He knows at once who his visitors are. Strange portents had long disturbed his court, and had warned him that his daughter must wed with no prince of Latian race: that a foreign host and a stranger bridegroom will come to claim her, and that the kings who shall spring from this union will spread the Latian name from sea to sea. He inquires the strangers’ errand courteously, and the Trojan Ilioneus, as spokesman of the embassy, thus makes reply:-- “We come not to your friendly coast By random gale o’er ocean tost, Nor land nor star has made us stray From our determined line of way: Of steady purpose one and all We flock beneath your city wall, Driven from an empire, greater none Within the circuit of the sun. Jove is our sire: to Jove’s high race We, Dardans born, our lineage trace: Jove’s seed, the monarch we obey, Æneas, sends us here to-day. How fierce a storm from Argos sent On Ida’s plains its fury spent, How Fate in dire collision hurled The eastern and the western world, E’en he has heard, whom earth’s last verge Just separates from the circling surge, And he who, to his kind unknown, Dwells midmost ’neath the torrid zone. Swept by that deluge o’er the foam For our lorn gods we ask a home: A belt of sand is all we crave, And man’s free birthright, air and wave. We shall not shame your Latin crown, Nor light shall be your own renown, Nor time obliterate the debt, Nor Italy the hour regret When Troy with outstretched arms she met. I swear it by Æneas’ fate, By that right hand which makes him great, In peace and war approved alike A friend to aid, a foe to strike, Full oft have mighty nations--nay, Disdain not that unsought we pray, Nor deem that wreaths and lowly speech The grandeur of our name impeach-- Full oft with zeal and earnest prayers Have nations wooed us to be theirs; But Heaven’s high fate, with stern command, Impelled us still to this your land. Here Dardanus was born, and here Apollo bids our race return: To Tyrrhene Tiber points the seer And pure Numicius’ hallowed urn. These presents too our hands convey, Scant relics of a happier day, From burning Ilium snatched away. From this bright gold before the shrine His sire Anchises poured the wine: With these adornments Priam sate ’Mid gathering crowds in kingly state, The sceptre and the diadem: Troy’s women wrought the vesture’s hem.” The king muses thoughtfully for a while: but he recognises the fulfilment of the auguries. Let Æneas come--he is welcome. If this be the bridegroom sent by heaven, he shall be more welcome still. He sends back the ambassadors in right royal fashion, all mounted on choice horses from his own stud, and with a chariot of honour to convey their chief to an interview.