War is now the subject, and Homer is the model. Yet the Roman poet never shows his individual genius more strongly than in his treatment of the external scenery amidst which his action lies. He is still the worshipper of Nature, even while he sets himself to sing of battles, as he was in his Pastorals and Georgics. Homer tells us of the rivers of the Troad, Simois and Scamander--but it is only as they affect Hector or Achilles; his heart is all the while with the combatants, not with the flowing river. Not so Virgil: with him we feel the cool breeze, we see the glancing shadow of the trees upon the river, we hear the flutter of the startled birds, and the long plash of the oars in the water: we sail with Æneas on a party of pleasure, rather than a voyage of conquest. Latium is reached at last. They moor their galleys under the trees which fringe the river-banks, and land to make their morning meal. It is but a scant one. Such wild fruits as they can collect are laid upon the wheaten cakes which they have brought with them, and when the fruit is finished they attack the cakes themselves. “Lo!” exclaims Iulus--“we are eating our tables!” Joyfully Æneas recognises, in the boy’s involuntary interpretation, the fulfilment of the curse of the Harpies,[38] and of certain strange words of his father Anchises, that when they were reduced to “eat their tables,” then they had found their destined home, and might begin to build their city. This, then, is their promised rest. He pours libations and offers prayers to the gods of the land, and peals of thunder from a cloudless sky seem to announce that the invocation is accepted. As soon as the moon rises, scouts are sent out to explore the country. The king of the land is old Latinus, whose palace is near at hand. He has one only daughter, Lavinia, for whose hand all the neighbouring princes have long been suitors. Turnus of Ardea, the gallant chief of the Rutuli, tallest and handsomest of all the rivals, has the goodwill of the queen-mother; the maiden’s own choice in such a matter being the last consideration which would enter into the thought of a Roman poet. When the Trojan chief has thus informed himself in some measure as to the localities, he sends a formal embassy to King Latinus’s court, carrying presents in token of goodwill. Meanwhile he busies himself in hurriedly marking out the boundaries of his new town, and fencing it round with an earthen rampart and a palisade. The strangers are ushered into the presence of Latinus, where he sits in his ancestral palace, surrounded by the cedar statues of the demi-gods and heroes of his line. “There too were spoils of bygone wars Hung on the portals,--captive cars, Strong city-gates with massive bars, And battle-axes keen, And plumy cones from helmets shorn, And beaks from vanquished vessels torn, And darts, and bucklers sheen.”