Ab urbe condita

We should much prefer to start with favourable omens, and if we could have adopted the poets' custom, it would have been much pleasanter to commence with prayers and supplications to gods and goddesses that they would grant a favourable and successful issue to the great task before us.

[*](Aeneas in Italy.)To begin with, it is generally admitted that after the capture of Troy, whilst the rest of the Trojans were massacred, against two of them —Aeneas and Antenor —the Achivi refused to exercise the rights of war, partly owing to old ties of hospitality, and partly because these men had always been in favour of making peace and surrendering Helen.