2.1. Lausus and his nameless mother

Lausus is the noble son of the wicked Etruscan leader Mezentius. Lausus and Pallas are of similar age but on opposite sides (though they never meet), both of them novices in battle, and both are destined to be killed by a stronger opponent (10.433–8). Lausus’ ill fortune is to come up against Aeneas while Aeneas is in a frenzy soon after having heard about the death of Pallas. Aeneas’ fatal swordthrust pierces Lausus’ tunic (10.817–18: transiit … | … tunicam molli mater quam neuerat auro, ‘it pierced the tunic which his mother had woven of soft gold’).

Lausus’ tunic is not remarkable from a Homeric point of view. There are three precedents in the Iliad for the piercing of a garment by a weapon. In the duel between Menelaus and Paris at Il. 3.359, Menelaus’ spear cuts Paris’ chiton, though without wounding Paris. The same words are used in Il. 7.253–4 for a similar situation, when it is Ajax whose spear cuts Hector's chiton. A somewhat more remote parallel is Agamemnon's prayer that he will be able to cut Hector's chiton before sunset (Il. 2.416–17).Footnote ⁹ So Virgil appears to have solid Homeric precedents here. There are nevertheless two non-Homeric elements in the Lausus episode: first, the thrust that pierces Lausus’ tunic is fatal; second, the tunic was woven by Lausus’ mother. So why is Lausus’ mother mentioned, and what do we know about her?

At one level, a reason for mentioning Lausus’ mother is clear. There is pathos in the mother's bereavement. Virgil hints here at the numerous passages in the Iliad where a young warrior is described as dying before his time, so that he cannot repay his aging parents for their love and care in bringing him up. But, apart from this conventional role of Lausus’ mother as a parent who will grieve for her son, we know nothing about her. She is given no name, and she is mentioned nowhere else. All we have is an association between Lausus’ death and a tunic that his mother has made for him.

2.2. Euryalus and his nameless mother

The association between a mother and a tunic is parallelled through Euryalus and his mother in Aen. 9. Euryalus dies in an attempt to pass through the Latins’ camp. His severed head, along with that of his friend Nisus, is paraded on a spear in front of the besieged Trojans (9.465–72). Euryalus’ mother, at the moment when she hears of her son's death, is busy weaving, and in her horrified excitement she drops the shuttle and the skein of wool (9.475–7). Night and day (we are told) she has soothed her anxiety by weaving a tunic for her son. She bewails now the fact that she will not be able to use it to cover him, after washing his wounds and closing his eyes (9.486–9). She speaks as if appealing to a recognized convention: if a mother lives to see the death in battle of a son, she ought to have the consolation of clothing him for his funeral.

This mother, in contrast to Lausus’ mother, is by no means a cipher. Her lamentations are recorded at length in 9.473–502, and they help to spread alarm and despondency among the Trojans until she is led away. But in one respect she does resemble the mother of Lausus: she has no name.Footnote ¹⁰ At the same time, she stands in for another mother who has a name. This is because, before Nisus and Euryalus set off on their mission, Ascanius promised that, if Euryalus should be killed, he would look after Euryalus’ mother as if she were his own (9.297–8: namque erit ista mihi genetrix, nomenque Creusae | solum defuerit, ‘for she will be a mother to me, and will lack only the name of Creusa’). Usually it is a parent who adopts a child, but in this instance a child seems to adopt a parent: Ascanius ‘adopts’ Euryalus’ mother to replace Creusa.

I should explain more carefully what I mean by ‘adopts’ here. Ascanius certainly does not adopt Euryalus’ mother in any legal sense, Roman or other. Nevertheless, he promises that, if Euryalus should die, he will behave towards this woman just as if she were his own mother: that is, he will support her and treat her with the filial devotion that Euryalus would have displayed. This is what I mean by ‘adoption’ in the present context: a non-biological parent-child relationship that is figurative rather than legal.

Some scepticism is understandable. ‘How important can a relationship be if it is merely figurative?’, one may ask. Nevertheless, it is a kind of relationship that recurs several times in the Aeneid, and Virgil intends (I suggest) that we should notice the recurrences and ponder their implications.

2.3. Ascanius and Andromache

We have just noted Ascanius’ adoption of a replacement mother. Earlier in the poem, Ascanius himself becomes a kind of replacement son. In Book 3, Aeneas and the Trojans visit the little replica of Troy that Helenus and Andromache (Hector's widow) have constructed at Buthrotum in Epirus. At 3.489–91, Andromache, who has lost her own son Astyanax, tells us that Ascanius looks exactly like him (sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat; | et nunc aequali tecum pubesceret aeuo, ‘he had just such eyes, just such hands and face; and now he would have grown to be the same age as you are’). What is more, she addresses Ascanius as ‘the sole image of Astyanax that remains to me’ (o mihi sola mei super Astyanactis imago). With the passage of time, the image of Astyanax has been fading from Andromache's memory, we gather; but now that image is refreshed by the sight of Ascanius, who is similar enough in appearance and age to stand in for Astyanax.

