Who He Is
Euryalus is a young Trojan warrior, the most handsome in the army, almost a boy, and the companion of Nisus. Son of a father accustomed to war, he followed Aeneas from Troy, and his mother was, among so many mothers, the only one who dared to follow him, without wanting to stay in the city of Acestes. He wants to prove his courage, and the proof he chooses is Nisus's mission. His role in the poem is to be the victim whom the reader remembers for his beauty: the boy whose death turns the Trojan siege into a scene of mourning, and not only of war.
Trajectory
In Book V Euryalus wins the foot race thanks to his friend: Nisus, who was running ahead, falls and places himself in Salius's path, and Euryalus darts across the sand and takes first place. Salius complains of trickery, but the crowd likes the boy, and Aeneas keeps the victory.
Non tamen Euryali, non ille oblitus amorum; / Nam sese opposuit Salio per lubrica surgens. / Ille autem spissa jacuit revolutus arena. / Emicat Euryalus, et munere victor amici / Prima tenet, but he did not forget Euryalus, did not forget his love; for, rising on the slippery ground, he placed himself in front of Salius. The latter rolled and lay in the thick sand. Euryalus darts off, victor through his friend's favor, and takes first place.
In Book IX he hears Nisus's plan as a doubt about his courage, and answers that he will not accept staying behind: his father raised him amid the terrors of Troy, and he has already proven his loyalty by following Aeneas to the last throw of fate. The honor he accepts paying for with his life is the same one Nisus wants.
Mene igitur socium summis adjungere rebus, / Nise, fugis? solum te in tanta pericula mittam? / Non ita me genitor, bellis assuetus Opheltes, / Argolicum terrorem inter Trojaeque labores / Sublatum erudiit; nec tecum talia gessi, / Magnanimum Aenean et fata extrema secutus. / Est hic, est animus lucis contemptor, et istum / Qui vita bene credat emi, quo tendis, honorem., so you flee from having me as your companion in the greatest undertakings, Nisus? Shall I send you alone into such dangers? That is not how my father Opheltes, accustomed to war, raised me, amid the Argive terror and the labors of Troy; nor did I behave thus with you, when I followed great-hearted Aeneas to the last throw of fate. Here is a spirit that scorns the light of day, and judges that the honor you aim for is well bought with life.
Before the chiefs, he places above Ascanius's gifts a single request: that they look after his mother, whom he leaves without farewell, because he could not bear her tears.
Unum oro: genitrix Priami de gente vetusta / Est mihi, quam miseram tenuit non Ilia tellus / Mecum excedentem, non moenia regis Acestae; / Hanc ego nunc ignaram hujus quodcumque pericli est, / Inque salutatam linquo; nox et tua testis / Dextera, quod nequeam lacrymas perferre parentis. / At tu, oro, solare inopem, et succurre relictae; / Hanc sine me spem ferre tui, audentior ibo / In casus omnes, I ask only one thing: I have a mother of the ancient lineage of Priam, whom neither the land of Ilium nor the walls of King Acestes held back, poor as she was, when she left with me. I leave her now, unaware of any danger this may be, and without farewell; night and your right hand are witnesses that I could not bear my mother's tears. But you, I beg, console the destitute one, and succor the one left behind; let me carry this hope in you, and I will go more boldly into every danger.
In the Rutulian camp he too kills, in a fury. When Nisus orders a halt, Euryalus takes the phalerae of Rhamnes and the helmet of Messapus, and puts them on. The helmet gleams in the dark, and Volscens's cavalry sees it. Entangled in the thicket and in his spoils, he is taken. The narrator calls him forgetful of danger, absorbed in the booty. Nisus returns to save him and arrives too late.
Cum procul hos laevo flectentes limite cernunt, / Et galea Euryalum sublustri noctis in umbra / Prodidit immemorem radiisque adversa refulsit., when from afar they see them turning down a path to the left, and the helmet, in the faint shadow of the night, gave away Euryalus, who had forgotten it, and flashed back against the rays of light.
Volscens kills him, and the poem compares him to a flower cut by the plow and to poppies weighed down by rain.
Volvitur Euryalus leto, pulchrosque per artus / It cruor, inque humeros cervix collapsa recumbit: / Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro / Languescit moriens; lassove papavera collo / Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur., Euryalus rolls in death, blood runs over his lovely limbs, and his neck slumps and rests upon his shoulders: like a purple flower, cut by the plow, that wilts as it dies; or like poppies that have let their heads droop, their necks weary, when the rain by chance weighs them down.
The heads of the two are fixed on spears before the Rutulian camp, and his mother, informed by Fame, drops her distaff and runs to the walls to mourn him before both armies, with a lament that breaks the spirit of the Trojans.
Hunc ego te, Euryale, aspicio? tune ille senectae / Sera meae requies? potuisti linquere solam, / Crudelis? nec te, sub tanta pericula missum, / Affari extremum miserae data copia matri? / Heu! terra ignota, canibus date praeda Latinis / Alitibusque, jaces! nec te, tua funera, mater, is it you, Euryalus, that I see? You, the late rest of my old age? Could you leave me alone, cruel boy? Was the poor mother not given the chance to speak to you one last time, when you were sent into such peril? Alas! In an unknown land, given as prey to the Latin dogs and to the birds, you lie!
Themes Embodied
Euryalus embodies War, through the human cost it exacts from the young, and Passion, because the desire for praise and the spoil that bring him down are the passions of a warrior, not errors of cowardice. He also touches on Home, Exile, and Return: the mother who followed him from Troy and is left without a tomb in which to mourn him is the domestic face of the Trojan exile.
The same passage that praises him for his beauty shows the error: the helmet he took is what gives him away. Virgil hides neither side, and the poem compensates for the denied burial with a monument of verses, in place of a tomb.