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scene changes to Olympus, where Jupiter holds a council of the gods. He is as much troubled as in the Iliad with the dissensions in his own court, and holds the balance with difficulty between his queen and his daughter, each unscrupulous in their partisanship. Venus complains to him bitterly of the peril in which her son Æneas stands, by reason of Juno's machinations. That goddess replies, with considerable show of reason, that Æneas has brought his troubles upon himself; that Latinus and Turnus and Lavinia were all going on peacefully before he came; and that—if the whole history of the Trojans must needs be discussed again—Venus herself, by her instrument Helen, was the mother of all the mischief. The king of the gods somewhat loses patience, and swears by the great river of Styx, with the awful nod which shakes Olympus, that Trojan and Rutulian shall even fight it out, and the Fates shall decide the question. So he dissolves the Olympian convocation.

The fight at the Trojan encampment is renewed in