To be adopted, even in my figurative sense, is it sufficient to be a visual stand-in? The answer is yes, I believe, for two reasons. The first is the strikingly blunt language that Andromache uses: from now on, when she thinks of her son Astyanax, the image of Ascanius will appear in her mind's eye, not merely alongside but perhaps even (it is hinted) in substitution for that of Astyanax himself. The second reason is the fact that Andromache not only talks to Ascanius but also makes a gift to him of clothing: a ‘Phrygian chlamys’ and other woven items (lines 482–8: accipe et haec, manuum tibi quae monimenta mearum | sint, puer, et longum Andromachae testentur amorem, | coniugis Hectoreae, ‘accept these too, my boy, as reminders of my hands and as testaments of the enduring love of Andromache, Hector's wife’). Just as with Lausus and Euryalus, garments play the role of physical counterparts to maternal or quasi-maternal love.

3.1. The son of Latinus and Amata, and his potential replacement

We have noted so far two nameless mothers: those of Euryalus and Lausus. I will discuss presently the nameless mother of Pallas. But the Aeneid also features a nameless son: that of Latinus and Amata, who died in early youth (7.50–1). If the parallels that I have been discussing are significant, the fact that this boy is both dead and nameless makes him a candidate for replacement by adoption. And, before the Trojans’ arrival, there is indeed a candidate to be a new son for Latinus and Amata, namely Turnus, who hopes to marry their daughter Lavinia.Footnote ¹¹

I say ‘son’ advisedly, even though, as the husband of Lavinia, Turnus would not undergo adoption; he would become not a son (filius) but a son-in-law (gener) to Latinus and Amata as his father-in-law (socer) and mother-in-law (socrus). Yet, in his last conversation with Latinus at the beginning of Book 12, Turnus addresses Latinus twice as pater (lines 13 and 50). One such occurrence might be regarded as merely a term of respect for the old king, who is often referred to as pater in Book 7 (lines 61, 92, 274, 593 and 618). But two occurrences, in a speech whose climax emphasizes Lauinia coniunx (12.17 ‘Lavinia as bride’), suggest a hint on Virgil's part that Turnus could indeed become a replacement for Lavinia's dead brother, just as Ascanius replaces the dead Astyanax and Euryalus’ mother replaces the dead Creusa.

This interpretation is reinforced by Amata's last speech and Turnus’ reply to her. Amata's last words (12.63) contain a passionate rejection of the position that we know she would occupy if she had survived: nec generum Aenean … uidebo, ‘and I will not see Aeneas as my son-in-law’. Turnus, in answer, addresses her as o mater (12.72), and, discussing his planned duel with Aeneas, he ends this speech too with a reference to Lavinia as a future wife (12.80 illo quaeratur coniunx Lauinia campo, ‘let Lavinia be sought as bride on that field [of combat]’). Thus Turnus emphasizes to both Latinus and Amata his desire to become their son, even if only by marriage. For a third and final time, at 12.937, Turnus uses the word coniunx. But this time it is when, in conceding defeat to Aeneas, he acknowledges that Lavinia will be Aeneas’ bride, not his.

By contrast, Aeneas uses a strikingly different vocabulary in relation to Lavinia, Latinus and Amata. Aeneas has been told by Creusa at 2.783 that a ‘royal bride’ (regia coniunx) awaits him at his destination in Italy. Yet, on the one occasion when Aeneas describes his future family relationship with Latinus and Amata (12.192–4), it is as if he is setting out drily the terms of a contract. Here, one may think, it would be doubly appropriate for Aeneas to refer to Latinus as pater, as a mark of their new kinship as well as of respect for the older ruler. Yet, he avoids the terms pater, mater and even coniunx. Rather, he uses twice, as if for emphasis, the strictly correct term socer (‘father-in-law’):

Thus Aeneas alludes to his future wife only as the source of the name for the Trojans’ new settlement.

