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offer the salted barley, score with the steel the brows of the
cattle, and make libations from their chargers. Then
thus prays good Æneas, his sword drawn in his hand:
"Let the Sun above and the Earth beneath witness my invocation, 5
this very Earth for which I have had the heart
to endure so much, and the almighty Sire, and thou, his
goddess-bride, Saturn's daughter, now—may I hope it?—now
at last made gracious: thou, too, glorious Mars,
whose princely nod controls every battle: Springs also
and Rivers I invoke, all the majesty of the sky, all the 10
deities of the purple deep: if chance award the victory
to Turnus the Ausonian, reason claims that the vanquished
shall retire to Evander's town: Iulus shall quit the land,
nor shall Æneas' children in after-days draw the sword again,
or threaten this realm with war. But should conquest 15
vouchsafe to us the smiles of the battle-field, as I rather
deem, and pray that Heaven will rather grant, I will not bid
the Italians be subject to Troy, nor ask I the crown for
myself: no, let the two great nations, one unconquered as
the other, join on equal terms in an everlasting federation. 20
The gods and their ritual shall be my gift: let my good
father-in-law still wield the sword and the lawful rights of
empire: the Teucrians shall raise me a city, and Lavinia
shall give it her name." Thus first Æneas: the Latian
king follows, with eyes lifted to heaven, and right hand 25
stretched to the stars: "I swear as you swore, Æneas,
by Land and Ocean and Lights above, Latona's twofold
offspring, and two-faced Janus, the potency of the gods
below and the shrine of relentless Pluto: and let the
Father too give ear, who ratifies covenants with thunder. 30
My hand is on the altars; I adjure the fires and powers
that part us: so far as rests with Italy, no length of time
shall break this bond of friendship, let things issue as they
may: no violence shall make me swerve in will, not though
deluge and chaos come again, ruining the earth into the 35
water and crushing down heaven into Tartarus: even
as this sceptre"—for a sceptre chanced to be in his hand—"shall
never more burgeon with light foliage into branch