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ter of king Latinus, who was the son of Faunus, the son of Picus, the son of Saturn. After the death of Latinus, Æneas obtained the kingdom of the Romans, and Lavinia brought forth a son, who was named Silvius. Ascanius founded Alba, and afterwards married. And Lavinia bore to Æneas a son named Silvius; but Ascanius[1] married a wife, who conceived and became pregnant. And Æneas, having been informed that his daughter-in-law was pregnant, ordered his son to send his magician to examine his wife, whether the child conceived were male or female. The magician came and examined the wife and pronounced it to be a son, who should become the most valiant among the Italians, and the most beloved of all men.[2] In consequence of this prediction, the magician was put to death by Ascanius; but it happened that the mother of the child dying at its birth, he was named Brutus; and after a certain interval, agreeably to what the magician had foretold, whilst he was playing with some others he shot his father with an arrow, not intentionally but by accident.[3] He was, for this cause, expelled from Italy, and came to the islands of the Tyrrhene sea, when he was exiled on account of the death of Turnus, slain by Æneas. He then went among the Gauls, and built the city of the Turones, called Turnis.[4] At length he came to this island, named from him Britannia, dwelt there, and filled it with his own descendants, and it has been inhabited from that time to the present period.

§ 11.Æneas reigned over the Latins three years; Ascanius thirty-three years; after whom Silvius reigned twelve years, and Posthumus thirty-nine[5] years: the latter, from whom the kings of Alba are called Silvan, was brother to Brutus, who governed Britain at the time Eli the high-priest judged Israel, and when the ark of the covenant was taken by a foreign people. But Posthumus his brother reigned among the Latins.

§ 12.After an interval of not less than eight hundred years, came the Picts, and occupied the Orkney Islands: whence they laid waste many regions, and seized those on

  1. Other MSS. Silvius.
  2. V. R. Who should slay his father and mother, and be hated by all mankind.
  3. V. R. He displayed such superiority among his play-fellows, that they seemed to consider him as their chief.
  4. Tours.
  5. V. R. Thirty-seven.