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.

To follow the story of Aeneas in sequence, use this link to the full Pantheon Poets selection of extracts from the Aeneid; see the next episode here.

To listen, press play:

To scroll the original and English translation of the poem at the same time - tap inside one box to select it and then scroll.

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