Turnus is presumably about the same age as Amata's son would have been, just as Ascanius is the same age as Astyanax would have been. Amata could therefore have been consoled for the loss of her son by Turnus, just as the image of Ascanius goes some way towards consoling Andromache for the loss of her son Astyanax. This helps to make sense of the first characteristic of Amata that we learn of: the ‘wonderful love’ (miro amore, 7.57) with which she promoted the cause of Turnus’ marriage to Lavinia. She can hardly wait for his position as her new son to be ratified, so to speak. But this ‘adoption’ never takes place. Nor is there any compensation for its failure, so far as Amata, Latinus and Lavinia are concerned. Aeneas’ marriage to Lavinia will have quite a different character; it will be purely dynastic. Amata has died unconsoled, and Lavinia enjoys no personal consolation either. The last time we see her, she is tearing her hair and lacerating her cheeks in despair at the suicide of her mother (12.605–6). Soon she will be forced to marry the man who has killed the man she loves.Footnote ¹²

This interpretation of the dead son mentioned at 7.50–1 is supported by the fact that Virgil, in attributing to Amata and Latinus a son who died young, appears to have deliberately set aside other traditions that would have been available to him. According to Servius and Servius Auctus, Latinus did indeed have sons (two, not one), but they survived their father's death (Serv. on Aen. 7.50–1: Amata enim duos filios, uoluntate patris Aeneae spondentes Lauiniam sororem, factione interemit …. hos alii caecatos a matre tradunt, postquam amisso Turno Lauinia Aeneae iuncta est, ‘for Amata used her supporters to kill his two sons when, according to their father's wish, they betrothed Lavinia to Aeneas. … Others say that they were blinded by their mother after Lavinia had been married to Aeneas following Turnus’ death’).Footnote ¹³ So why does Virgil choose the version of the son's early death? A plausible answer is: because the tradition recorded by Servius would not have provided another possibility for a mother (in this instance, Amata) to obtain a living replacement (namely Turnus) for a dead son. The irony is that this is an ‘adoption’ that fails not only because Turnus never marries Lavinia but also because his would-be ‘mother’ dies before he does.

3.2. Pallas as Dido's adoptive son

In preparing for Pallas’ funeral at 11.72–7, Aeneas makes use of two tunics woven by Dido. One of the tunics is, or closely resembles, the tunic that he was wearing in Carthage when chided by Mercury at 4.261–76 for neglecting his Italian destiny.Footnote ¹⁴ If we apply to Pallas the precedents so far discussed, we arrive at the conclusion that Görler (n. 6) hints at but cannot quite bring himself to embrace. Just as Andromache and Amata yearn for new sons, and just as Ascanius needs (or, at any rate, acquires) a new mother, so Pallas too acquires symbolically a new mother, namely Dido. Aeneas brings this about by clothing Pallas in a tunic made by her, echoing the son-mother-tunic connections of Lausus, Euryalus and Ascanius. Pallas thus becomes belatedly the paruulus Aeneas (‘little Aeneas’) that Dido wishes she had been left with as a reminder of him (4.327–30).

This is consistent with what Aeneas himself solemnly declares immediately after the paruulus Aeneas speech in Book 4: he will not regret remembering Dido so long as he has memory of his own self and so long as breath sustains his limbs (4.335–6 … | dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos regit artus). This is not quite the same as telling Dido that he loves her. In this last speech to her, Aeneas uses the word amor only in relation to patria (4.347). But this is a central part of their joint tragedy. The narrator tells us twice that Aeneas loves Dido (4.395, 6.455), yet he never acknowledges it directly to her.Footnote ¹⁵

The possibility of posthumous adoption through the tunic is reinforced by what little we know of Pallas’ real mother. She is mentioned only twice, by Pallas’ father Evander, at 8.510 and at 11.158–9. Like the mother of Euryalus, she is given no name. Also, she is dead before the action of Books 8–10 takes place (11.158–9 tuque, o sanctissima coniunx, | felix morte tua neque in hunc seruata dolorem!, ‘and you, most holy wife, fortunate in having died and not been preserved to witness this sorrow!’). So the position of mother for Pallas is, so to speak, vacant, available for a new occupant—just as the position of mother for Ascanius is when he offers to ‘adopt’ the mother of Euryalus in Book 9.

A further detail concerning Pallas’ original mother may be pertinent. She was Italian, more precisely Sabine (8.510). The ostensible reason why Evander tells us this is to explain why Pallas cannot lead the Etruscans against Mezentius and why Aeneas should therefore put himself forward to do so: a soothsayer has warned that the Etruscans must choose externos … duces (‘foreign leaders’, 8.503). But there may be a further reason for emphasizing the Sabine origin of Pallas’ mother, from the poet's point of view rather than from Evander's. Pallas’ shadowy biological mother belonged to a people who were early rivals of the Romans; his far-from-shadowy adoptive mother, Dido, belonged to a people who were later and much more serious rivals.

