147It was night, and sleep held living creatures over the earth: the sacred images of the gods, the Phrygian Penates, which I had carried with me from Troy and out of the midst of the burning city, seemed to stand before my eyes as I lay in sleep, clear in a flood of light, where the full moon poured in through the open windows; 153then they seemed to address me so, and ease my cares with these words: 'What Apollo would tell you if you sailed to Ortygia, he prophesies here, and look, of his own accord he sends us to your threshold. 156We, who followed you and your arms when Dardania was burnt, we who under your command crossed the swelling sea in ships, we too shall raise your descendants to come to the stars and give empire to their city: you must prepare great walls for the great, and not abandon the long toil of flight.
161You must change your home: these were not the shores the Delian urged on you, nor did Apollo bid you settle in Crete. 163There is a place the Greeks call by the name of Hesperia, an ancient land, mighty in arms and in the richness of its soil; 165Oenotrian men lived there; 165now the story is that their descendants have called the nation Italy after their leader's name: this is our true home; 167from here Dardanus sprang, and father Iasius, the founder from whom our race descends. 169Up, then, and gladly report these words, not to be doubted, to your aged father: let him seek Corythus and the Ausonian lands; 171Jupiter denies you the fields of Dicte.' 172Astounded by such visions and by the voice of the gods — nor was that sleep, but I seemed to recognise their faces before me, their veiled hair, their features present to my eyes; 175then a cold sweat was streaming over my whole body — I snatch myself from my bed, stretch my upturned hands to heaven with a cry, and pour pure offerings on the hearth.
178Glad that the rite is completed, I inform Anchises and unfold the matter in order. 180He recognised the twofold lineage and the double ancestors, and that he had been misled by a new error about ancient places. 182Then he recalls: 'My son, harried by the fates of Ilium, Cassandra alone used to foretell such chances to me. 184Now I remember that she foretold this as due to our race, and often spoke of Hesperia, often of Italian realms. 186But who would have believed that Teucrians would come to the shores of Hesperia, or whom then would the prophetess Cassandra have moved? 188Let us yield to Phoebus, and, warned, follow the better course.' 189So he speaks, and we all obey his word, rejoicing.
190This home too we desert, and, leaving a few behind, set sail and run over the vast sea in our hollow timbers.