Aeneid, Book 10 — The Battle; the Death of Pallas

Reading Troy — chapter 48 of 74 · Aeneid, Book 10

Aeneid, Book 10 — The Battle; the Death of Pallas (Day after the night-raid of Book 9; the Italian war's central battle-day; the shore at the Tiber's mouth, the Trojan camp's beach, the plain inland)

The book opens with a council of the gods on Olympus. Jupiter expresses surprise at the war, having promised the Trojans an Italian settlement; Venus pleads her son's case at length, demanding the Trojans at least be allowed to survive; Juno answers fiercely, defending Turnus's claim. Jupiter, refusing to take sides, declares neutral: the gods will not intervene further; the war's outcome will be decided by men, with fate the only arbiter. He locks the gates of Olympus. The cycle's most morally serious divine moment — the gods themselves stepping back from a war they have caused.

Aeneas sails back down the Tiber with his fleet, now reinforced by the Etruscan allies under Tarchon. The transformed ships (the sea-nymphs of Book 9) rise from the sea around his fleet and tell him of the siege; Aeneas urges the rowers. They reach the camp at sunrise. The amphibious assault begins. Aeneas's ships beach against the Rutulian-occupied stretch of shore; Aeneas leaps first onto the sand, shield of Vulcan on his arm. The fighting is general and Iliadically intense. Turnus rallies his men against the new threat.

Pallas, the young son of Evander given to Aeneas in Book 8 as his companion, fights in his first major battle. He leads the Arcadian contingent against the Rutulians. He kills man after man — Lagus, Hisbo, Sthenius, Anchemolus, the twins Larides and Thymber. Virgil gives him a sustained young-warrior aristeia. The young man's beauty in battle is one of the cycle's most-mourned-in-advance things.

Turnus learns that Pallas is in the field. He says: "I wish his father were here to see this." He rides against him. Pallas faces him bravely; Pallas prays to Hercules (whom his father's people worship); Hercules, watching from heaven, weeps that he cannot save the boy. Jupiter, beside him, comforts him: "every man has his day; the span of life is short; courage in dying is the longest a man owns." Pallas casts his spear; it grazes Turnus's shoulder. Turnus casts his; it goes through Pallas's chest. The boy falls. Turnus stands over him and gloats; he strips the bronze swordbelt from the body — a heavy belt embossed with the killing of the fifty bridegrooms by the Danaids at their wedding, a famous Greek mythological scene. He puts the belt on his own shoulder. Virgil's narrator intervenes again: "O mortal mind, ignorant of fate and of its appointed lot — the day will come when Turnus shall wish at any price these spoils untouched, when he shall curse the hour he stripped Pallas." The most-discussed piece of authorial intervention in the second half of the poem.

Aeneas, hearing of Pallas's death, goes berserk. The book's middle section is Aeneas's aristeia of rage — the cycle's most morally serious piece of grief-driven killing, modelled on Achilles's rage at Patroclus's death in Iliad 21-22. He cuts a swath through the Italian lines. He takes eight Italian young men alive for human sacrifice at Pallas's funeral (a detail Virgil includes; the human sacrifice will be carried out in Book 11; one of the Aeneid's darkest passages, Iliadically modelled on Achilles's similar twelve human captives at Patroclus's pyre in Iliad 23). He refuses pleas for mercy. He kills the young brother of Lausus called Magus. He kills Haemonides the priest of Apollo and Trivia in his priestly robes. He kills the brothers Liger and Lucagus together. The cycle's most-debated proto-Aeneas, the man whose pietas is supposed to define Roman virtue, is here a killer in extremity.

The book closes with the death of Lausus and then of Mezentius. Mezentius, the Etruscan tyrant, is wounded by Aeneas; Lausus his beautiful young son steps between them to shield his father; Aeneas warns Lausus off; Lausus refuses to retreat; Aeneas reluctantly kills him. He pities the boy as he dies, lifts him from the dust, addresses him with affection: "What now shall pious Aeneas give thee worthy of so great a heart? Keep the arms in which thou tookest delight; I send thee back, if such a thing is anything, to the spirits and ashes of thy parents." Then Mezentius, hearing of his son's death, comes against Aeneas himself. The old wounded tyrant fights desperately; he is killed in turn. The book closes with the Trojan-Etruscan side holding the field, the Italian-Rutulian side reeling, and Pallas's body laid out for the funeral procession of Book 11.

Analysis

The cycle's structural Patroclus-death

Aeneid 10's death of Pallas is the Aeneid's structural Patroclus-death. The pattern is precise: a young warrior beloved by the protagonist, killed in battle by the protagonist's antagonist, the killing precipitating the protagonist's grief-driven aristeia which carries to the poem's close. Iliad 16 killed Patroclus and the cycle's Iliadic plot then runs to Iliad 22's killing of Hector by Achilles in vengeance. Aeneid 10 kills Pallas and the cycle's Aeneidic plot then runs to Aeneid 12's killing of Turnus by Aeneas in vengeance. Virgil's mapping of the structure is total. The detail Virgil chooses to seal the parallel — Turnus stripping Pallas's swordbelt, which Aeneas will see on Turnus in Book 12 and which will precipitate the final killing — is the cycle's most precise single piece of intertextual engineering.

