306Then, the sacred rites completed, they all make their way back to the city. 307The king walked, beset with age, and kept Aeneas and his son beside him as companions as he went, and lightened the way with varied talk. 310Aeneas marvels and turns his ready eyes on everything around, and is captivated by the places, and gladly asks about and hears of each memorial of the men of old. 313Then King Evander, founder of the Roman citadel: 'These groves were held by native Fauns and Nymphs, and a race of men born from tree trunks and hard oak, who had no custom or culture, and did not know how to yoke bulls or to store up wealth or to husband what they had gained, but branches and hunting, a harsh way of living, fed them.
319First came Saturn from heavenly Olympus, fleeing the arms of Jupiter, an exile from his stolen kingdom. 321He brought together the unruly race, scattered over the high mountains, and gave them laws, and chose that the land be called Latium, since he had lain hidden safe on these shores. 324Under that king were the ages they call golden. 325So he ruled the peoples in tranquil peace, until little by little a worse and tarnished age took its place, and the madness of war and the love of possession. 328Then came the Ausonian band and the Sicanian peoples, and more often the land of Saturn laid aside its name; 330then came kings, and fierce Thybris of huge body, after whom we Italians later called the river by the name Thybris; old Albula lost its true name; 333me, driven from my homeland and following the furthest reaches of the sea, all-powerful Fortune and inescapable fate settled in these places, and the awesome warnings of my mother, the nymph Carmentis, and the god Apollo, my guide, drove me here.'