go out and explore this new region; to inquire what shores be these on which the wind has driven him, who their dwellers, for he sees it is a wilderness, men or beasts; and bring his comrades back the news. His fleet he hides in the wooded cove under a hollow rock, 5 with a wall of trees and stiffening shade on each side. He moves on with Achates, his single companion, wielding in his hands two spear shafts, with heads of broad iron. He had reached the middle of the wood, when his way was crossed by his mother, wearing a maiden’s mien and 10 dress, and a maiden’s armour, Spartan, or even as Harpalyce of Thrace, tires steed after steed, and heads the swift waters of her own Hebrus as she flies along. For she had a shapely bow duly slung from her shoulders in true huntress fashion, and her hair streaming in the wind, her knee 15 bare, and her flowing scarf gathered round her in a knot. Soon as she sees them, “Ho![82] youths,” cries she, “if you have chanced to see one of my sisters wandering in these parts, tell me where to find her—wandering with a quiver, and a spotted lynx hide fastened about her; or, it may 20 be, pressing on the heels of the foaming boar with her hounds in full cry.”