At this crisis, Neptune, hearing the storm raging, and knowing that he had given no orders for one, raised his head above the waves, and saw the fleet of Aeneas driving before the gale.  Knowing the hostility of Juno, he was at no loss to account for it, but his anger was not the less at this interference in his province.  He called the winds and dismissed them with a severe reprimand.  He then soothed the waves, and brushed away the clouds from before the face of the sun.  Some of the ships which had got on the rocks he pried off with his own trident, while Triton and a sea-nymph, putting their shoulders under others, set them afloat again.  The Trojans, when the sea became calm, sought the nearest shore, which was the coast of Carthage, where Aeneas was so happy as to find that one by one the ships all arrived safe, though badly shaken.

Waller, in his “Panegyric to the Lord Protector” (Cromwell), alludes to this stilling of the storm by Neptune: 

    “Above the waves, as Neptune showed his face,
    To chide the winds and save the Trojan race,
    So has your Highness, raised above the rest,
    Storms of ambition tossing us repressed.”

DIDO

Carthage, where the exiles had now arrived, was a spot on the coast of Africa opposite Sicily, where at that time a Tyrian colony under Dido, their queen, were laying the foundations of a state destined in later ages to be the rival of Rome itself.  Dido was the daughter of Belus, king of Tyre, and sister of Pygmalion, who succeeded his father on the throne.  Her husband was Sichaeus, a man of immense wealth, but Pygmalion, who coveted his treasures, caused him to be put to death.  Dido, with a numerous body of friends and followers, both men and women, succeeded in effecting their escape from Tyre, in several vessels, carrying with them the treasures of Sichaeus.  On arriving at the spot which they selected as the seat of their future home, they asked of the natives only so much land as they could enclose with a bull’s hide.  When this was readily granted, she caused the hide to be cut into strips, and with them enclosed a spot on which she built a citadel, and called it Byrsa (a hide).  Around this fort the city of Carthage rose, and soon became a powerful and flourishing place.

Such was the state of affairs when Aeneas with his Trojans arrived there.  Dido received the illustrious exiles with friendliness and hospitality.  “Not unacquainted with distress,” she said, “I have learned to succor the unfortunate.” [Footnote:  See Proverbial Expressions.] The queen’s hospitality displayed itself in festivities at which games of strength and skill were exhibited.  The strangers contended for the palm with her own subjects, on equal terms, the queen declaring that whether the victor were “Trojan or Tyrian should make no difference to her.” [Footnote 1:  See Proverbial Expressions.] At the feast which followed the games, Aeneas gave