But entirely aside from its national, religious, or other characteristics, and so far as its place in the world's literature is concerned, the _Æneid_ is first of all a story. It has not, indeed, the simple grandeur of the _Iliad_, upon the model of which it was probably composed. The passing of nearly a millennium of world-life after Homer's time made that impossible; and it is obviously unfair to compare any product of the refined and artificial society of the Augustan with the product of the simple and fresh life of the Homeric age when the world was young. But the _Æneid_ has a grandeur, a grace, a polished beauty all its own; and, compared with the epic product of his own and later ages, Vergil's poem stands colossal--the unapproachable epic of the Roman tongue. It is the heroic story of the last night of Troy, and the subsequent wanderings of a band of Trojans under Æneas, prince of Troy; their long, vain search for their fate-promised land; their shipwreck upon the shores of Africa; their sojourn in Carthage and the love tragedy of Dido and Æneas; their memorial games in Sicily; Æneas' visit to the underworld, and the struggle of the Trojan exiles against native princes for a foothold in their destined Italy--all a story of heroes and heroic deeds, sketched on broad lines and with a free hand, but worked out with exquisite grace and beauty of detail. Vergil follows common usage in telling his story in an order not chronological. The introduction reminds us that the struggle of the Trojan exiles is not confined to earth, but has its counterpart in heaven, where Juno cherishes many old grudges against the Trojans, while Venus champions them for the sake of her son Æneas. A recognition of this divine element is all essential to an understanding of the story, for it is through the agency of these rival goddesses that much of the action for better and for worse is wrought out. The first view of our Trojan band shows them helpless in the grasp of a raging storm, wave-tossed and all but wrecked, they know not where. Through the uproar of the elements we hear the despairing cry of stout-hearted Æneas himself: O happy, thrice and yet again, Who died at Troy like valiant men, E'en in their parents' view! O Diomed, first of Greeks in fray, Why pressed I not the plain that day, Yielding my life to you, Where, stretched beneath a Phrygian sky, Fierce Hector, tall Sarpedon lie: Where Simoïs tumbles 'neath his wave Shields, helms, and bodies of the brave? Conington. But even as he speaks, the mountain waves break and drive his frail ships upon the quicksands near some wild and unknown shore.