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Aeneid · Book X

The Battle

Fate and Free WillDutyWar

Chapter summary

Jupiter calls the gods to Olympus because the war in Italy, which he had forbidden, broke out anyway. He orders peace and postpones the time of hatred: one day Carthage will attack the fortresses of Rome, and then it will be lawful to contend and plunder. Venus replies that the Trojan camp is surrounded and that Aeneas is far away, and asks that at least Ascanius be spared. Juno retorts: Aeneas went to Italy by the order of fate, and Venus, who snatched her son from the hands of the Greeks and turned the fleet into nymphs, cannot call a crime the help she gives Turnus. Jupiter closes without taking sides: each one, Trojan or Rutulian, will reap what their own actions have earned, and fate will find the way.

Meanwhile, the Rutulians surround the camp, and the Trojans resist on the towers, with Ascanius among them. Aeneas had gone to seek allies and secured the Etruscans, who, by divine order, accept a foreign commander. The poet names the captains of the fleet, and Pallas goes alongside Aeneas, asking about the stars. At midnight, the Trojan ships that the goddess Cybele transformed into sea nymphs (episode of Book IX) reach their chief, and Cymodocea, the most eloquent of them, warns him of the siege and of Turnus's plan to separate the allies from the camp. They seek him as their fleet, after breaking their moorings under the Rutulian attack. Aeneas prays to Cybele and, at dawn, raises the shield in flames, which heartens the besieged and unsettles the Rutulians.

Turnus does not lose confidence and orders an attack on the Trojans on the beach, while they disembark in disorder. The ship of the Etruscan Tarchon runs aground, but the men leap out, and Aeneas opens the fighting, killing several. Pallas's Arcadians, on foot and on bad ground, begin to flee, and Pallas shames them: there is no god against them, they are men against men, and behind them there is only the sea. He advances and kills. Lausus, son of the Etruscan tyrant Mezentius, keeps his men from retreating. Jupiter does not let the two young men face each other, because their deaths are already reserved for greater enemies. Turnus's sister, Juturna, advises him to replace Lausus, and Turnus draws his men back and claims Pallas for himself alone, wanting the boy's father, Evander, to watch. Pallas prays to Hercules, who weeps, but Jupiter explains that each has his day. Pallas grazes Turnus, and Turnus runs him through with his spear.

Turnus tramples the body, orders it returned to Evander, and tears off the baldric, on which the slaughter of the husbands by the daughters of Danaus is engraved. The narrator interrupts and says that one day Turnus will hate that spoil. The news reaches Aeneas, who advances without pause, captures eight young men to sacrifice them on Pallas's pyre, and refuses the ransom of Magus, saying that Turnus ended the exchange of prisoners of war by killing Pallas. He also kills the priest Hemonides and Tarquitus, who begs in vain, and denies Liger the mercy he begs for, after Aeneas had killed his brother, Lucagus. Ascanius and the besieged break the siege.

On Olympus, Jupiter observes to Juno that Venus sustains the Trojans. Juno asks that Turnus be taken out of combat, and he grants this postponement, but warns that he will not change the course of the war. Juno then forms a phantom with the face and arms of Aeneas, which provokes Turnus and flees. Turnus pursues it to an anchored ship, boards it, and Juno cuts the cables and carries him out to sea. Aeneas searches for him in vain, and the phantom dissolves. Turnus, not understanding, imagines he has fled from battle, three times tries to kill himself or throw himself into the sea, and three times Juno restrains him. The ship leaves him in the city of his father, Daunus.

By order of Jupiter, Mezentius takes Turnus's place. Expelled by his own people and enemy of the gods, he fights like a rock and like a boar at bay, and kills Orodes, telling the father of the gods to look after him. Aeneas wounds him in the groin. Lausus sees his father wounded and hurls himself at Aeneas to give him time to escape. Aeneas warns him and, filled with anger, kills him, and soon feels pity and returns the arms and body. Mezentius, who was staunching his wound by the Tiber, understands from the soldiers' weeping and blames himself for having let his son die in his place. He mounts the horse Rhoebus, calls Aeneas three times and circles him hurling spears, until Aeneas kills the horse. Trapped under the animal, Mezentius asks only for a grave beside his son, and Aeneas kills him.

Analysis

The whole book turns around two young men and their fathers. Pallas is sent to war by Evander and dies far from his father, and his death transforms Aeneas, who begins to deny ransoms and to kill whoever begs him. Lausus dies for Mezentius, and his death undoes the tyrant. Lausus falls out of filial piety and Pallas out of desire for the glory of single combat, and the poem does not let piety stand on only one side, because Aeneas recognizes it in Lausus. The baldric that Turnus tears from Pallas is the object for which the narrator promises a reckoning later, and the reader lives the rest of the book knowing that Turnus's triumph is already condemned.

Jupiter's neutrality is the hardest question in the book. He says he will treat Trojans and Rutulians without distinction and, further on, tells Hercules that Turnus has reached the end of what was given to him. Aeneas's fury also is not born only from Pallas's death: it was already growing against the Rutulians before he knew, and the news makes it implacable. The book sustains two readings, that of a fate that acts above everyone and that of men who choose each blow, and leaves both standing.

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