grown to be a mighty and terrible power, and had also picked up many
Greek notions. Then they seem to have made their history backwards, and
worked up their old stories and songs to explain the names and customs
they found among them, and the tales they told were formed into a great
history by one Titus Livius. It is needful to know these stories which
every one used to believe to be really history; so we will tell them
first, beginning, however, with a story told by the poet Virgil.




CHAPTER II.

THE WANDERINGS OF ÆNEAS.


You remember in the Greek history the burning of Troy, and how Priam and
all his family were cut off. Among the Trojans there was a prince called
Æneas, whose father was Anchises, a cousin of Priam, and his mother was
said to be the goddess Venus. When he saw that the city was lost, he
rushed back to his house, and took his old father Anchises on his back,
giving him his Penates, or little images of household gods, to take care
of, and led by the hand his little son Iulus, or Ascanius, while his
wife Creusa followed close behind, and all the Trojans who could get
their arms together joined him, so that they escaped in a body to Mount
Ida; but just as they were outside the city he missed poor Creusa, and
though he rushed back and searched for her everywhere, he never could
find her. For the sake of his care for his gods, and for his old father,
he is always known as the pious Æneas.