Prayer to Hercules

From the hymn of the Salii at the Ara Maxima — Evander is receiving Aeneas, and the priests sing to Hercules over the sacrificial table. It is one of the few places in the Aeneid where Virgil gives not a character's prayer but a ritual text sounding on its own.

Both lines are pure formula. Salve followed by adi is the standard pair of Roman invocation: first a greeting to the god already present, then a request that he come nearer, to us and to his rites.

Dexter … pede … secundo doubles the indication of the favourable side and the favourable foot. The god must enter correctly: Roman ritual watched which foot one used to cross into a shrine, and the formula transfers that anxiety to the god himself.

Decus addite divis — "glory added to the gods". The single word addite records that Hercules is not original to that company: he was added to the gods, and the hymn does not pass over the fact but turns it into praise.