The council of the gods

The book's opening council on Olympus is the cycle's most theologically ambitious single divine scene since Aeneid 6. Jupiter's neutrality — his refusal to take sides, his locking of the gates of Olympus, his declaration that fate alone will arbitrate — is one of the cycle's most morally serious Olympian moments. The Iliad's gods constantly intervene partisan; the Posthomerica's gods are vengeful; the Aeneid's chief god here actively withdraws. The cycle's longest movement toward a less interventionist theology. Virgil's reader is meant to feel that the rest of the poem's events are humanly chosen, not divinely caused — and that the moral weight of those events therefore falls on the human choosers. The cycle's gravest single piece of god-theology.

Pallas as the Aeneid's Patroclus

Pallas is constructed by Virgil with deliberate care. The son of Evander, the young man given to Aeneas as companion in Book 8, raised by an old father in a small Arcadian settlement, untested in battle, beautiful, untouched by the cycle's previous violence — every element of the portrait makes the reader love him before he dies. Virgil follows the Iliad 16 template (Patroclus's youth, beauty, devotion, untested status, beloved by Achilles), but the relationship is filial-political rather than erotic-paternal: Pallas is Aeneas's surrogate son, given to him by an ally as a token of trust. The bond therefore carries the additional weight of a political contract. Aeneas's grief is also his political failure to bring the boy back alive.

The swordbelt

Pallas's swordbelt is one of the most-discussed single objects in the Aeneid. It is embossed with the Danaid murder of the bridegrooms — the famous Greek mythological scene where fifty sisters murdered their fifty new husbands on the wedding-night. Virgil's choice of this image on Pallas's belt is precisely calibrated. It places a wedding-night-as-massacre into the cycle's text at the moment of an alliance-formed-too-late; it foreshadows the marriage of Aeneas to Lavinia that the war is being fought for; it inserts a Greek-mythological allegory into the Italian-Roman foundation narrative. When Turnus strips the belt and wears it, he is wearing the cycle's most-charged single object. When Aeneas sees it on Turnus in Book 12, he will recognise the gift to Pallas and kill Turnus partly because of it. The cycle's longest-acting single visual object.

Aeneas's rage

Aeneas's aristeia of grief is the cycle's most morally unsettling single passage in the Aeneid. The man whose defining adjective is "pius" (pious, dutiful, restrained) — the man Virgil has been constructing for nine books as the cycle's exemplary Roman — here becomes a killer in extremity. He kills wounded men begging for mercy; he kills a priest in his robes; he kills brothers together. The detail Virgil includes — Aeneas taking eight young men alive for human sacrifice at Pallas's funeral, fulfilled in Book 11 — is the cycle's most disturbing piece of Iliadic-modelled barbarism (Achilles took twelve human captives for Patroclus's pyre in Iliad 23). Virgil's choice to include this material is deliberate. The cycle's protagonist is being shown that what pietas costs sometimes is everything pietas normally constrains. The Aeneid's reader is invited to consider whether Aeneas's grief justifies what it produces.

Lausus and Mezentius

The death-scene of Lausus and Mezentius is the cycle's most morally complex piece of father-and-son writing. Mezentius is the catalogue-villain of Book 7 (the tyrant who tied living men to corpses); his beautiful young son Lausus has done nothing wrong but love his father. Aeneas kills the son to spare himself the harder kill of the wounded father; the father then comes to die in turn at the son's killer's hand. Virgil's handling of both deaths is morally serious. Aeneas pities Lausus as he dies; he addresses him with the affection of a man speaking to his own dead son; he sends the body home with honour. Mezentius's last speech — asking that he be buried with his son, knowing his people will hate him still — is one of the cycle's most-quoted pieces of tarnished-hero writing. The cycle's villain dies with more dignity than the cycle could give him in life.

Dryden's battle-poetry

Dryden's English in Book 10's battle-passages is among his most consistent. The aristeiai of Pallas, Aeneas, Mezentius all receive the formal heroic-couplet treatment without the rhyme losing the narrative momentum; the Lausus death-scene is handled with the slow restrained register the material demands; the Olympian council at the book's opening gets the formal weight of a senate-debate. The translator is on his Augustan ground throughout. The single most-quoted line from Dryden's Aeneid 10 — "yet here lies one beneath whose hand thou diest, / the man of all the world I'd most have wished to see" (Aeneas addressing the dying Lausus, in Dryden's rendering) — is the cycle's best single piece of pity-in-translation.

