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VirgilAeneid
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | BCEA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Books 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 11 Summary
The book opens at dawn, with Aeneas decorating an oak tree with the trophies he stripped from the dead Mezentius. Rather than honoring himself with them, he piously dedicates them to Mars, the god of war. Aeneas gives his troops a pep talk and encourages them to bury their fallen comrades with the proper honors (1-28). He himself joins the mourners gathered around the corpse of Pallas, lamenting that he will be sent back this way to Evander, who still does not know of his son’s death (35-58). Aeneas drapes the body in a fine mantle spun by Dido, and Pallas is mourned in a ceremony resembling a Roman state funeral (72-99).
The enemy Latin troops ask Aeneas for permission to bury their dead, too, which Aeneas grants, reminding them that he would grant mercy to the living as well, if they would only surrender: “I wouldn’t be here if fate hadn’t granted me this place to settle. / I’m not at war with your people” (112-13). Drances, an older Italian who disagrees with Turnus, seizes the opportunity to tell Aeneas he is impressed with him and they will do their best to reunite the Latin tribes with the Trojans. Turnus, he says, is acting for personal reasons (122-31). A 12-day ceasefire is put into place.
A contingent of Trojans returns Pallas’s corpse to Arcadia. Evander is distraught: “These are the piteous marks of your passage to manhood […] I’m a father who’s outlived his own son” (156-61). Back in Aeneas’s camp, funeral pyres and sacrifices for the Trojan dead light up the beach (182-202). The Latins burn and bury some of their dead, but others go into “a gigantic heap of unsortable slaughter, / not honored, not even counted, they burn” (207-08).
In Latium, public sentiment begins to turn against Turnus. Drances fuels it further (213-21). Worse news still arrives for the Latin army: Diomedes, the great Greek warrior from the Trojan War and a stalwart enemy of Aeneas, has rejected their call to arms (225-30). Venulus, the messenger, relates that Diomedes has had his fill of war. The Greeks paid dearly after the Trojan War ended; some never made it home, and some were killed when they got there (255-68). Diomedes encourages the Latins to make peace with Aeneas, whom he remembers as being the most powerful Trojan warrior next to Hector (281-93).
Latinus sees the writing on the wall and encourages peace be brokered with the Trojans. He has a plot of his own land to cede to them. They will also offer them 20 ships should they prefer to settle elsewhere (302-35). Drances suggests Latinus re-offer Lavinia’s hand to Aeneas as well and that Turnus either surrender the war or challenge Aeneas to a one-on-one fight (333-75). Enraged, Turnus accuses Drances of cowardice and reminds everyone of his own prowess in battle (377-409). He encourages Latinus not to give up the fight, as Fortune could just as easily turn on the Trojans next (420-27). They still have allies, including the warrior girl Camilla, but Turnus would be happy to engage in hand-to-hand combat with Aeneas if that is the best course of action (428-44).
Just then, word of Aeneas’s troops moving down from the river Tiber arrives in the city. Many are enraged, especially the young men. Turnus capitalizes on the moment and rushes everyone back into war, as Latinus laments not accepting Aeneas as his heir when he could.
The city prepares for a siege. At the gate Turnus meets with the Volscian warrior Camilla, who wants to attack Aeneas’s cavalry herself. They hatch a plan: Turnus will box the Trojans in a wooded gorge, and Camilla and a few other generals will attack them there (498-519).
In heaven, the hunter goddess Diana laments that her beloved Camilla will soon be killed in battle. When Camilla’s father, Metabus, was exiled from his kingdom and pursued by angry citizens, he found himself up against a raging river. He tied the infant Camilla to a javelin and, dedicating her to Diana, threw her across and swam to meet her. From that point on they led a life of rural exiles. Camilla was nursed by animals and trained in the warrior arts. All the Italian mothers wanted her as a wife for their sons, but Camilla resolved not to marry; she was fully devoted to Diana, a virgin goddess. Diana sends her nymph Opis to Italy to punish any man who would harm Camilla (532-96).
