After thus escaping from the terrible Polyphemus, the Trojan wanderers
sailed along the coasts of Sicily, and coming to the north-west
extremity of the island, they put ashore at Drep'a-num. Here AEneas
met with a misfortune which none of the prophets had predicted. This
was the death of his venerable father Anchises.

"After endless labors (often tossed
By raging storms and driven on every coast),
My dear, dear father, spent with age, I lost--
Ease of my cares, and solace of my pain,
Saved through a thousand toils, but saved in vain!
The prophet, who my future woes revealed,
Yet this, the greatest and the worst, concealed,
And dire Celaeno, whose foreboding skill
Denounced all else, was silent of this ill."
DRYDEN, _AEneid_, BOOK III.



III. A GREAT STORM--ARRIVAL IN CARTHAGE.

Thus far you have read the story of the Trojan exiles as it was told
by AEneas himself to Di'do, queen of Carthage, at whose court we shall
soon find him, after a dreadful storm which scattered his ships,
sinking one, and driving the rest upon the coast of Africa. The
narrative occupies the second and third books of the AEneid. In the
first book the poet begins by telling of Juno's unrelenting hate,
which was the chief cause of all the evils that befell the Trojans.