By means of Dido's tunic, then, Aeneas makes a sort of amends (I suggest) to two individuals that he has loved but who are casualties of the Trojan and Roman destiny that he is shackled to through his pietas towards Jupiter. As a court poet of Augustus, Virgil could not explicitly cast doubt on Jupiter's wisdom in choosing Augustus as the re-founder of Rome. But what if Augustus should fail—if, for example, he should be assassinated, like Pompey and Caesar?

In the 20s b.c.e. neither Virgil nor anyone else knew what we know, namely that Augustus would live into his seventies and that his success would be so amazing that he may plausibly be judged the most influential figure in the political history of Europe during the last three thousand years. Therefore, in assessing the tension between public and private pietas in the Aeneid, we must be on the alert for what one may call Virgil's insurance policy: those elements in the poem that might still captivate future generations of readers and allow them to find Aeneas admirable, even if historical contingencies should render embarrassing the prophecies in Books 1, 6 and 8. However, precisely because of Augustus’ amazing success, the need to safeguard Aeneas’ status as the hero of the poem has never compelled readers to look outside the realm of public duty for manifestations of his famous pietas.Footnote ¹⁶

4.1. The parallels between Nisus and Aeneas

I will approach this puzzle by an apparently roundabout route: comparing Aeneas with Nisus, the Trojan warrior whom we meet in the funeral games in Book 5 and who, with his friend Euryalus, gets himself killed while attempting to carry a message through enemy lines to Aeneas in Book 9. The only contact between Nisus and Aeneas occurs at one of the poem's rare moments of light relief: after the running race, Aeneas, laughing, agrees to award Nisus a prize, even though Nisus, having slipped in the gory remains of a sacrifice, did not even finish the race (5.353–61).Footnote ¹⁷ Yet, in respect of the first and the last mentions of them in the poem, Nisus and Aeneas (as I will show) parallel each other more closely than any other two characters do. What is more, Nisus and his friend Euryalus receive at 9.446–9 more extravagant praise than anyone else in the poem. Addressing them as fortunati ambo, ‘fortunate pair’, the poet promises them that, if his work can achieve anything, no day will ever erase them from the memory of time, so long as Rome endures:

Even Aeneas himself is never spoken of in such lavish terms.

Aeneas is first mentioned (without being named) at 1.10: insignem pietate uirum, ‘a man outstanding for his pietas’. (I leave pietas and pius untranslated for the time being; we will return later to the question of what exactly they embrace.) Nisus is first mentioned at 5.294–6, when he and his friend Euryalus volunteer for the footrace: Nisus et Euryalus primi, | Euryalus forma insignis uiridique iuuenta, | Nisus amore pio pueri, ‘Nisus and Euryalus first, Euryalus outstanding for his beauty and green youth, Nisus for his pius love for the boy’. The epithet insignis in connection with pietas and pius yields a striking parallel.Footnote ¹⁹

Aeneas’ last action in the poem is his killing of Turnus. Whether or not Aeneas needs to kill Turnus in order to play his part in the fulfilment of Rome's destiny, the narrator makes it clear that what is uppermost in Aeneas’ mind when he thrusts his sword into Turnus’ chest is vengeance for Pallas, whose baldric Turnus is wearing. Indeed, in his final angry words, Aeneas identifies himself with Pallas: it is really Pallas himself who is bringing about Turnus’ death, he says. Likewise, Nisus’ last action in the poem is his killing of the Latin warrior Volcens, in revenge for Volcens’ killing of Euryalus (9.438–43). Nisus, too, in his final words, identifies himself with the youth he is avenging: it is really he, Nisus, who has done everything that Euryalus has done, because Euryalus could do nothing on his own and is guilty only of having loved his friend too well (9.427–30: me, me adsum qui feci … nihil iste nec ausus nec potuit, ‘here I am, I'm the one who did it … this one took no initiative, he couldn't do anything!’). This is a claim that we, the readers, know to be false, since Euryalus in the Latin camp by no means restricted himself to carrying out orders from Nisus. So, in Aeneas and Nisus, Virgil presents us with two individuals who are outstanding for pietas (whether in general or in association with amor), who carry out as their last acts the only two revenge killings in the poem,Footnote ²⁰ and who, in their last speeches, identify themselves with the person avenged in such a way as to engineer a purported shift of responsibility for crucial actions—on to himself in Nisus’ case, away from himself in Aeneas’ case.Footnote ²¹

The beginning and ending resemblances between Aeneas and Nisus suggest that the Nisus–Euryalus episodes in Books 5 and 9 are more integral to the main narrative than is often assumed. For example, it has been suggested that the Nisus–Euryalus episode in Book 9 represents an attempt to inject into the second half of the poem an element of pathos corresponding to the death of Dido in Book 4.Footnote ²² But the comparison is inappropriate, I suggest. There is little resemblance between the story of Nisus and Euryalus and the story of Dido, which contains no revenge killing parallel to that of Turnus by Aeneas. The fortunati ambo lines may indeed appear exaggerated or incongruous, if they are meant for Nisus and Euryalus alone; but the parallels between Nisus and Aeneas are (I suggest) an indication from the poet that their real importance lies in their application to Aeneas. They show us that Aeneas deserves the same sort of praise as Nisus does, and for the same sort of reason—whatever that is.

