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CHAPTER IX.

ÆNEAS MAKES ALLIANCE WITH EVANDER.

The turn of events gives the Trojan chief much natural disquiet. All Latium is in arms against his little force of adventurers. He Hes down within his lines to a disturbed and anxious rest, where he has a remarkable vision. A figure rises, wrapped in a grey mantle, with his brows crowned with reed. It is "Father Tiber," the tutelary genius of the Rome that shall be. He bids his visitor be of good cheer: his coming has been long looked for. He renews, for his encouragement, the old oracle of Anchises:—

"On woody banks before your eye
A thirty-farrowed sow shall lie,
Her whole white length on earth stretched out,
Her young, as white, her teats about,
Sign that when thirty years come round
'White Alba' shall Ascanius found."

He will find allies, too, within reach. A colony from Arcadia have migrated to Italy under their king Evander, and have founded in the neighbouring mountains