The battle begins, and the tides shift back and forth. Where the fighting is fiercest, Camilla shows herself proficient with many different weapons. Virgil describes the deaths of many men who try to fight her, and he asks: “Who was the first man you killed with your weapons, you fierce young woman? / Who was the last? Bodies spilled to the ground and left dying: how many?” (663-65). Aeneas’s Etruscan ally Tarchon rallies his troops by shaming them for being routed by a girl (732-40). Meanwhile, the cowardly Arruns is quietly stalking Camilla with his spear. She has been distracted by the beautiful armor worn by a Trojan warrior, Chloreus; she is “Hot, but with feminine tastes, in her passion for booty and plunder” (782). Praying to Apollo to kill Camilla and go home with glory—Apollo grants his first wish, but not the second—Arruns spears her and flees like a wolf with its tail between its legs (801-13). With her dying breath, Camilla urges her friend Acca to send word to Turnus to take her place and defend the city (816-33). Diana’s nymph Opis, watching from afar, sees her fall. As ordered by Diana, she shoots and kills Arruns, who is forgotten by his comrades as soon as he dies (836-66).
With Camilla gone, the Latins cannot resist the Trojan onslaught. They retreat to the city, but many are barred out by the defenders who have shut the gates—“a hideous slaughter / follows” (885-86). Camilla’s friend Acca updates Turnus on the situation, and he abandons his plan for a canyon ambush and seeks to engage the Trojans directly. The book ends with Turnus catching sight of Aeneas on the field of battle; the sun god Apollo causes the sun to set, forcing both sides to make camp for now (868-915).
Book 12 Summary
Turnus understands that these setbacks have severely impacted Latin morale, but he is, if anything, only more determined to succeed. Virgil compares him to a wounded lion in Carthage who snaps off the arrow in his bloody jaws (4-9). Turnus tells Latinus either he will kill Aeneas himself in hand-to-hand combat or Lavinia will marry Aeneas. Latinus, out of respect for his courage, reminds Turnus that he already rules his own realm of Daunus and that there are other women for him to marry. The king feels this awful war has come about because he went back on his word to marry Lavinia to Aeneas, and that the Italians will rightfully hold him responsible if Turnus is killed because “madness is warping [Latinus’s] reason” (37). He asks Turnus to take pity on his own father back home and stand down (18-45). Amata, the queen, also begs Turnus to stop the fight, as she claims their house’s power relies on him and she will die if Aeneas becomes her son-in-law. Lavinia only blushes, which makes Turnus love her more (64-70). He sends word to Aeneas to fight him one-on-one at dawn to decide the war (81-106).
Aeneas agrees to the terms. At daybreak the two armies meet. Seeing what is happening, Juno encourages Turnus’s sister Juturna to help her brother, as Juno can no longer protect him or Latium. The Fates have spoken (134-60). On the ground, the Trojans and Latins offer sacrifice. Pious as ever, Aeneas offers a prayer and reiterates the terms. If he loses, the Trojans will leave and never act aggressively towards the Italians again. If he wins, however, the Trojans will not subjugate the Italians—rather, they will live in harmony (175-94). Latinus ratifies the treaty (195-211).
In contrast to Aeneas, who is prepared for their fight, Turnus seems young and afraid (216-20). To protect him, Juturna takes the form of Camers, a distinguished old Rutulian man, and suggests to Turnus’s army that they could defeat the Trojans in battle. If they do not act now, she warns, the Trojans will certainly subjugate them (224-37). To top it all off, Juturna stages a false omen: A swan, snatched up by an eagle, is forced to drop its prey by the other angry swans. The Italians feel this presages a victory for them and break the truce (244-65).
In the ensuing battle, Aeneas tries to stand his troops down but is hit by an arrow from an unknown source and must withdraw (311-33). Turnus takes heart and goes on a bloody killing spree (324-82). Meanwhile, Aeneas encourages the doctor to cut the arrow out so he can return to battle, but the doctor’s efforts are futile (390-410). Venus, pitying her son, substitutes the doctor’s salve for her own magical concoction, which stops the bleeding and pushes the arrow out (411-24). Aeneas quickly suits up again and encourages Ascanius to learn and be inspired by his example (435-40).
