ROMAN MYTHOLOGY AND SAGA 647who foretold that he would reach Italy and would only found his new city when
hunger had compelled the Trojans to eat the tables upon which their food lay.
Leaving Helenus, Aeneas reached Sicily, sailing past the shore of southern
Italy and avoiding the perils of Charybdis. A direct link with Odysseus was pro-
vided by the appearance of one of his men, Achaemenides, a survivor of the ad-
venture with the Cyclopes, who warned Aeneas of Polyphemus and other dan-
gers. It was in Sicily, too, that Anchises died and was buried.
The fall of Troy and Aeneas' wanderings to this point are narrated by him
to Dido in Books 2 and 3 of the Aeneid. The poem begins with a storm that scat-
ters Aeneas' fleet after setting sail from Sicily. The survivors were reunited in
northern Africa, where Dido, queen of Carthage, hospitably received them. She
fell deeply in love with Aeneas, who would himself have been content to stay
with her had not Mercury appeared to him and gave him Jupiter's orders to sail
away to fulfill his destiny in Italy. As he left, Dido laid a curse on Aeneas and
his descendants that they should always be the enemies of Carthage, and then
killed herself with the sword that Aeneas had given her.
Aeneas sailed back to Sicily and was welcomed by the king of Egesta, the
Trojan Acestes. Here he celebrated funeral games in honor of Anchises, during
which the Trojan women, incited by Juno, set fire to some of the ships, the rest
being saved by Jupiter in a miraculous rainstorm.^7 Aeneas left some of his fol-
lowers behind in Sicily and now sailed on to Italy where he reached Cumae.
Here the Sibyl foretold the wars he must fight in the new land and escorted him
to the Underworld, where he talked with many of the dead whom he had known
in his past life. The climax of his visit to the Underworld was his meeting with
Anchises, who foretold the greatness of Rome and showed him a pageant of fu-
ture Romans. The visit to the Underworld is the turning point in Aeneas' saga;
after it, he is sure of his destiny and determined to settle in Italy, whatever ob-
stacles have to be surmounted.
From Cumae, Aeneas sailed to the mouth of the Tiber, where the prophecy
of Celaeno was fulfilled; as the Trojans ate the flat cakes upon which their food
was placed, lulus said, "Why, we are even eating our tables!" In Latium, King
Latinus had betrothed his daughter Lavinia to the prince of the tribe of the Ru-
tuli, Turnus. Worried by prodigies, Latinus consulted the oracle of Faunus, who
advised him to give Lavinia to a foreigner instead. Latinus attempted to obey
this advice by giving Lavinia to Aeneas, but Juno sent the Fury Allecto to
madden Turnus and Lavinia's mother Amata, so that they violently opposed
Aeneas.
War became inevitable, and Latinus was powerless to prevent it. Turnus and
the Latins, with other Italian leaders (notably the Etruscan exile Mezentius), op-
posed the Trojans, who had for allies the Etruscans under Tarchon and the men
of Pallanteum, Evander's city on the future site of Rome. Aeneas' visit to Evan-
der had been preceded by the vision of the river-god Tiberinus. Evander him-
self showed Aeneas the city that was to become Rome and sent back with him
his own son, Pallas, who later was killed by Turnus. After ferocious battles