Camilla is queen of the Volscians, a virgin warrior who commands the cavalry allied with Turnus and dies in Book 11, the only woman in the poem with feats in combat and divine vengeance.
She closes the catalogue of Italian chiefs in Book 7, defined by what she refuses: she is not used "to put women's hands to the distaff or the baskets of Minerva," but to endure hard combat and to outrun the winds in a race. The poet says that she could fly over the ears of grain in an untouched field without harming them. In Book 11, the narrator tells of her childhood: her father, Metabus, exiled from the city of Priverno, arrives with her, a newborn, at a river too swollen to cross, ties her to a spear, promises her to Diana, and hurls her from one bank to the other. She grows up in the mountains on mare's milk, a huntress and a virgin.
When the Trojans and the Etruscans come down the plain, Camilla asks Turnus to let her face the enemy cavalry alone, while he guards the walls and prepares an ambush. She kills a line of warriors, until Tarchon shames the Etruscans for fleeing from a woman. Then she pursues Chloreus, priest of Cybele dressed in gold and purple, to fix Trojan arms in a temple or to display the prey, and the narrator does not choose between the reasons. Aruns, who had been stalking her, prays to Apollo and wounds her. Apollo grants her death and denies his return.
Camilla dies with a commander's order: "so far I could, sister Acca," and she sends word to Turnus to take up the fight. Diana, who wanted her far from the war, sends Opis with an arrow, and Aruns dies without knowing where the blow came from.