Aeneid

Virgil

Vergil. The Aeneid of Virgil. Williams, Theodore, C, translator. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910.

  1. Aeneas thus: then with uplifted eyes
  2. Latinus swore, his right hand raised to heaven:
  3. “I too, Aeneas, take the sacred vow.
  4. By earth and sea and stars in heaven I swear,
  5. by fair Latona's radiant children twain,
  6. and two-browed Janus; by the shadowy powers
  7. of Hades and th' inexorable shrines
  8. of the Infernal King; and may Jove hear,
  9. who by his lightnings hallows what is sworn!
  10. I touch these altars, and my lips invoke
  11. the sacred altar-fires that 'twixt us burn:
  12. we men of Italy will make this peace
  13. inviolate, and its bond forever keep,
  14. let come what will; there is no power can change
  15. my purpose, not if ocean's waves o'erwhelm
  16. the world in billowy deluge and obscure
  17. the bounds of heaven and hell. We shall remain
  18. immutable as my smooth sceptre is“
  19. (By chance a sceptre in his hand he bore),
  20. “which wears no more light leaf or branching shade;
  21. for long since in the grove 't was plucked away
  22. from parent stem, and yielded to sharp steel
  23. its leaves and limbs; erewhile 't was but a tree,
  24. till the wise craftsman with fair sheath of bronze
  25. encircled it and laid it in the hands
  26. of Latium's royal sires.” With words like these
  27. they swore the bond, in the beholding eyes
  28. of gathered princes. Then they slit the throats
  29. of hallowed victims o'er the altar's blaze,
  30. drew forth the quivering vitals, and with flesh
  31. on loaded chargers heaped the sacrifice.