Extendat oras, qua medius liquor
Secernit Europen ab Afro,
Qua tumidus rigat arva Nilus.
* * * *
Quicunque mundi terminus obstitit,
Hunc tanget armis, visere gestiens
Qua parte debacchentur ignes,
Qua nebulae pluviique rores[494].
And while it animates even the effeminate tones of the elegiac poets to a more manly sound, this pride of empire is the dominant mode of patriotic enthusiasm in the Aeneid. Thus, in the very beginning of the poem, Virgil describes the people destined to spring from the remnant of the Trojans as
populum late regem belloque superbum.