colour on his wings. Of such wise was the temple of the
gods wherein Latinus, sitting on his father's seat, summoned the
Teucrians to his house and presence; and when they entered in, he thus
opened with placid mien:

'Tell, O Dardanians, for we are not ignorant of your city and race, nor
unheard of do you bend your course [197-228]overseas, what seek you?
what the cause or whereof the need that hath borne you over all these
blue waterways to the Ausonian shore? Whether wandering in your course,
or tempest-driven (such perils manifold on the high seas do sailors
suffer), you have entered the river banks and lie in harbour; shun not
our welcome, and be not ignorant that the Latins are Saturn's people,
whom no laws fetter to justice, upright of their own free will and the
custom of the god of old. And now I remember, though the story is dimmed
with years, thus Auruncan elders told, how Dardanus, born in this our
country, made his way to the towns of Phrygian Ida and to the Thracian
Samos that is now called Samothrace. Here was the home he left,
Tyrrhenian Corythus; now the palace of heaven, glittering with golden
stars, enthrones and adds him to the ranged altars of the gods.'

He ended; and Ilioneus pursued his speech with these words:

'King, Faunus' illustrious progeny, neither hath black tempest driven us
with stress of waves to shelter in your lands, nor hath star or shore
misled us on the way we went. Of set purpose and willing mind do we draw
nigh this thy city, outcasts from a realm once the greatest that the sun
looked on as he came from Olympus' utmost border. From Jove hath our
race beginning; in Jove the men of Dardania rejoice as ancestor; our
King himself of Jove's supreme race, Aeneas of Troy, hath sent us to thy
courts. How terrible the tempest that burst from fierce Mycenae over the
plains of Ida, driven by what fate Europe and Asia met in the shock of
two worlds, even he hath heard who is sundered in the utmost land where
the ocean surge recoils, and he whom stretching midmost of the four
zones the zone of the intolerable sun holds in severance. Borne by that
flood over many desolate seas, we crave a scant dwelling [229-261]for
our country's gods, an unmolested landing-place, and the air and water
that are free to all. We shall not disgrace the kingdom; nor will the
rumour of your renown be lightly gone or the grace of all you have done
fade away; nor will Ausonia be sorry to have taken Troy to her brea