So what exactly have Nisus and Euryalus done to deserve this praise? We are naturally inclined to look for some contributions on their part to the fulfilment of the Trojan destiny, or some manifestations of epic heroism. But we find neither—indeed, rather, the opposite. In the footrace in Book 5, Nisus cheats so that Euryalus can win, and, when Salius protests, Euryalus, far from graciously relinquishing his prize, threatens to burst into tears if he is made to give it up (5.331–44). As for Nisus, although he did not even finish the course, he brazenly protests that he too deserves to win something (5.353–8). Then, in Book 9, after Euryalus has been captured, Nisus would not have turned back in a hopeless attempt to rescue his friend if he had been determined above all to serve the Trojan–Roman cause; rather, he would have continued on his mission alone, carrying to Aeneas the plea for help from the besieged Trojan camp.Footnote ²³ And if Nisus and Euryalus deserved to be held up as model warriors, we would be shown them bravely confronting the enemy on the battlefield (as Pallas and Lausus do), not slaughtering enemy soldiers while they lie in a drunken stupor and, in Euryalus’ case, weighing himself down with stolen armour.

I say ‘stolen armour’ advisedly. This is a superficially minor point that looms larger when its implications are examined. The glinting armour that leads to Euryalus’ capture is stolen, not in any sense won.Footnote ²⁴ We are told of four Latins that Euryalus himself killed (Fadus, Herbesus, Rhoetus and Abaris: 9.344). It would be natural to suppose that Euryalus has taken the booty from one or more of them. But Virgil tells us plainly (9.359–66) that what Euryalus encumbers himself with is an embossed belt belonging to Rhamnes, whom Nisus has killed (9.324–8), and a helmet belonging to Messapus, whom neither of them has killed (he plays a role in the fighting later on).

If Euryalus had been captured wearing armour taken from one of his own four victims, he would be in a position similar to Turnus, who, at the end of the poem, is wearing armour taken from his victim Pallas. This is a foolish mistake on Turnus’ part, as the narrator has warned us (10.501–5). Nevertheless, Turnus is not a thief. He won Pallas’ armour by defeating him in battle. By contrast, Euryalus is a thief as well as a fool. In Book 5, with the help of Nisus, Euryalus stole victory in the running race. Now, in Book 9, Virgil goes out of his way to make the young Trojan behave again in a disreputable fashion, it would seem.Footnote ²⁵ Yet, less than a hundred lines later, Virgil exalts Euryalus and his selfish lover Nisus above all other warriors, including even Aeneas, with the promise of everlasting fame in lines 446–9. So what is going on here?

Virgil paints us into a corner, as it were, with regard to Nisus and Euryalus. To set against their numerous failings, they have one and only one characteristic that is clearly laudable: their mutual love and loyalty, or, as Virgil puts it, the pius amor that Nisus displays (5.296) and Euryalus reciprocates (9.182, 9.430). That is the only quality that can plausibly justify the narrator's extravagant praise for them at 9.446–9. So it is essential now to compare the young warriors’ form of pietas with that of Aeneas.

4.2. Public and private pietas

Pietas (‘loyal devotion’) is usually a public virtue directed towards objects imposed by convention (gods, country or ancestors). But it can also be more private, directed towards objects chosen by an individual, such as friends.Footnote ²⁶ And clearly Virgil wishes us to think that pietas can be manifested in love (amor) such as that between Nisus and Euryalus. We are not told what form this love takes: whether it is a close friendship or, as seems more likely, a romantic relationship.Footnote ²⁷ But that is a side-issue. What is important is that it is pius.

