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Aeneid · Book XII

Turnus

PassionFate and Free WillDutyWarEmpire and Colonialism

Chapter summary

Turnus sees the Latins broken by defeat and understands that they hold him to his promise to face the Trojan, which inflames him like a wounded lion. He demands that King Latinus seal the pact: he will fight Aeneas, and the victor will take Lavinia. Latinus tries to dissuade him calmly: he offers the kingdom of Turnus's father and other brides, confesses that he yielded to him out of love, kinship, and the queen's tears, although the oracle forbids his daughter to any suitor from the land. The council only exalts Turnus, who asks to pay with his life for the praise. Amata begs him to give up, because if Turnus dies she will not live to see Aeneas as her son-in-law. Lavinia blushes on hearing her mother's weeping, and the blush inflames Turnus even more: he sends word to the Trojan chief that the morning's duel will decide the war and the bride, and he arms himself. Aeneas rejoices to see the war ended by a treaty, and he comforts his companions and his son Ascanius.

At dawn, the armies take their places around the altars. From the top of a hill, Juno tells Juturna, nymph and sister of Turnus, that she protected him as long as fate allowed, but that he now runs toward unequal fates, and orders her to save him or to break the treaty by war. Aeneas swears first: if he loses, the Trojans will go to the city of Evander and will not take up arms again; if he wins, he will not make the Italians obey him, he wants no kingdom, and the two peoples will have equal laws, with Latinus in command and a Trojan city that will bear the name of Lavinia. Latinus swears next, by the scepter in his hand.

The Rutulians, seeing Turnus pale and with downcast eyes before the altar, find the duel unequal. Juturna, disguised as Camertes, says that it is shameful to risk one life for everyone, and that, if defeated, they will become subjects. An eagle that drops the swan it carried, forced by a flock of birds, is read by the augur Tolumnius as a favor of the gods, and he hurls the first spear, which kills one of the nine Arcadian brothers. The treaty dissolves in tumult, and Latinus flees carrying the gods. Aeneas, without helmet and with open hand, shouts that only he should fight, when an arrow of unknown origin wounds him.

Turnus, seeing Aeneas withdraw, returns to the fight in his chariot and kills all he meets. In the camp, the physician Iapis, who had preferred herbs to the gift of prophecy from Apollo, cannot remove the arrowhead. Venus, moved by her son's pain, brings dittany from Mount Ida and secretly mixes it into the water: the wound closes. Aeneas kisses Ascanius over the helmet, asks him to learn courage from him and fortune from others, and returns to the fight. Turnus freezes when he sees him coming, and Juturna flees.

Aeneas seeks only Turnus, but Juturna takes the place of the charioteer Metiscus and turns the chariot aside every time he comes near. Grazed on the helmet by a spear, Aeneas calls on Jupiter and on the altars of the violated treaty, and begins to kill without choosing. Then Venus puts into his mind the idea of attacking the city: he sees Laurentum intact, promises to raze it if it does not accept the bridle, orders fire brought, and accuses Latinus of breaking the pact for the second time. Amata, seeing the enemy and the fire and no troops of Turnus, believes he is dead, cries out that she is the cause of everything, and hangs herself. Latinus, with his clothes torn, blames himself for not having accepted Aeneas as a son-in-law.

Turnus, at the far end of the field, hears the clamor from the city. Juturna, still disguised as Metiscus, proposes to follow wherever victory opens the way, but he has already recognized her. Saces, wounded, arrives and tells everything: Aeneas threatens to raze the city, Latinus hesitates, the queen has killed herself, and only Messapus and Atinas hold the gates. Turnus falls silent, seized by shame, madness, and love; he sees the tower he himself had built burning, leaps from the chariot, leaves his sister, and shouts to his men to stop, because the risk is his alone.

Jupiter weighs the fates of the two in equal balance. Turnus's sword breaks against the arms made by Vulcan: in his haste he had taken the sword of Metiscus, not his father's. He flees, and Aeneas, still lame, pursues him for five circuits. Aeneas's spear had lodged in the root of an olive tree of Faunus, which the Trojans had cut. Turnus prays to Faunus to hold it fast, and Venus pulls it out for Aeneas, while Juturna returns the sword to her brother.

In heaven, Jupiter forbids Juno to continue, reminding her that Aeneas is destined for heaven. Juno yields and asks that the Latins not lose their name, their speech, or their dress, and Jupiter grants, smiling, that they will be one Latin people. Jupiter then sends a Dira, an ill-omened bird, to terrify Turnus, and Juturna, recognizing her, laments the immortality she received and plunges into the river. Turnus tells Aeneas that it is the gods and a hostile Jupiter that frighten him, not words, and he raises an enormous stone, but his legs fail him, as in a dream. Aeneas's spear pierces his thigh. Turnus asks to be spared or to have his body returned to his father. Aeneas hesitates until he sees on the shoulder of the vanquished the baldric of Pallas, and kills him.

Analysis

Book XII has two agreements. The one among men is sworn in the morning and broken in less than a hundred lines by a disguised goddess and by an omen she herself prepared; the one among the gods is closed without any mortal witness, between Jupiter and Juno, and it decides what Rome will inherit: the Latin name remains, the Trojan one disappears. The final duel is the violence the poem pays to reach the second agreement. The men of the book want peace: Latinus, who blames himself; Aeneas, who offers equality; even Turnus, who accepts the duel to end the war. The one who undoes it is Juno, through Juturna.

The poem ends in the blow, without marriage, without foundation, without mourning, and that is why the ending divides readers. One reading sees justice: Turnus killed Pallas, uses the baldric as a trophy, and Aeneas fulfills what Evander demanded of him in Book XI. Another sees the price of empire: the victor kills a surrendered man, who asked for his life in the name of an aged father, moved by rage and not by law. The two sides rest on the same lines, and the chase of five circuits already recalled Achilles' pursuit of Hector in the Iliad, only here the suppliant is not answered.

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