Who He Is
Mezentius is the Etruscan king of Agylla, a tyrant driven out by his own people, and one of the allies of Turnus in the war against the Trojans. The poem presents him as one who scorns the gods and is cruel enough to kill by binding the dead to the living. He flees to the Rutulians with his son, Lausus, and fights Aeneas without asking anything of anyone. What he wants is only to survive with his son beside him, and the poem undoes him on this single point: the father who seemed pitiless has all his pity for Lausus. His role is to be the enemy whom Aeneas kills without relief, and whom the reader, in the end, sees as a grieving father.
Trajectory
In Book VII Mezentius joins the catalog of chiefs who gather around Turnus, described as a scorner of the gods and accompanied by Lausus. Later he recruits troops and lays waste to fields, and the poem leaves him there, without showing what he did to be hated.
It is Evander who tells the story, in Book VIII: the people of Agylla drove out the king because of his cruel killings, and a haruspex forbade the Etruscans to follow an Italian chief, which throws them into the arms of Aeneas. Evander also recalls that, had he still the strength he once had, the tyrant next door would not have made so many widows in his city.
Non ego nunc dulci amplexu divellerer usquam, / Nate, tuo; neque finitimo Mezentius unquam / Huic capiti insultans, tot ferro saeva dedisset / Funera, tam multis viduasset civibus urbem, I would not now be torn from your sweet embrace, son; nor would Mezentius, mocking this neighboring head, ever have dealt so many cruel deaths by the sword, nor left the city widowed of so many citizens.
In Book IX Mezentius appears in the general assault on the Trojan camp, attacking with fire.
In Book X, by Jupiter's order, he takes Turnus's place in the combat, and fights like a rock and like a boar surrounded by hounds. Aeneas wounds him in the groin, and Lausus hurls himself at Aeneas to give his father time to flee. Aeneas warns him, with the same pity he recognizes in him, and, seized by anger, kills him, and soon feels remorse and gives back the arms and the body.
Quo, moriture, ruis? majoraque viribus audes? / Fallit te incautum pietas tua, where are you rushing, doomed one? Do you dare more than your strength allows? Your filial love deceives you, unwary one.
Mezentius stanches the wound by the Tiber and understands from the weeping of the soldiers that his son has died. He accuses himself of having let his son die in his place, and of having stained his name with his own crime.
Tantane me tenuit vivendi, nate, voluptas, / Ut pro me hostili paterer succedere dextrae / Quem genui? tuane haec genitor per vulnera servor, / Morte tua vivens? [...] Idem ego, nate, tuum maculavi crimine nomen, / Pulsus ob invidiam solio sceptrisque paternis, did such a pleasure in living hold me, son, that I let the one I begot be put in my place to the enemy's hand? Am I, a father, saved by your wounds, living on your death? [...] I myself, son, stained your name with my crime, cast out from the throne and the scepter of my fathers out of hatred.
He mounts the horse Rebo, calls Aeneas three times, and circles him, hurling spears, until Aeneas kills the horse. Before the last combat, he tells Aeneas that the only way to bring him down has already been used; trapped under the dead animal, he asks only for a grave beside his son.
Quid me erepto, saevissime, nato / Terres? haec via sola fuit qua perdere posses. / Nec mortem horremus, nec divum parcimus ulli. / Desine: jam venio moriturus, why do you terrify me, most savage one, after you have snatched my son away? That was the only path by which you could destroy me. We do not dread death, nor do we spare any of the gods. Enough: I come to die.
Aeneas kills him. In Book XI he will raise his armor on an oak as a trophy dedicated to Mars, and will tell the chiefs that the great deed is accomplished.
Maxima res effecta, viri; timor omnis abesto, / Quod superest: haec sunt spolia et de rege superbo / Primitiae, manibusque meis Mezentius hic est., a great deed is accomplished, men; let all fear be set aside for what remains: these are the spoils and first fruits of the proud king, and here is Mezentius, by my hands.
Themes Embodied
Mezentius is the other side of Duty: filial piety, which gives the hero his name, belongs to the tyrant as well, and the poem shows it in him without erasing the rest. War runs through him, through the cruelty that makes a people turn against its king, and Fate and Free Will, because Jupiter places him in Turnus's place and leads him to the only combat in which Aeneas kills him.
Lausus and Pallas die young, Lausus out of loyalty to his father and Pallas out of the glory of the duel, and Aeneas reacts to each in opposite ways: he gives back Lausus's arms and, on seeing Pallas's baldric on Turnus's shoulder, kills the Rutulian. The poem puts the tyrant asking for a grave beside his son and the hero avenging his ally's son, and leaves the two fathers, Mezentius and Evander, in the same grief.
Relationships
- Aeneas: the enemy who wounds him, kills his son, and then kills him.
- Turnus: the ally whose place in the combat he takes, by Jupiter's order, when Juno draws the Rutulian off the field.
- Evander: the neighbor who suffered under his tyranny and who tells the hero why the Etruscans changed sides.
- Pallas: the young man whose death mirrors that of Lausus.