It may well be that, to Virgil's contemporaries, pius amor would have seemed a novel, even daring, collocation. B. Pavlock calls it ‘paradoxical’ and ‘an oxymoron’, and adds: ‘The essentially private nature of amor is likely to interfere with the publicly oriented demands of pietas.’Footnote ²⁸ Yet, Virgil emphasizes this form of pietas displayed by Nisus in the same way as he emphasizes the pietas of Aeneas, inasmuch as it is the first characteristic of each of them that he mentions. The exactness of this parallel suggests that Virgil wishes us to take the implications of the phrase pius amor seriously.Footnote ²⁹ As A. Thornton puts it: ‘When Virgil calls the love of Nisus for Euryalus pius (5.296) he means it: Nisus is loyal to the bitter end.’Footnote ³⁰ Whatever may be the traditional Roman view, Virgil is insisting that pietas can be manifested in private and chosen loyalties no less than in public and conventionally imposed ones. Thus, through the Nisus parallel, Virgil shows us that the pietas which makes Aeneas the hero of the poem need not always be restricted to the public domain of obedience to Jupiter and fatum. It may just as well reside, at least in part, in the private domain of his devotion to Pallas and Dido, analogous to Nisus’ devotion to Euryalus.

I choose my words carefully here. My claim is that, from Virgil's point of view, the kind of pietas exhibited by Aeneas on any particular occasion need not reside in his obedience to Jupiter or in his conventionally appropriate love for his father Anchises and his son Ascanius; it may rather reside in loyalty to chosen objects of affection, that is, Pallas and Dido. Certainly, there are innumerable passages in the poem that emphasize pietas towards one's gods, one's nation and one's family rather than towards one's friends and lovers. Such passages include Aeneas’ first speech to a non-Trojan audience (in fact, his mother in disguise), to whom he introduces himself with the words sum pius Aeneas (1.378). At this point, he has never met Pallas and is only just on the point of meeting Dido. But to make sense of the four lines 9.446–9 fortunati ambo … pater Romanus habebit in the context of the Nisus–Euryalus episodes requires us to recognize private pietas as sometimes predominant.

Recognizing the role of private pietas in the behaviour of Aeneas as well as in the behaviour of Nisus enables us to solve at last the puzzle posed at the beginning of this section. Aeneas reacts so violently to the death of Pallas for a reason that Virgil uses Dido's tunic at 11.74 to show us, without telling us explicitly: that Aeneas is reacting also to the death of Dido. Dido is the wife that Aeneas would like to have had, following the death of Creusa, and Pallas is the son he would like to have had. What did not come to pass in reality Aeneas brings about symbolically: through the tunic, Dido becomes Pallas’ adoptive mother. And the invocation of Pallas in Aeneas’ final speech shows us that his private pietas towards Dido is relevant even there.

To many of Virgil's contemporaries, Aeneas’ angry killing of Turnus (12.946–7 furiis accensus et ira | terribilis) was no doubt justified, because Turnus stood in the way of Troy's destiny and Jupiter's will. Some have argued, too, that Turnus deserves death because he has broken a truce.Footnote ³¹ But Virgil gives us good reason to think that Aeneas too breaks a truce in Book 11.Footnote ³² In any case, Virgil shows us that Aeneas’ fury at the end is not a reflection of Jupiter's will but is sparked by the sight of Pallas’ swordbelt, a reminder that Turnus has killed a young man who is linked in Aeneas’ heart with Dido. In killing Turnus, Aeneas takes his revenge for what has happened to those two (not only Pallas but also Dido), and thus confirms dramatically his pietas towards them.

Servius too invokes pietas as justifying Aeneas’ killing of Turnus, but does so in a different way: Euandri intuitu Pallantis ulciscitur mortem, ‘out of regard for Evander he avenges the death of Pallas’ (Serv. on Aen. 12.940). It is certainly true that Evander has called on Aeneas to avenge Pallas (11.176–80). That the old man, in his grief, should appeal to his Trojan guest in this way is understandable. But Aeneas was not present to hear this appeal, and we are not told that it was ever reported to him. Besides, it is unreasonable to expect a commander-in-chief to act as bodyguard to a young warrior who, though inexperienced, is knowingly putting himself in harm's way by going into battle.Footnote ³³ This is especially so when the young man is the commander of his own unit within the army, as Pallas is. Nor does the Roman institution of contubernium, which some have invoked as a model for Aeneas’ relationship to Pallas,Footnote ³⁴ oblige a commander-in-chief to act as a personal bodyguard.

