1 Whereof the Tritonian gave token by no uncertain signs.
2 I will tell thee the token, and do thou keep it close in thine heart.
3 By this token in thirty revolving years shall Ascanius found a city, Alba of bright name.
4 With twenty sail did I climb the Phrygian sea; oracular tokens led me on; my goddess mother pointed the way; scarce seven survive the shattering of wave and wind.
5 Then indeed, amazed at the tokens and driven by madness, they raise a cry and snatch fire from the hearths within; others plunder the altars, and cast on brushwood boughs and brands.
6 I have a daughter whom the oracles of my father's shrine and many a celestial token alike forbid me to unite to one of our own nation; sons shall come, they prophesy, from foreign coasts, such is the destiny of Latium, whose blood shall exalt our name to heaven.
7 In the heart of the town was a grove deep with luxuriant shade, wherein first the Phoenicians, buffeted by wave and whirlwind, dug up the token Queen Juno had appointed, the head of a war horse: thereby was their race to be through all ages illustrious in war and opulent in living.
8 As once of old, they say, the labyrinth in high Crete had a tangled path between blind walls, and a thousand ways of doubling treachery, where tokens to follow failed in the maze unmastered and irrecoverable: even in such a track do the children of Troy entangle their footsteps and weave the game of flight and battle; like dolphins who, swimming through the wet seas, cut Carpathian or Libyan.