What to watch for

• Book 11 will give us the funeral of Pallas, the cycle's most extended young-warrior funeral; Evander's lament will be the Aeneid's most-quoted father's grief.
• Book 11 also gives us the aristeia and death of Camilla, the warrior-maiden of Book 7's catalogue.
• Book 12 will close the cycle of revenges started here: Aeneas will kill Turnus partly because he sees Pallas's swordbelt on him.
• The eight human captives Aeneas takes here will be killed at Pallas's pyre in Book 11 — the cycle's most disturbing Iliad-modelled barbarism.
• Mezentius's tarnished-dignity death is the cycle's quiet template for every subsequent literary tyrant who dies with more pathos than the reader expects.

Echoes across the cycle

Backward echoes

Aeneid 10 is the cycle's most direct structural rhyme with Iliad 16-23 — the long death-of-Patroclus-and-aftermath sequence. The pattern is precise: Pallas dies in single combat with the antagonist (Iliad 16's Patroclus killed by Hector); the protagonist responds with a grief-driven aristeia (Iliad 19-22's Achilles); the protagonist takes human captives for the funeral pyre (Iliad 23.175-176, twelve Trojan captives killed at Patroclus's pyre); the protagonist's vengeance will culminate in killing the antagonist (Iliad 22's killing of Hector). Virgil's mapping of the structure is total. The swordbelt-as-recognition-token is the cycle's most precise piece of intertextual engineering: it functions exactly as Patroclus's armour functioned in Iliad 17 (the spoils of the dead beloved that the antagonist wears and the protagonist recognises). The council of the gods reaches back to every previous Olympian council in the cycle (Iliad 1's open quarrel, Iliad 20's reluctant intervention, Posthomerica 3's rebuke of Apollo, Aeneid 1's prophecy of Rome); Jupiter's withdrawal here is the cycle's most novel divine move — the chief god declines further intervention. Mezentius is constructed as the cycle's late counterpart to the Iliad's Diomedes (the man who wounded gods in Iliad 5) and to the Posthomerica's Eurypylus (the Trojan champion who must be killed); the cycle's villains have been escalating from Hector through to Mezentius and now to Turnus. The Lausus death echoes every previous father-son scene in the cycle and most directly the Iliad 17 fight over Patroclus's body (the beloved son shielding the wounded comrade-father).

Forward echoes

Book 11 is the immediate sequel: the funeral of Pallas with the eight human captives sacrificed at his pyre; Evander's lament when his son's body arrives; the aristeia and death of Camilla. Book 12 will close the cycle of revenges: Aeneas will kill Turnus partly because he sees Pallas's swordbelt on his body — the recognition Virgil engineers here pays off in the poem's last twenty lines. The cycle's longest-acting single object (the swordbelt) is therefore being placed in Book 10 to drive the cycle's most-debated single moment in Book 12. The eight human captives Aeneas takes here will be killed at Pallas's pyre in Book 11 and are the cycle's most disturbing Iliad-modelled barbarism; Virgil's contemporary readers (Augustan-period Romans whose state had largely abolished human sacrifice) would have read the passage with the same discomfort modern readers feel. The Aeneid is here showing that Roman pietas, taken to its grief-driven extreme, can produce the cruelty Roman law has explicitly banned. The cycle's deepest single moral question — whether duty justifies its own excesses — is opened by this book and closed by the next two. Mezentius's tarnished-dignity death is the cycle's template for every subsequent literary tyrant who dies with more pathos than the reader expects: Macbeth, Richard III, the great romantic-tragic villains of European literature reach back through Mezentius. The eight captives also echo backward to Cassandra and the other Trojan captives at the sack — the cycle's deepest theme of innocent prisoners disposed of for the dead.

Cast in this chapter

On stage

• Aeneas — returns with the new shield and Etruscan allies; berserk rage after Pallas's death; kills Lausus reluctantly and Mezentius in turn
• Pallas — young Arcadian; first major aristeia; killed by Turnus's spear; his swordbelt stripped and worn by his killer
• Turnus — kills Pallas; takes the swordbelt; Virgil's narrator-aside warns the spoil will undo him
• Mezentius — Etruscan tyrant fighting for Turnus; wounded by Aeneas; his son Lausus dies shielding him; he comes to die in turn
• Aphrodite — Venus; pleads her son's case in the divine council
• Hera — Juno; defends Turnus's claim in the divine council
• Zeus — Jupiter; declares neutrality; closes the gates of Olympus; fate to decide

Mentioned / off-stage

• Evander — old king at Pallanteum; will receive his son's body in Book 11
• Ascanius — at the Trojan camp; his first kill was Book 9's
• Creusa — long dead; Aeneas's first wife
• Anchises — long dead; in Elysium watching the parade he showed his son
• Achilles — long dead; the Iliad 16 Patroclus-death is the cycle's structural template for Pallas
• Patroclus — long dead; the Aeneid's structural predecessor for Pallas; the twelve human captives at his pyre are the model for the eight Aeneas takes here

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This post is part of Reading Troy, a slow daily readalong through the four canonical Trojan-cycle epics — Homer's Iliad, Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, Virgil's Aeneid, and Homer's Odyssey — read in chronological narrative order.