I have said nothing yet about Anchises’ injunction to the Romans in 6.853: parcere subiectis et debellare superbos, ‘spare the defeated and wear down the proud with war’. This may seem surprising, inasmuch as some recent commentators have seen this injunction as centrally relevant to the issue of Aeneas’ pietas. For example, M. Putnam says:Footnote ³⁵ ‘Aeneas’ final act … gives the lie to the much-vaunted pietas, the loyalty to father and to Rome, which the hero has used as his excuse for leaving Carthage and abandoning [Dido]. … At the end of the Aeneid Virgil sharply and profoundly disavows the linkage between Aeneas and pietas.’ Likewise, A. Boyle says:Footnote ³⁶ ‘The conflict of pietas and furor is one of the most important motifs in the Aeneid.’ But Putnam is wrong in seeing an inconsistency between Aeneas’ pietas and his final act. As C. Mackie points out, pietas is not an all-embracing virtue; one can be pius while showing neither clementia nor humanitas.Footnote ³⁷

Putnam is right in saying that, at the end, Aeneas has no thought of Jupiter, of Anchises or of Rome. But, as we have noted, pietas towards gods, ancestors and country is not the only kind there is. The whole of the Aeneid, one might say, is an education in the meaning of pietas as Virgil wishes us to conceive it. In Book 11, through the tunic, Aeneas displays his pietas towards Pallas and indirectly towards Dido. His loyalty to Pallas is sufficient to justify us in regarding him as insignem pietate uirum in Books 10–12 just as much as in Book 1, irrespective of what we may think about his pietas towards Jupiter.

One further consideration confirms the link between Nisus’ pius amor and Aeneas’ pietas. This involves the three occurrences of the expression fremere ore cruento, ‘to roar with bloody mouth’. The first occurrence is at 1.286–96, where Jupiter describes how, under ‘a Caesar of Trojan origin’ (Troianus origine Caesar), the doors of War will be closed and ‘impious Fury’ (Furor impius), imprisoned within, ‘will roar with bloody mouth’ (fremet … ore cruento), his hands bound behind his back with a hundred brazen knots. Of the two mortal characters who are described in the same way as this hideous monster, one is Turnus. In a simile at 12.4–9, Turnus in his uiolentia, seeing the defeat of the Latin forces in Book 11, is likened to a wounded Libyan lion which roars with bloody mouth as it tosses its long mane. This application to the principal instigator of Latin opposition to Aeneas is not surprising. But, at first sight, it is indeed a surprise to find that the other warrior who fremit ore cruento, likened to a lion in a sheepfold while on a rampage among sleeping Latins, is the Trojan Nisus (9.339–41). What's more, the slaughter wrought by Euryalus is said to be no less extensive (nec minor Euryali caedes, 9.342).

P. Schenk argues that, because Nisus and Euryalus are characterized here in a way that anticipates Turnus at 12.4–9, Turnus’ bloodthirstiness cannot be attributed solely to the influence on him of the Fury Allecto (7.413–66).Footnote ³⁸ That is a fair point. But it does not solve our present problem. If Nisus and Euryalus are described in a way that recalls Furor impius in Book 1, how is it that, only a hundred lines later (9.446–9), the two of them deserve the remarkable four-line accolade fortunati ambo … pater Romanus habebit?

By now, the reader should be able to predict the answer that I will suggest. Nisus and Euryalus have evident flaws, but these are (in the poet's eyes) dwarfed by one virtuous characteristic: Nisus’ pius amor for Euryalus, which Euryalus reciprocates. Likewise, even when Aeneas is portrayed as furiis accensus et ira | terribilis ‘burning with fury and terrible in anger’ (12.946–7), excusing him does not require an appeal to a supposed distinction between singular furor (which is always bad) and plural furiae (which, according to some commentators, may be justified).Footnote ³⁹ Any flaws in Aeneas that resemble those exhibited by Nisus and Euryalus are dwarfed by the virtue that he shares with them: his pietas, which includes his chosen personal pietas towards Dido and Pallas.

7.1. uitaque cum gemitu …: Camilla and Turnus

As Turnus dies, we are told in the last line of the poem (12.952) that ‘his life with a groan fled protesting through the shades’ (uitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata per umbras). This line echoes Homer's words at Il. 22.362–3 on Hector's death: ‘his spirit, flying from his limbs, came to the underworld, bewailing his fate’. But these words are applied also to Patroclus, whom Hector has killed (Il. 16.856–7). An Achaean death is echoed in the Trojan death that avenges it.

In the Aeneid too, 12.952 is a repetition of a line used earlier. The symmetry of the Homeric lines leads us to expect a similar symmetry: Turnus being a Latin, the earlier death should be that of a Trojan. But it is not: it is that of the Italian warrior maiden Camilla (11.831). So, in order to replicate the Homeric symmetry, we would have to imagine something seemingly incredible: that Turnus, at his death, has become a Trojan, at least in the sense of having become reconciled to a Trojan victory.Footnote ⁵¹

But is this suggestion so incredible? After all, Jupiter has intervened on Aeneas’ side by sending down to Turnus a Dira, a malevolent bird-like creature that terrifies and unmans him (12.845–68, 12.894–914). We at once think of the Fury Allecto, sent by Juno to stir up Turnus in Book 7. But, whereas Allecto spurs Turnus into frantic action while clouding his judgement, Jupiter's Dira has the opposite effect.Footnote ⁵² Turnus at the end is like a man in a dream, unable even to move his limbs (12.908–12), yet he understands Jupiter's purposes with awful clarity and at last bows to his will. His willingness to concede to Aeneas now places him alongside Drances, his arch-opponent, and in opposition to his erstwhile ally Camilla.

