Clavis Libri
Plans Sign in

Aeneid · Book IX

The Siege

PassionFate and Free WillDutyWar

Chapter summary

While Aeneas is away, in the lands of Evander and of the Etruscans seeking allies, Juno sends Iris to Turnus, who was resting in a sacred grove. Iris says what is true: Aeneas has left the fleet and camp without a leader, and it is time to attack. Turnus takes the prodigy as a divine sign, prays, and leads the army across the plain.

The Trojans, however, obey the order Aeneas left when he departed: not to form a battle line or trust in the open field, but only to keep the camp behind its walls. They close the gates and wait on the towers, even though shame and anger push them outside. Turnus comes forward with twenty horsemen and throws a spear to open the combat, but no one comes out. He circles the walls looking for an entrance, impatient like a wolf before a sheepfold, and, with no means of drawing them out, decides to set fire to the fleet, moored along one flank of the camp.

Before the fire catches, the poet asks the Muses who saved the ships. The mother of the gods, Cybele, had given Aeneas the pines of her grove on Mount Ida and asked Jupiter that the ships never be defeated. Jupiter denies immortality to a thing made by mortal hands, but swears by the Styx that the ships that reach Italy will become sea goddesses. When the time comes, and with Turnus's outrage reminding the mother, a voice from heaven orders the Trojans not to defend the ships: they break loose, dive like dolphins, and return as nymphs. The Rutulians are terrified. Turnus recovers his courage and reads the prodigy in his favor: without the sea, the Trojans have no escape, and the land belongs to the Italians. He too has destinies, he says, the one of ending this people who took his bride, Lavinia, and the Greeks are not the only ones who take up arms for a wife. He will attack by day, in the open, with fire. Messapus guards the gates, and the Rutulians take turns, drinking and keeping watch without sleep.

On the walls, the Trojans keep watch under Mnestheus and Serestus. Nisus, a gate guard, and Euryalus, the most handsome of the Trojans, almost a boy, are inseparable companions. Nisus, restless, sees the Rutulians sleeping off their wine and the fires sinking, and proposes carrying word to Aeneas by the route he knows from hunting to the city of Evander. He wants the fame of the deed, and Euryalus, moved by love of praise, refuses to stay behind. Nisus gives in, but asks him to survive, for the sake of his mother. Before the chiefs, old Alethes praises the courage of both, and Ascanius promises cups, tripods, gold, the horse and the arms of Turnus, captive women, and the lands of Latinus. Euryalus asks only that Ascanius look after his mother, who followed him from Troy and whom he leaves without farewell, because he could not bear her tears. Ascanius weeps and swears to treat her as a mother. The two set out.

In the Rutulian camp, there is wine and sleep. Nisus kills Rhamnes, Turnus's favorite augur, and several servants; Euryalus also kills, in a frenzy. Nisus notices that they are letting themselves be carried away and orders a stop, for the light is approaching. Euryalus picks up Rhamnes's baldric and Messapus's helmet and puts them on. Three hundred cavalrymen of Volscens, who were carrying the Latins' replies to Turnus, see the helmet shine and surround the path. Euryalus, hampered by the wood, the darkness, and the plunder, is captured. Nisus, who had already passed, turns back, prays to the Moon, and kills two horsemen with darts that no one sees coming. Volscens threatens Euryalus, Nisus gives himself up shouting that the fault is his, and Volscens's sword kills Euryalus. Nisus kills Volscens and dies over his friend.

At dawn, the heads of the two are fixed on spears in front of the camp. Fame tells Euryalus's mother, who drops her spindle and runs to the walls; her lament breaks the spirit of the Trojans until Idaeus and Actor take her inside. Then comes the general assault: Mezentius with fire, Messapus with ladders, Turnus burning a tower. Ascanius, offended by Numanus Remulus, kills him with his first arrow of war, and Apollo orders him to withdraw.

Pandarus and Bitias open the gate to draw in the enemy, and the Rutulians advance; warned, Turnus runs there and enters. He kills Bitias with a falarica, and Pandarus, seeing his brother fall, shuts the gate with his shoulders without noticing that Turnus is already inside. Turnus kills Pandarus and many others, but the narrator says that if he had opened the gate to his own men, it would have been the last day of the war, and adds that Juno gives him strength. Mnestheus gathers the Trojans, and Turnus, exhausted, retreats to the river and leaps into it. The Tiber gives him back to the Rutulians.

Analysis

The center of the book is the raid of Nisus and Euryalus, and it has two faces that the text does not separate. On one side, it is service: carrying to Aeneas news of the siege, with the support of the chiefs and Ascanius's promises. On the other, it is a hunt for fame and booty: Nisus says that the fame of the deed is enough for him, Euryalus is struck by love of praise, the slaughter goes beyond what is needed, and Messapus's helmet is what gives him away. The defense is also in the text: Ascanius promised riches, and taking spoils was a custom of war, so Euryalus does nothing that his own people do not expect of him. The poem does not choose, and the narrator closes the episode with praise, not with a verdict.

Aeneas does not appear in the book, yet everything starts from him: his voyage opens the breach through which Turnus attacks, his order keeps the Trojans behind the wall, and it is to him that Nisus and Euryalus want to carry the warning. The absence recalls that of Achilles in the Iliad, with the sign reversed: Achilles' absence is born of wrath and weakens the Greeks, Aeneas's is born of the search for allies and forces the Trojans to wait. Turnus, in the end, has courage that alone does not decide the war: he enters the camp and kills chief after chief, but does not open the gate to his own men, and the narrator says that, had he done so, that would have been the last day of the war. The change of beast, from wolf to lion, follows this: the blind hunger of the beginning becomes, at the end, the pride of one who retreats without turning his back.

Unlock with a subscription

Subscription

The complete analysis of every book of Aeneid comes with a subscription, along with the explanation of each quote, the quiz, the PDF guide, and the study workbook.

See the plansAlready subscribed? Sign in