Lightnings blaze, and heaven flashes in sympathy with the bridal; and from mountain-tops the nymphs give the nuptial shout. That day was the birthday of death, the birthday of woe. Henceforth she has no thought for the 20 common eye or the common tongue; it is not a stolen passion that Dido has now in her mind—no, she calls it marriage; that name is the screen of her sin. Instantly Fame[173] takes her journey through Libya’s great cities—Fame, a monster surpassed in speed by none; her 25 nimbleness lends her life, and she gains strength as she goes. At first fear keeps her low; soon she rears herself skyward, and treads on the ground, while her head is hidden among the clouds. Earth, her parent, provoked to anger against the gods, brought her forth, they say, the 30 youngest of the family of Cœus[174] and Enceladus—swift of foot and untiring of wing, a portent terrible and vast—who, for every feather on her body has an ever-wakeful eye beneath, marvellous to tell, for every eye a loud tongue and mouth, and a pricked-up ear. At night she flies midway 35 between heaven and earth, hissing through the darkness, nor ever yields her eyes to the sweets of sleep. In the daylight she sits sentinel on a high house-top, or on a lofty turret, and makes great cities afraid; as apt to cling to falsehood and wrong as to proclaim the truth. So then she was filling the public ear with a thousand tales—things done and things never done alike the burden of her song—how that Æneas, a prince of Trojan blood, had 5 arrived at Carthage, a hero whom lovely Dido deigned to make her husband, and now in luxurious ease they were wearing away the length of winter together, forgetful of the crowns they wore or hoped to wear, and enthralled by unworthy passion. Such are the tales the fiendlike goddess 10 spreads from tongue to tongue. Then, in due course, she turns her steps to King Iarbas, and inflames him with her rumours, and piles his indignation high. He, the son of Ammon, from the ravished embrace of a Garamantian nymph, built within his broad realms a hundred temples 15 to Jove, and in each temple an altar; there he had consecrated an ever-wakeful fire, the god’s unsleeping sentry, a floor thick with victims’ blood, and doors wreathed with particoloured garlands. And he, frenzied in soul, and stung by the bitter tidings, is said, as he stood before the 20 altars, with the majesty of Heaven all around him, to have prayed long and earnestly to Jove with upturned hands:—“Jove, the Almighty, to whom in this my reign the Moorish race, feasting on embroidered couches, pour out the offering of the vintage, seest thou this? or is our dread 25 of thee, Father, when thou hurlest thy lightnings, an idle panic? are those aimless fires in the clouds that appal us?