lordly ancestry; but boding signs from heaven, many
and terrible, bar the way. Within the palace, in the lofty inner courts,
was a laurel of sacred foliage, guarded in awe through many years, which
lord Latinus, it was said, himself found and dedicated to Phoebus when
first he would build his citadel; and from it gave his settlers their
name, Laurentines. High atop of it, wonderful to tell, bees borne with
loud humming across the liquid air girt it thickly about, and with
interlinked feet hung in a sudden swarm from the leafy bough.
Straightway the prophet cries: 'I see a foreigner draw nigh, an army
from the same quarter seek the same quarter, and reign high in our
fortress.' Furthermore, while maiden Lavinia stands beside her father
feeding the altars with holy fuel, she was seen, oh, horror! to catch
fire in her long tresses, and burn with flickering flame in all her
array, her queenly hair lit up, lit up her jewelled circlet; till,
enwreathed in smoke and lurid light, she scattered fire over all the
palace. That sight was rumoured wonderful and terrible. Herself, they
prophesied, she should be glorious in fame and fortune; but a great war
was foreshadowed for her people. But the King, troubled by the omen,
visits the oracle of his father Faunus the soothsayer, and the groves
deep under Albunea, where, queen of the woods, she echoes from her holy
well, and breathes forth a dim and deadly vapour. Hence do the tribes of
Italy and all the Oenotrian land seek answers in perplexity; hither the
priest bears his gifts, and when he hath lain down and sought slumber
under the silent night on the spread fleeces of slaughtered sheep, sees
many flitting phantoms of wonderful wise, hears manifold voices, and
attains converse of the gods, and hath speech with Acheron and the deep
tract of hell. Here then, likewise seeking an answer, lord Latinus paid
fit sacrifice of an hundred woolly ewes, and [94-127]lay couched on the
strewn fleeces they had worn. Out of the lofty grove a sudden voice was
uttered: 'Seek not, O my child, to unite thy daughter in Latin
espousals, nor trust her to the bridal chambers ready to thine hand;
foreigners shall come to be thy sons, whose blood shall raise our name
to heaven, and the children of whose race shall see, where the circling
sun looks on either ocean, all the rolling world swayed beneath their
feet.' This his father Faunus' answer and counsel given in the silent
night Latinus restrains not in hi