Listen, lords of Troy, and learn where your hopes are. Crete lies in the midst of the deep, the island of mighty Jove. There is Mount Ida, and there the cradle of our race. It has a hundred peopled cities, a realm of richest plenty. Thence it was that our first father, Teucer, if I rightly recall what I have heard, came in the beginning to the Rhoetean coast, and fixed on the site of empire. Ilion and the towers of Pergamus had not yet been reared; the people dwelt low in the valley. Hence came our mighty mother, the dweller on Mount Cybele, and the symbols of the Corybants, and the forest of Ida: hence the inviolate mystery of her worship, and the lions harnessed to the car of their queen. Come, then, and let us follow where the ordinance of heaven points the way; let us propitiate the winds, and make for the realm of Gnossus--the voyage is no long one--let but Jupiter go with us, and the third day will land our fleet on the Cretan shore. Conington. They quickly reach the Cretan shore, joyfully lay out their new city, and begin again the sweet, simple life in home and field which had been theirs before Paris brought the curse on Troy. But alas for their bright hopes! A blighting pestilence falls on man and beast, on tree and shrub; the very ground is accursed. It is the harsh warning of fate that they must not settle here. But where? To Æneas, as he tosses in sleepless anxiety through the night, there appear in the white moonlight the images of his country's gods, who give him the needed counsel: We, the followers of you and your fortune since the Dardan land sank in flame--we, the comrades of the fleet which you have been guiding over the swollen main--we it is that will raise to the stars the posterity that shall come after you, and crown your city with imperial sway. Be it yours to build mighty walls for mighty dwellers, and not abandon the task of flight for its tedious length. Change your settlement; it is not this coast that the Delian god moved you to accept--not in Crete that Apollo bade you sit down. No, there is a place--the Greeks call it Hesperia--a land old in story, strong in arms and in the fruitfulness of its soil--the Oenotrians were its settlers. Now report says that later generations have called the nation Italian, from the name of their leader. That is our true home: thence sprung Dardanus and father Iasius, the first founder of our line. Quick! rise, and tell the glad tale, which brooks no question, to your aged sire; tell him that he is to look for Corythus and the country of Ausonia. Jupiter bars you from the fields of Dicte. Conington.