A Reflection on Aeneas Slaying Turnus

“Turnus lowered

his eyes and reached with his right hand and begged,

a supplicant: “I deserve it all. No mercy, please,”

Turnus pleaded. “Seize your moment now. Or if

some care for a parent's grief can touch you still,

I pray you – you had such a father, in old Anchises -

pity Daunus in his old age and send me back

to my own people, or if you prefer,

send them my dead body stripped of life. Here,

the victor and the vanquished, I stretch my hands to you,

so the men of Latium have seen me in defeat.

Lavinia is your bride.

Go no further down the road of hatred..”

Aeneas, ferocious in armor, stood there, still,

shifting his gaze, and held his sword-arm back,

holding himself back to as Turnus' words began

to sway him more and more... when all at once

he caught sight of the fateful sword-belt of Pallas,

swept over Turnus' shoulder, gleaming with shining studs

Aeneas knew by healt. Young Pallas, whom Turnus had overpowered,

taken down by a wound, and now his shoulder flaunted

his enemy's battle-emblem like a trophy. Aeneas,

soon as his eyes drank in that plunder – keepsake

of his own terrible grief – flaring up in a fury,

terrible in his rage, he cries: “Decked in spoils

you stripped from one I loved – escape my clutches? Never -

Pallas strikes this blow, Pallas sacrifices you no,

makes you pay the price with your own guily blood! “

In the same breath, blazing with wrath he plants

his iron sword hilt-deep in his enemy's heart.

Turnus' limbs went limp in the chill of death.

His life breath fled in a groan of outrage

down to the shades below.”¹

Virgil's The Aeneid is one of the land-mark works of Western literature, and it is the tale of the hero Aeneas, and his Trojan exiles in their quest to establish a new city as divine providence dictated. Combining both the epic warfare style of The Iliad, and the swash-buckling exploits of The Odessey, in my opinion it is superior to both, and, without a doubt, the greatest accomplishment of Rome's literary culture. Throughout the epic Virgil characterizes his protagonist as pius Aeneas, a virtuous hero who is the paragon of pietas, yet the compassion, and moderation that is entailed in pietas does not stop Aeneas, now being characterized by furor (the paradigm of which had been the deity Juno, the primary obstacle against the refugees) – the opposing force to pietas in The Aeneid - from executing his foe, Turnus. The most astonishing feature of the entire act is the fact that Virgil ends his poem with it, he finishes the exploits of pius Aeneas with an act that seems to defy the very meaning of pietas, but perhaps it is a blunt statement by the author about nature of emotion, revenge, and war.

Even a character as noble as Aeneas can fall victim to emotion, and furor; it is his sorrow for the death of his friend, and ally Palas, son of King Evander who aids Aeneas in his war against Turnus, that drives him to executing his foe. However, when Pallas was slain in battle as Aeneas watched, and then rushed forward through the Latin ranks to kill Turnus, though Juno lured him away so that he could not kill him, the price, pushed forward by a murderous rage, slaughtered Lausus, “driv(ing) his tempered sword through the youth/ plunging it home hilt-deep”². However, Aeneas proceeded to regret the action, filled with compassion for the soldier who had tried to defend his father Mezentius; but, it is not so with Turnus, even though Aeneas is possessed by the same murderous fury as he was before.

Nevertheless, Aeneas is a veteran of war, having not only fought in Latium against Turnus, but also in Ilium alongside Hector against the Achaeans, and as such he knows that compassion, despite its virtue, is irrelevant, and often a hindrance on the battlefield. Unspeakable horrors are done once armies have been raised in hostility, and, as a war-hero, Aeneas is not innocent of such crimes, but rather a man who has done his best to fight for his patria, his fatherland, without giving into the excesses of war. But, like all men, he is corruptible, and furor often acts through him, and it did so when it corrupted his love for Pallas into a lust for revenge against Turnus. War is a terrible thing, and even when it is presented in a virtuous fashion as done in The Aeneid, it is suitable that the affair ends with an act, though one can argue its legitimacy, that defies the sought-after virtue of pietas. Indeed, pietas cannot survive in a world of perennial war, and man cannot be expected to conform to its precepts in such an environment where furor dominates.