The Aeneid

The Trojans, after a seven years’ voyage, set sail for Italy, but are overtaken by a dreadful storm, which Aeolus raises at the request of Juno. The tempest sinks one, and scatters the rest. Neptune drives off the winds, and calms the sea. Aeneas, with his own ship and six more, arrives safe at an African port. Venus complains to Jupiter of her son’s misfortunes. Jupiter comforts her, and sends Mercury to procure him a kind reception among the Carthaginians. Aeneas, going out to discover the country, meets his mother in the shape of a huntress, who conveys him in a cloud to Carthage, where he sees his friends whom he thought lost, and receives a kind entertainment from the queen. Dido, by device of Venus, begins to have a passion for him, and, after some discourse with him, desires the history of his adventures since the siege of Troy, which is the subject of the two following books. A rms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate, And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate, Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore. Long labours, both by sea and land, he bore, And in the doubtful war, before he won The Latian realm, and built the destin’d town; His banish’d gods restor’d to rites divine, And settled sure succession in his line, From whence the race of Alban fathers come, And the long glories of majestic Rome. O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate; What goddess was provok’d, and whence her hate; For what offence the Queen of Heav’n began To persecute so brave, so just a man; Involv’d his anxious life in endless cares, Expos’d to wants, and hurried into wars! Can heav’nly minds such high resentment show, Or exercise their spite in human woe? Against the Tiber’s mouth, but far away, An ancient town was seated on the sea; A Tyrian colony; the people made Stout for the war, and studious of their trade: Carthage the name; belov’d by Juno more Than her own Argos, or the Samian shore. Here stood her chariot; here, if Heav’n were kind, The seat of awful empire she design’d. Yet she had heard an ancient rumour fly, (Long cited by the people of the sky,) That times to come should see the Trojan race Her Carthage ruin, and her tow’rs deface;