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Rh queen-mother; the maiden's own choice in such a matter being the last consideration which would enter into the thought of a Roman poet. When the Trojan chief has thus informed himself in some measure as to the localities, he sends a formal embassy to King Latinus's court, carrying presents in token of goodwill. Meanwhile he busies himself in hurriedly marking out the boundaries of his new town, and fencing it round with an earthen rampart and a palisade.

The strangers are ushered into the presence of Latinus, where he sits in his ancestral palace, surrounded by the cedar statues of the demi-gods and heroes of his line.

There too were spoils of bygone wars

Hung on the portals,—captive cars,

Strong city-gates with massive bars,

And battle-axes keen,

And plumy cones from helmets shorn,

And beaks from vanquished vessels torn,

And darts, and bucklers sheen."

He knows at once who his visitors are. Strange portents had long disturbed his court, and had warned him that his daughter must wed with no prince of Latian race: that a foreign host and a stranger bridegroom will come to claim her, and that the kings who shall spring from this union will spread the Latian name from sea to sea. He inquires the strangers' errand courteously, and the Trojan Ilioneus, as spokesman of the embassy, thus makes reply:—

We come not to your friendly coast

By random gale o'er ocean tost,