“When in the bosom of the wood Before him, lo, his mother stood, In mien and gear a Spartan maid, Or like Harpalycè arrayed, Who tires fleet coursers in the chase, And heads the swiftest streams of Thrace. Slung from her shoulders hangs a bow; Loose to the wind her tresses flow; Bare was her knee; her mantle’s fold The gathering of a knot controlled. And ‘Saw ye, youths,’ she asks them, ‘say, One of my sisters here astray; A silver quiver at her side, And for a scarf a lynx’s hide; Or pressing on the wild boar’s track With upraised dart and voiceful pack?’” There is in this description a happy reminiscence of an earlier legend. In such guise--not with any of the meretricious attractions assigned to the goddess of Cyprus and of Paphos, but as a simple mountain nymph--had she won her mortal lover, the Trojan shepherd Anchises, from whom this her dear son was born. So ran the fable; and it was added that she had enjoined her lover never to disclose the secret of the child’s birth, nor to boast of the favour shown him by a goddess, but to bring the boy up in the forests of Ida, as the offspring of a wood-nymph. Anchises, in his pride, had neglected or forgotten her warning, and was punished by premature weakness and a helpless old age. Professing herself to be but a Tyrian damsel, Venus replies to her son’s questions as to the inhabitants of the land. They are a colony from Tyre; their queen, Dido, has fled from the treachery of her false brother Pygmalion, who, after murdering her husband Sichæus, had possessed himself of the kingdom. Hither she has escaped with her husband’s wealth, and is founding a new city on the coast of Africa. Æneas tells her in return his own sad story, and is comforted by the assurance that all his fleet, though scattered, are safe--all but one unhappy vessel and her crew. Then, as she turns to leave him, the disguised divinity becomes apparent. “Ambrosial tresses round her head A more than earthly fragrance shed; Her falling robe her footsteps swept, And showed the goddess as she stept.”