Aeneid Book 10, lines 474 - 502

The death of Pallas

by Virgil

As the battle between the Trojans and Rutulians continues, Turnus and young Pallas come face to face. Pallas is the prince of the Arcadians, Aeneas’s new allies, and his father, King Evandrus, has asked Aeneas to be his friend and mentor. The fight does not last long and the outcome is never in doubt. Turnus’s grant of Pallas’s body to be taken back to his father for burial is magnanimous, but taking Pallas’s armour as spoils of war will have consequences when the epic finally moves to its close.

The scene on the gold-decorated swordbelt that Turnus takes from Pallas as a trophy shows the Danaids, fifty sisters of whom all but one obeyed their father’s instruction to murder their new husbands on the night after what must have been a very big wedding.

The English translation is by John Dryden. See the illustrated blog post here.

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At Pallas magnis emittit viribus hastam
vaginaque cava fulgentem deripit ensem.
illa volans umeri surgunt qua tegmina summa
incidit, atque viam clipei molita per oras
tandem etiam magno strinxit de corpore Turni.
hic Turnus ferro praefixum robur acuto
in Pallanta diu librans iacit atque ita fatur:
‘aspice num mage sit nostrum penetrabile telum.’
dixerat; at clipeum, tot ferri terga, tot aeris,
quem pellis totiens obeat circumdata tauri,
vibranti cuspis medium transverberat ictu
loricaeque moras et pectus perforat ingens:
ille rapit calidum frustra de vulnere telum:
una eademque via sanguis animusque sequuntur.
corruit in vulnus (sonitum super arma dedere)
et terram hostilem moriens petit ore cruento.
quem Turnus super adsistens:
‘Arcades, haec’ inquit ‘memores mea dicta referte
Evandro: qualem meruit, Pallanta remitto.
quisquis honos tumuli, quidquid solamen humandi est,
largior. haud illi stabunt Aeneia parvo
hospitia.’ et laevo pressit pede talia fatus
exanimem rapiens immania pondera baltei
impressumque nefas: una sub nocte iugali
caesa manus iuvenum foede thalamique cruenti,
quae Clonus Eurytides multo caelaverat auro;
quo nunc Turnus ovat spolio gaudetque potitus.
nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurae
et servare modum rebus sublata secundis!

Now with full force his spear young Pallas threw,
And, having thrown, his shining fauchion drew
The steel just graz’d along the shoulder joint,
And mark’d it slightly with the glancing point.
Fierce Turnus first to nearer distance drew,
And pois’d his pointed spear, before he threw:
Then, as the winged weapon whizz’d along,
“See now,” said he, “whose arm is better strung.”
The spear kept on the fatal course, unstay’d
By plates of ir’n, which o’er the shield were laid:
Thro’ folded brass and tough bull hides it pass’d,
His corslet pierc’d, and reach’d his heart at last.
In vain the youth tugs at the broken wood;
The soul comes issuing with the vital blood:
He falls; his arms upon his body sound;
And with his bloody teeth he bites the ground.
Turnus bestrode the corpse: “Arcadians, hear,”
Said he; “my message to your master bear:
Such as the sire deserv’d, the son I send;
It costs him dear to be the Phrygians’ friend.
The lifeless body, tell him, I bestow,
Unask’d, to rest his wand’ring ghost below.”
He said, and trampled down with all the force
Of his left foot, and spurn’d the wretched corse;
Then snatch’d the shining belt, with gold inlaid;
The belt Eurytion’s artful hands had made,
Where fifty fatal brides, express’d to sight,
All in the compass of one mournful night,
Depriv’d their bridegrooms of returning light.
In an ill hour insulting Turnus tore
Those golden spoils, and in a worse he wore.
O mortals, blind in fate, who never know
To bear high fortune, or endure the low!

`

More Poems by Virgil

  1. Fire strikes Aeneas’s fleet
  2. Help for Father Aeneas from Father Tiber
  3. Aeneas joins the fray
  4. The infant Camilla
  5. Virgil begins the Georgics
  6. Aeneas reaches the Elysian Fields
  7. Aeneas arrives in Italy
  8. A Fury rouses Turnus to war
  9. Dido and Aeneas: royal hunt and royal affair
  10. Aeneas finds Dido among the shades
  11. Omens for Princess Lavinia
  12. The death of Euryalus and Nisus
  13. Hector visits Aeneas in a dream
  14. Virgil predicts a forthcoming birth and a new golden age
  15. What is this wooden horse?
  16. Aeneas rescues his Father Anchises
  17. Rites for the allies’ dead
  18. Sea-nymphs
  19. Virgil’s perils on the sea
  20. Juno throws open the gates of war
  21. The portals of sleep
  22. Into battle
  23. Dido falls in love
  24. Palinurus the helmsman is lost
  25. The Trojans reach Carthage
  26. Mourning for Pallas
  27. Aeneas is wounded
  28. Juno’s anger
  29. The Trojan horse opens
  30. Laocoon and the snakes
  31. The Harpy’s prophecy
  32. Dido’s story
  33. How Aeneas will know the site of his city
  34. Aeneas sees Marcellus, Augustus’s tragic heir
  35. The Aeneid begins
  36. The journey to Hades begins
  37. New allies for Aeneas
  38. Virgil’s poetic temple to Caesar
  39. More from Virgil’s farming Utopia
  40. Vulcan’s forge
  41. Aeneas prepares to tell Dido his story
  42. Signs of bad weather
  43. Aeneas saves his son and father, but at a cost
  44. The death of Priam
  45. The farmer’s starry calendar
  46. The battle for Priam’s palace
  47. The Trojans prepare to set sail from Carthage
  48. King Latinus grants the Trojans’ request
  49. The Fury Allecto blows the alarm
  50. Turnus is lured away from battle
  51. Turnus at bay
  52. Anchises’s ghost invites Aeneas to visit the underworld
  53. The Syrian hostess
  54. Jupiter’s prophecy
  55. Cassandra is taken
  56. Storm at sea!
  57. Turnus the wolf
  58. Aeneas comes to the Hell of Tartarus
  59. Catastrophe for Rome?
  60. Souls awaiting punishment in Tartarus, and the crimes that brought them there.
  61. Aeneas learns the way to the underworld
  62. Dido’s release
  63. King Mezentius meets his match
  64. Juno is reconciled
  65. Mercury’s journey to Carthage
  66. Aristaeus’s bees
  67. In King Latinus’s hall
  68. The death of Priam
  69. Aeneas’s oath
  70. The Trojan Horse enters the city
  71. Aeneas prepares for a hopeless fight
  72. Love is the same for all
  73. Aeneas and Dido meet
  74. The natural history of bees
  75. Laocoon warns against the Trojan horse
  76. Charon, the ferryman
  77. The farmer’s happy lot
  78. Rumour
  79. Aeneas tours the site of Rome
  80. The death of Dido.
  81. Aeneas’s vision of Augustus
  82. Dido and Aeneas: Hell hath no fury …
  83. Aeneas’s ships are transformed
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