But his goddess-mother, Venus, stays his hand, and bids him think rather of saving his wife, and aged father, and infant son. Virgil gives us no hint of the other story of Helen’s discovery by her angry husband Menelaus, who was lifting his sword to kill the adulteress, when his arm fell powerless before the fascination of her beauty. Obedient to the goddess, says Æneas, he went to seek his father Anchises, that he might carry him with him in his flight. But the old man refused to move. He would die, he said, in Troy. Life might be dear to the young; but for himself, even the tender mercies of the enemy would give him all he seeks, though they leave his corpse unburied,-- “He lacks not much that lacks a grave.” The desperate entreaties of his son were all in vain, until there came an omen from heaven. While Æneas was threatening--since the old man would not be saved--to rush himself again into the fight and meet a warrior’s death, his wife Creusa placed their young son Iulus in his arms. Lo! on the child’s head there played a lambent light of flame. The mother and Æneas would have sought to extinguish it, but Anchises recognised in it a sign from heaven. Virgil reads us no special interpretation, but surely he meant his Roman readers to understand that the seal of sovereignty was thus early set upon the founder of the great house of Julius. Thunder on the left hand--always the best of auguries--and a meteor flashing across the sky and pointing out their path to the fugitives, confirm the omen.