ably
cast away for a single enemy's anger, are betrayed and severed far from
the Italian coasts. Is this the reward of goodness? Is it thus thou dost
restore our throne?'

Smiling on her with that look which clears sky and [255-289]storms, the
parent of men and gods lightly kissed his daughter's lips; then answered
thus:

'Spare thy fear, Cytherean; thy people's destiny abides unshaken. Thine
eyes shall see the city Lavinium, their promised home; thou shalt exalt
to the starry heaven thy noble Aeneas; nor is my decree reversed. He
thou lovest (for I will speak, since this care keeps torturing thee, and
will unroll further the secret records of fate) shall wage a great war
in Italy, and crush warrior nations; he shall appoint his people a law
and a city; till the third summer see him reigning in Latium, and three
winters' camps pass over the conquered Rutulians. But the boy Ascanius,
whose surname is now Iuelus--Ilus he was while the Ilian state stood
sovereign--thirty great circles of rolling months shall he fulfil in
government; he shall carry the kingdom from its fastness in Lavinium,
and make a strong fortress of Alba the Long. Here the full space of
thrice an hundred years shall the kingdom endure under the race of
Hector's kin, till the royal priestess Ilia from Mars' embrace shall
give birth to a twin progeny. Thence shall Romulus, gay in the tawny
hide of the she-wolf that nursed him, take up their line, and name them
Romans after his own name. I appoint to these neither period nor
boundary of empire: I have given them dominion without end. Nay, harsh
Juno, who in her fear now troubles earth and sea and sky, shall change
to better counsels, and with me shall cherish the lords of the world,
the gowned race of Rome. Thus is it willed. A day will come in the lapse
of cycles, when the house of Assaracus shall lay Phthia and famed
Mycenae in bondage, and reign over conquered Argos. From the fair line
of Troy a Caesar shall arise, who shall limit his empire with ocean, his
glory with the firmament, Julius, inheritor of great Iuelus' name. Him
one day, thy care done, thou shalt welcome to heaven loaded
[290-321]with Eastern spoils; to him too shall vows be addressed. Then
shall war cease, and the iron ages soften. Hoar Faith and Vesta,
Quirinus and Remus brothers again, shall deliver statutes. The dreadful
steel-riveted gates of war shall be shut fast; on murderous weapons the
inhuman Fury, his hands bound behind him