Young Folks History of Rome | Page 5

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 Sybil, after a great sacrifice,
Æneas 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 Sybil,
however, made him take Æneas across, his boat groaning under the
weight of a human body. On the other side stood Cerberus, but the
Sybil threw him a cake of honey and of some opiate, and he lay asleep,
while Æneas 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 Æneas, namely, Virgil, who wrote the _Æneid_, whence
all these stories are taken. He further tells us that Æneas landed in Italy
just as his old nurse Caiëta died, at the place which is still called Gaëta.
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 Æneas, 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 Æneas, 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 Æneas and Lavinia reigned until
he died, and his descendants, through his two sons, Ascanius or Iulus,
and Æneas 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 two babes were put
in a trough on the waters of the river Tiber, there to perish. The river
had overflowed its banks, and left the children on dry ground, where,
however, they were found by a she-wolf, who fondled and fed them
like her own offspring, until a shepherd met with them and took them
home to his wife. She called them Romulus and Remus, and bred them
up as shepherds.
When the twin brothers were growing into manhood, there was a fight
between the shepherds of Numitor and Amulius, in which Romulus and
Remus did such brave feats that they were led before Numitor. He
enquired into their birth, and their foster-father told the story of his
finding them, showing the trough in which they had been laid; and thus
it became plain that they were the grandsons of Numitor. On finding

this out, they collected an army, with which they drove away Amulius,
and brought their grandfather back to Alba Longa.
They then resolved to build a new city for themselves on one of the
seven low hills beneath which ran the yellow river Tiber; but they were
not agreed on which hill to build, Remus wanting to build on the
Aventine Hill, and Romulus on the Palatine. Their grandfather advised
them to watch for omens from the gods, so each stood on his hill and
watched for birds. Remus was