have their confused rumblings no meaning? See here: a woman, who, wandering in our territories, bought leave to build a petty town, to whom we made over a strip of 30 land for tillage, with its rights of lordship, she has rejected an alliance with us, and received Æneas into her kingdom, to be its lord and hers. And now that second Paris, with his emasculate following, a Mæonian[175] cap supporting his chin and his essenced hair, is enjoying his prize, while we, 35 forsooth, are making offerings to temples of thine, and keeping alive an idle rumour.” Thus as he prayed, his hands grasping the altar, the almighty one heard him, and turned his eyes to the queenly city and the guilty pair, lost to their better fame. Then thus he bespeaks Mercury, and gives him a charge like this:—“Go, haste, my son, summon the Zephyrs, and float on thy wings; address the Dardan chief, who is now dallying 5 in Tyrian Carthage, and giving no thought to the city which Destiny makes his own; carry him my commands through the flying air. It was not a man like that whom his beauteous mother promised us in him, and on the strength of her word twice rescued him from the sword of 10 Greece. No, he was to be one who should govern Italy—Italy, with its brood of unborn empires, and the war-cry bursting from its heart—who should carry down a line sprung from the grand fountain-head of Teucer’s blood, and should force the whole world to bow to the laws[176] he 15 makes. If he is fired by no spark of ambition for greatness like this, and will not rear a toilsome fabric for his own praise, is it a father’s heart that grudges Ascanius the hills of Rome? What is he building? What does he look to in lingering on among a nation of enemies, with no thought 20 for the great Ausonian family, or for the fields of Lavinium? Away with him to sea! This is our sentence; thus far be our messenger.”