--Nor thus can Jove resign
The future father of the Dardan line:
The first great ancestor obtain'd his grace,
And still his love descends on all the race.
For Priam now, and Priam's faithless kind,
At length are odious, to the all-seeing mind;
On great Æneas shall devolve the reign,
And sons succeeding sons the lasting line sustain.
ILIAD, xx.

But long before the historic age, Phrygia and the greater part of the
western shores of Asia Minor were occupied by Grecian colonies, and
all remembrance of Æne'as and his followers lost. When the narrative
of the Trojan war, with other Greek legends, began to be circulated in
Lati'um, it was natural that the identity of name should have led to
the confounding of the Æne'adæ who had survived the destruction of
Troy, with those who had come to La'tium from the Pelasgic Æ'nus. The
cities which were said to be founded by the Æne'adæ were, Latin Troy,
which possessed empire for three years; Lavinium, whose sway lasted
thirty; Alba, which was supreme for three hundred years; and Rome,
whose dominion was to be interminable, though some assign a limit of
three thousand years. These numbers bear evident traces of
superstitious invention; and the legends by which these cities are
successively deduced from the first encampment of Æne'as, are at
variance with these fanciful periods. The account that Alba was built
by a son of Æne'as, who had been guided to the spot by a white sow,
which had farrowed thirty young, is clearly a story framed from
the similarity of the name to Albus (_white_,) and the circumstance of
the city having been the capital of the thirty Latin tribes. The city