Prayer to Faunus and Mother Earth

The last minutes of the Aeneid. Aeneas' spear is stuck in the stump of a wild olive — a tree sacred to Faunus, which the Trojans had felled to clear the beach. Turnus prays to Faunus and to Earth to hold the iron fast.

His argument is comparative piety, and on the facts he is right: "if I have always honoured your rites, which the sons of Aeneas have on the contrary profaned by war". An Italian king is reminding Italian gods whose he is.

And the gods obey: the spear will not come out. Then Venus intervenes and wrenches it free herself. The prayer in this episode is granted and immediately cancelled — not because it was a bad prayer, but because the opponent's deity is stronger.

Earth is named without the usual cult title Terra Mater — simply optima … Terra, "best Earth". Turnus speaks to her as to the local ground, his own.