Meanwhile the kings go forth; Latinus in mighty pomp rides in his four-horse chariot; twelve gilded rays go glittering round his brows, symbol of the Sun his ancestor; Turnus moves behind a white pair, clenching in his hand two broad-headed spears. On this side lord Aeneas, fount of the Roman race, ablaze in starlike shield and celestial arms, and close by Ascanius, second hope of mighty Rome, issue from the camp; and the priest, in spotless raiment, hath brought the young of a bristly sow and an unshorn sheep of two years old, and set his beasts by the blazing altars. They, turning their eyes towards the sunrising, scatter salted corn from their hands and clip the beasts with steel over the temples, and pour cups on the altars. Then Aeneas the good, with sword drawn, thus makes invocation: 'Be the Sun now witness, and this Earth to my call, for whose sake I have borne to suffer so sore travail, and the Lord omnipotent, and thou his wife, at last, divine daughter of Saturn, at last I pray more favourable; and thou, mighty Mavors, who wieldest all warfare in lordship beneath thy sway; and on the Springs and Rivers I call, and the Dread of high heaven, and the divinities of the blue seas: if haply victory fall to Turnus the Ausonian, the vanquished make covenant to withdraw to Evander's city; Iülus shall quit the soil; nor ever hereafter shall the Aeneadae return in arms to renew warfare, or attack this realm with the sword. But if Victory grant battle to us and ours (as I think the rather, and so the rather may the gods seal their will), I will not bid Italy obey my Teucrians, nor do I claim the realm for mine; let both nations, unconquered, join treaty for ever under equal law. Gods [192-225]and worship shall be of my giving: my father Latinus shall bear the sword, and have a father's prescribed command. For me my Teucrians shall establish a city, and Lavinia give the town her name.' Thus Aeneas first: thereon Latinus thus follows: 'By these same I swear, O Aeneas, by Earth, Sea, Sky, and the twin brood of Latona and Janus the double-facing, and the might of nether gods and grim Pluto's shrine; this let our Father hear, who seals treaties with his thunderbolt. I touch the altars, I take to witness the fires and the gods between us; no time shall break this peace and truce in Italy, howsoever fortune fall; nor shall any force turn my will aside, not if it dissolve land into water in turmoil of deluge, or melt heaven in hell: so surely as this sceptre' (for haply he bore a sceptre in his hand) 'shall never burgeon into thin leafage and shady shoot, since once in the forest cut down right to the stem it lost its mother, and the steel lopped away its tressed arms: a tree of old: now the craftsman's hand hath bound it in adornment of brass and given it to our Latin fathers' bearing.'