He tells us nothing, however, for the present, of the escape from Troy and the embarkation of the fugitives, or of the guiding oracles in obedience to which they had sailed forth in quest of this new home. He only shows us Æneas on the sea, having just set sail from Sicily, where the angry Queen of Heaven catches sight of him. Juno, we must remember--Virgil, apparently, has no idea that any one could need reminding of it--Juno has never forgotten or forgiven that scene upon Mount Ida, where the Trojan Paris preferred the fascinations--or the bribes--of Venus to her own stately charms. She had persuaded her royal consort, the king of gods and men, to consent to the downfall of the accursed race; and she persecutes this unhappy remnant, now on its voyage, with unrelenting hate. Even the poet, who makes use of her persecution as one of the mainsprings of his story, professes his astonishment at its bitterness,-- “Can such deep hate find place in breasts divine?”[16] She had another reason, too, for her present jealous feelings. The city of Carthage, where she was especially honoured, she had hoped to make the mistress of the world. And now--so the inexorable Fates have woven it in their web--this new brood from Troy are to destroy it in the years to come. Rome, and not Carthage, the Roman poet would thus convey to his readers, is to have this universal empire. But they have not reached Latium yet, these hateful Trojans. They never shall. The Queen of Heaven betakes herself to the King of the Winds, where he sits enthroned in his Homeric island of Æolia, controlling his boisterous subjects:-- “They with the rock’s reverberant roar Chafe blustering round their prison door: He, throned on high, the sceptre sways, Controls their moods, their wrath allays. Break but that sceptre, sea and land And heaven’s ethereal deep Before them they would whirl like sand, And through the void air sweep.” At Juno’s request Æolus lets loose his prisoners. Out rush the winds in mad delight. “All in a moment, sun and skies Are blotted from the Trojans’ eyes: Black night is brooding o’er the deep, Sharp thunder peals, live lightnings leap: The stoutest warrior holds his breath, And looks as on the face of death. At once Æneas thrilled with dread; Forth from his breast, with hands outspread, These groaning words he drew: ‘O happy thrice, and yet again, Who died at Troy like valiant men, E’en in their parents’ view! O Diomed, first of Greeks in fray, Why passed I not the plain that day, Yielding my life to you, Where, stretched beneath a Phrygian sky, Fierce Hector, tall Sarpedon, lie: Where Simois tumbles ’neath his wave Shields, helms, and bodies of the brave?’”