Roman History, Books I-III | Page 7

boundless wandering, Latinus the king and the Aborigines, who then occupied these districts, assembled in arms from the city and country to repel the violence of the new-comers. In regard to what followed there is a twofold tradition. Some say that Latinus, having been defeated in battle, first made peace and then concluded an alliance with ?neas; others, that when the armies had taken up their position in order of battle, before the trumpets sounded, Latinus advanced to the front, and invited the leader of the strangers to a conference. He then inquired what manner of men they were, whence they had come, for what reasons they had left their home, and in quest of what they had landed on Laurentine territory. After he heard that the host were Trojans, their chief ?neas, the son of Anchises and Venus, and that, exiled from home, their country having been destroyed by fire, they were seeking a settlement and a site for building a city, struck with admiration both at the noble character of the nation and the hero, and at their spirit, ready alike for peace or war, he ratified the pledge of future friendship by clasping hands. Thereupon a treaty was concluded between the chiefs, and mutual greetings passed between the armies: ?neas was hospitably entertained at the house of Latinus; there Latinus, in the presence of his household gods, cemented the public league by a family one, by giving ?neas his daughter in marriage. This event fully confirmed the Trojans in the hope of at length terminating their wanderings by a lasting and permanent settlement. They built a town, which ?neas called Lavinium after the name of his wife. Shortly afterward also, a son was the issue of the recently concluded marriage, to whom his parents gave the name of Ascanius.
Aborigines and Trojans were soon afterward the joint objects of a hostile attack. Turnus, king of the Rutulians, to whom Lavinia had been affianced before the arrival of ?neas, indignant that a stranger had been preferred to himself, had made war on ?neas and Latinus together. Neither army came out of the struggle with satisfaction. The Rutulians were vanquished: the victorious Aborigines and Trojans lost their leader Latinus. Thereupon Turnus and the Rutulians, mistrustful of their strength, had recourse to the prosperous and powerful Etruscans, and their king Mezentius, whose seat of government was at C?re, at that time a flourishing town. Even from the outset he had viewed with dissatisfaction the founding of a new city, and, as at that time he considered that the Trojan power was increasing far more than was altogether consistent with the safety of the neighbouring peoples, he readily joined his forces in alliance with the Rutulians. ?neas, to gain the good-will of the Aborigines in face of a war so serious and alarming, and in order that they might all be not only under the same laws but might also bear the same name, called both nations Latins. In fact, subsequently, the Aborigines were not behind the Trojans in zeal and loyalty toward their king ?neas. Accordingly, in full reliance on this state of mind of the two nations, who were daily becoming more and more united, and in spite of the fact that Etruria was so powerful, that at this time it had filled with the fame of its renown not only the land but the sea also, throughout the whole length of Italy from the Alps to the Sicilian Strait, ?neas led out his forces into the field, although he might have repelled their attack by means of his fortifications. Thereupon a battle was fought, in which victory rested with the Latins, but for ?neas it was even the last of his acts on earth. He, by whatever name laws human and divine demand he should be called, was buried on the banks of the river Numicus: they call him Jupiter Indiges.
Ascanius, the son of ?neas, was not yet old enough to rule; the government, however, remained unassailed for him till he reached the age of maturity. In the interim, under the regency of a woman--so great was Lavinia's capacity--the Latin state and the boy's kingdom, inherited from his father and grandfather, was secured for him. I will not discuss the question--for who can state as certain a matter of such antiquity?--whether it was this Ascanius, or one older than he, born of Creusa, before the fall of Troy, and subsequently the companion of his father's flight, the same whom, under the name of Iulus, the Julian family represents to be the founder of its name. Be that as it may, this Ascanius, wherever born and of whatever mother--it is at any rate agreed that his father was ?neas--seeing that Lavinium was over-populated, left that city, now a flourishing and