nd of some opiate, and he lay asleep, while AEneas passed
on and found in myrtle groves all who had died for love, among them, to
his surprise, poor forsaken Dido. A little further on he found the home
of the warriors, and held converse with his old Trojan friends. He
passed by the place of doom for the wicked, Tartarus; and in the Elysian
fields, full of laurel groves and meads of asphodel, he found the spirit
of his father Anchises, and with him was allowed to see the souls of all
their descendants, as yet unborn, who should raise the glory of their
name. They are described on to the very time when the poet wrote to
whom we owe all the tale of the wanderings of AEneas, namely, Virgil, who
wrote the _AEneid_, whence all these stories are taken. He further tells
us that AEneas landed in Italy just as his old nurse Caieta died, at the
place which is still called Gaeta. After they had buried her, they found
a grove, where they sat down on the grass to eat, using large round
cakes or biscuits to put their meat on. Presently they came to eating up
the cakes. Little Ascanius cried out, "We are eating our very tables;"
and AEneas, remembering the harpy's words, knew that his wanderings were
over.

[Illustration: ROMAN SOLDIER.]

CHAPTER III.

THE FOUNDING OF ROME.

B.C. 753--713.

Virgil goes on to tell at much length how the king of the country,
Latinus, at first made friends with AEneas, and promised him his daughter
Lavinia in marriage; but Turnus, an Italian chief who had before been a
suitor to Lavinia, stirred up a great war, and was only captured and
killed after much hard fighting. However, the white sow was found in the
right place with all her little pigs, and on the spot was founded the
city of Alba Longa, where AEneas and Lavinia reigned until he died, and
his descendants, through his two sons, Ascanius or Iulus, and AEneas
Silvius, reigned after him for fifteen generations.

The last of these fifteen was Amulius, who took the throne from his
brother Numitor, who had a daughter named Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin.
In Greece, the sacred fire of the goddess Vesta was tended by good men,
but in Italy it was the charge of maidens, who were treated with great
honor, but were never allowed to marry under pain of death. So there was
great anger when Rhea Silvia became the mother of twin boys, and,
moreover, said that her husband was the god Mars. But Mars did not save
her from being buried alive, while the