Robbed of his realms, and banished from above. The men, dispersed on hills, to towns he brought, And laws ordained, and civil customs taught, And Latium called the land where safe he lay From his unduteous son, and his usurping sway. With his mild empire, peace and plenty came; And hence the golden times derived their name. A more degenerate and discoloured age Succeeded this, with avarice and rage. The Ausonians then, and bold Sicanians, came; And Saturn's empire often changed the name. Then kings--gigantic Tybris, and the rest-- With arbitrary sway the land oppressed: For Tyber's flood was Albula before, Till, from the tyrant's fate, his name it bore. I last arrived, driven from my native home, By fortune's power, and fate's resistless doom. Long tossed on seas, I sought this happy land, Warned by my mother nymph, and called by heaven's command." Thus, walking on, he spoke, and shewed the gate, Since called Carmental by the Roman state; Where stood an altar, sacred to the name Of old Carmenta, the prophetic dame, Who to her son foretold the Ænean race, Sublime in fame, and Rome's imperial place;-- Then shews the forests, which, in after-times, Fierce Romulus, for perpetrated crimes, A sacred refuge made;--with this, the shrine Where Pan below the rock had rites divine;-- Then tells of Argus' death, his murdered guest, Whose grave and tomb his innocence attest. Thence, to the steep Tarpeian rock he leads-- Now roofed with gold, then thatched with homely reeds. A reverent fear (such superstition reigns Among the rude) even then possessed the swains. Some god, they knew--what god, they could not tell-- Did there amidst the sacred horror dwell. The Arcadians thought him Jove; and said they saw The mighty Thunderer with majestic awe, Who shook his shield, and dealt his bolts around, And scattered tempests on the teeming ground. Then saw two heaps of ruins, (once they stood Two stately towns, on either side the flood,) Saturnia's and Janiculum's remains; And either place the founder's name retains. Discoursing thus together, they resort Where poor Evander kept his country court. They viewed the ground of Rome's litigious hall; (Once oxen lowed, where now the lawyers bawl,) Then, stooping, through the narrow gate they pressed, When thus the king bespoke his Trojan guest:-- "Mean as it is, this palace, and this door, Received Alcides, then a conqueror. Dare to be poor; accept our homely food, Which feasted him, and emulate a god." Then underneath a lowly roof he led } The weary prince, and laid him on a bed; } The stuffing leaves with hides of bears o'erspread. } Now night had shed her silver dews around, And with her sable wings embraced the ground,