land as
could be enclosed by a bullock's hide. He granted this readily; and
Dido, cutting the hide into the finest possible strips, managed to
measure off ground enough to build the splendid city which she had named
Carthage. She received AEneas most kindly, and took all his men into her
city, hoping to keep them there forever, and make him her husband. AEneas
himself was so happy there that he forgot all his plans and the
prophecies he had heard, until Jupiter sent Mercury to rouse him to
fulfil his destiny. He obeyed the call; and Dido was so wretched at his
departure that she caused a great funeral pile to be built, laid herself
on the top, and stabbed herself with AEneas's sword; the pile was burnt,
and the Trojans saw the flame from their ships without knowing the
cause.

By and by AEneas landed at a place in Italy named Cumae. There dwelt one
of the Sibyls. These were wondrous virgins whom Apollo had endowed with
deep wisdom; and when AEneas went to consult the Cumaean Sibyl, she told
him that he must visit the under-world of Pluto to learn his fate.
First, however, he had to go into a forest, and find there and gather a
golden bough, which he was to bear in his hand to keep him safe. Long he
sought it, until two doves, his mother's birds, came flying before him
to show him the tree where gold gleamed through the boughs, and he found
the branch growing on the tree as mistletoe grows on the thorn.

Guarded with this, and guided by the Sibyl, after a great sacrifice,
AEneas passed into a gloomy cave, where he came to the river Styx, round
which flitted all the shades who had never received funeral rites, and
whom the ferryman, Charon, would not carry over. The Sibyl, however,
made him take AEneas across, his boat groaning under the weight of a
human body. On the other side stood Cerberus, but the Sibyl threw him a
cake of honey and 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 farther 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 ver