126Then Aeneas addresses the king with friendly words: 'Best of the Greek-born, to whom Fortune has willed that I should pray and hold out branches decked with fillets, I did not fear you because you were a leader of the Danaans and an Arcadian, and because you were linked by descent to the twin sons of Atreus; 131but my own courage and the holy oracles of the gods and our kindred fathers, and your fame spread across the earth, have joined me to you and led me willing by the fates. 134Dardanus, first father and founder of the city of Ilium, born, as the Greeks relate, of Electra, daughter of Atlas, comes to the Teucrians; 136Electra was begotten by mighty Atlas, who bears the spheres of heaven on his shoulder; your father is Mercury, whom fair Maia conceived and brought forth on the cold summit of Cyllene; 140but Maia, if we put any trust in what we hear, was begotten by Atlas, that same Atlas who holds up the stars of the sky.
142So the race of both of us divides from a single blood. 143Relying on this, I did not arrange envoys or first approaches to you by craft: myself, myself and my own life I have exposed, and come as a suppliant to your threshold. 146The same Daunian people that pursues you pursues us with cruel war; 147if they drive us out, they believe nothing will prevent them from sending all Hesperia wholly under their yoke and holding the sea that washes it above and the sea below. 150Receive and give a pledge of faith: we have hearts brave in war, we have spirit and young men proved in action.'