Camilla is, in Roman terms, a rule-breaker: a huntress who transgresses into the male sphere of warfare. What's more, she opposes the Trojan cause. Thus for two reasons we might expect Virgil to encourage us to applaud her death. Yet, his portrayal of Camilla is wholly sympathetic. She makes a mistake in being distracted by a ‘woman's love’ (femineo amore, 11.782) for Chloreus’ gaudy finery. Yet, it is no worse a mistake than that of Euryalus, who (as we have seen) is elaborately praised at 9.446–9, even though his lust for shiny armour has ruined himself, his friend Nisus and his mission. What's more, Camilla as a female warrior stands in direct contrast to another Italian who is wholly unsympathetic, despite being a fervent supporter of the Trojan cause: the unwarlike politician Drances (11.122–31, 11.220–1, 11.336–75).Footnote ⁵³

Once more, we are painted into a corner. The repetition at 12.952 of 11.831 supports what we have gleaned from the Dira's effect on Turnus, namely that, at the end, Turnus has been coerced by Jupiter into deserting Camilla's anti-Trojan cause. So the paradox of Aeneas’ pietas is presented in the starkest possible fashion. Virgil must wish us to regard the hero of his poem as admirable. Yet, how can he be so while killing a man who, as he is now coming to realize, is no longer an enemy (12.940–1: cunctantem flectere sermo coeperat, ‘his [i.e. Turnus’] speech began to sway him as he hesitated’)? The answer is that Aeneas is indeed still pius but in a private rather than a public fashion: he is avenging his beloved Dido's adopted son, whose swordbelt Turnus is wearing.

7.2. Diana, the goddess who breaks ranks

We have already encountered Diana as a heavenly counterpart of Dido (section 6). This may seem strange, inasmuch as Diana (or Artemis) is the twin sister of Apollo, and Apollo supports Aeneas as staunchly as Jupiter does (it would seem). In the Iliad, Artemis is associated with Aeneas in that she helps look after him, after Apollo has rescued him from defeat by Diomedes (5.447–8). Yet, her principal role in the Aeneid is as the patron goddess of the Italian Camilla, whose earlier life she recounts in detail to her divine attendant Opis (11.532–97).

The story of Camilla shows us that Diana and Apollo are now, surprisingly, on opposite sides.Footnote ⁵⁴ Camilla is shot dead by Arruns, a devotee of Apollo (11.784–93). Thereupon Opis, on instruction from Diana, kills Arruns, whom Apollo fails to protect (11.858–67)—just as later he fails to help his pupil Iapyx cure Aeneas’ leg wound (12.405–6).Footnote ⁵⁵ By contrast, after Ascanius has killed Remulus Numanus in Book 9, Apollo favours him with warm praise and advice, both in person (9.641–4) and in disguise as Butes (9.653–6).Footnote ⁵⁶ Interestingly, Apollo and Butes together address seven lines to Ascanius, while Aeneas in the course of the whole poem addresses to him only six (12.435–40). It is as if Apollo, having at 9.638–58 appointed himself patron of the new ‘Julian’ dynasty that will spring from the son Iulus (9.642–4: geniture deos … nec te Troia capit, ‘begetter of gods … Troy cannot hold you’), has lost interest in the old ‘Trojan’ cause associated with the father Aeneas. In this respect he resembles Jupiter, who is willing at 12.833 to give way to Juno's demand that the ‘Trojan’ identity should disappear—a decision that will come as a surprise to Aeneas, whose first speech to an audience contained the ringing words illic fas regna resurgere Troiae, ‘there it is destined that the realms of Troy will rise again’ (1.206).

Diana's change of sides ought to disconcert any reader who is inclined to take at face value the pro-Augustan prophecies in Books 1, 6 and 8. By distancing Diana from Apollo and Jupiter, as well as by associating her with Dido (see section 6 above), Virgil reinforces the option of a non-Augustan reading of the kind that I have been arguing for. And the fact that a female god and a female warrior are used for this purpose shows that Virgil's women play as important a role as his male characters in guiding us to a correct understanding of Aeneas’ pietas. The Aeneid thus demonstrates that Virgil was able to contemplate a world in which female influences compete with male ones on terms which are, if not equal, at any rate not wholly unequal.Footnote ⁵⁷