Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/322

 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