Analysis
With the gods refraining from intervention in Aeneas’s
movements, Aeneas’s words and actions reveal his integrity. His
sincere mourning at Pallas’s funeral shows how deeply he appreciates
the youth’s valor in arms and how seriously he took his promise
to King Evander to protect the boy. Aeneas also honorably agrees
to a truce so that the dead of both sides can be properly buried.
His earlier descent to the underworld allows him to witness
the terrible fate of those not properly buried on Earth—they roam
the shores of the river Acheron, without a home and without rest.
As a new aspect of his piety, Aeneas takes up the imperative that
no one, not even his enemies in battle, should endure this awful
punishment on his account.
But Aeneas has not conducted himself entirely as a paragon
of mercy in the struggle with the Latins. In Book X, he mercilessly
kills two Latins who are on their knees, begging him to spare their
lives. In portraying Aeneas as a man who expresses many different
emotional extremes—anger, hatred, passivity, grief, love, and pious respect—Virgil
risks introducing some inconsistencies in his hero’s character.
Of course, it is certainly possible that a man could be both brutally
unforgiving in war and lovingly compassionate at other times. However,
our attempt to reconcile these two contradictory sides
of Aeneas’s heroism resembles Dido’s failure to comprehend Aeneas’s
expression of love for her just before his act of abandonment. In
both cases, Aeneas’s primary motivations lie in fate and piety,
but in the brief moments when fate and piety do not govern his actions, Aeneas
expresses his true emotions either tenderly or brutally.
Turnus’s character remains consistent, if somewhat one-dimensional.
He is as stubborn and temperamental as ever. Drancës’ claim that
the war is Turnus’s fault holds some truth, for King Latinus has opposed
battle from the very beginning. Originally, Turnus claims to be
fighting for his promised bride, Lavinia, but in the council it appears
that his own pride has usurped Lavinia as his motivation. Both Latinus
and Drancës insult Turnus by suggesting that he should be willing
to lay down his arms in front of the Trojans after fighting for
so long. Turnus’s reply to the council is bitterly sarcastic, adding
new depth to his character as he shows himself to be either ignorant
or recklessly defiant. He seems hell-bent on destruction, despite
the warning signs of the gods in the earlier battles. He has too
much at stake in terms of honor and reputation to give up now.
The action of Book XI suggests that the movement and
success of the armies depend entirely upon visible and active leaders.
The tide turns in battle when a leader either arrives on the scene
or leaves it. When Camilla dies, for example, the Trojans scatter
the Latins. Because the battles in the Aeneid always
flow this way, it is necessary for Virgil, at times, to remove the
greatest heroes from the fighting for a while in order to maintain
some suspense—otherwise, Aeneas and Turnus would have met in single
combat long ago. In Book XI, Turnus’s planned ambush in the mountains
removes the main characters from the fighting and then, coincidentally,
keeps them from meeting at the last moment. Virgil delays this final
confrontation for as long as possible, thus building the tension.