Juturna hears Aeneas approaching and flees, as do many of Turnus’s Rutulians (446-51; 462-64). Aeneas is interested in just one target: Turnus. Still intent on protecting her brother, Juturna takes on the form of his charioteer and commandeers his chariot. She keeps Turnus just out of Aeneas’s reach while also making him look good in battle (470-86). Aeneas’s frustration, combined with a cheap javelin shot from Turnus’s ally Messapus, make Aeneas fighting mad (487-99). Echoing his earlier invocations to the Muses, Virgil now doubts any god could help him describes the carnage wrought by Aeneas and Turnus (500-02): “[…] Deep in their spirits,” he describes, “anger’s rip-tides seethe, hearts, void of all concept of yielding, / Burst” (526-28).
Venus inspires Aeneas to attack Latium itself. Unless they concede, he decides, he will burn the city to the ground (554-73). The Trojans begin to siege Latium, causing absolute chaos within. When Queen Amata believes Turnus has fallen, she hangs herself (595-603). Lavinia joins the household in mourning. Latinus is stunned (604-13).
Turnus hears the wailing from the city and wants to turn back, but Juturna, still in the guise of his charioteer, tries to convince him to stay. Turnus reveals that he has known who she is all along and wonders which god sent her to cause him such anguish. He had to watch a good friend, Murranus, die right in front of his eyes. His appearance of shirking battle with Aeneas disgraces him: “Is dying really so bad? Oh souls of the dead, I implore you, / […] Let me never disgrace my ancestral distinction” (646-49). An ally, Saces, informs him of Aeneas’s siege and Amata’s death. Turnus is stricken. He orders Juturna to stop delaying what must happen and accept fate. Eager to face Aeneas, he leaps from the chariot and runs back himself (676-83).
Where the battle is fiercest, Turnus loudly proclaims that he wants to fight Aeneas one-on-one, as was agreed before the treaty was broken: “Anything Fortune may have in her plans is for me” (694). Aeneas stops the siege, and he and Turnus begin their battle on the plain. In heaven Jupiter holds two scales and “places / In them the two men’s differing fates so that he can determine / Which one the struggle condemns, under whose weight the scales begin sinking” (725-27).
Turnus’s sword breaks on first impact with Aeneas; rumor has it that it was not his ancestral sword, but a lesser blade that could not stand up to weapons forged by the gods. Unarmed, Turnus flees, and Aeneas pursues him (742-55). Turnus begs his allies for his sword; Aeneas swears to kill anyone who provides it (759-61). Aeneas goes for his spear, which is lodged in the stump of a sacred olive tree, but Turnus appeals to the local god Faunus, who holds it fast. When Juturna arms her brother with the sword he forgot, Venus, enraged, rips Aeneas’s spear from the stump. Both men are armed again (774-90).
In heaven, Jupiter begs Juno to give up her anger and forbids her meddling any further (791-806). Juno sadly agrees, on one condition: that the Trojans give up their name and become Latins from now on, adopting Latin customs, dress, and language. The last remnants of Troy die today (808-28). Jupiter agrees. A new nation, he says, will rise from the union of these two cultures. He sends one of the Dirae, a fierce Underworld spirit, to take the form of a small monstruous bird which swoops down and harries Turnus. Juturna recognizes that the omen spells death for her brother and, mourning, withdraws (843-86).
Turnus tries to throw a great stone at Aeneas but misses. Virgil describes him seeing Aeneas approach, with no help in sight, as feeling like a nightmare in which one’s body cannot move (908-12). Aeneas’s javelin strikes Turnus’s thigh and drives him to the ground. On bended knee, Turnus accepts defeat. He does not beg for his life, but rather requests that Aeneas return him—or his corpse—to his beloved father (931-38). At first Aeneas is inclined to spare him, but then he sees the sword belt Turnus stripped from Pallas when he killed him. His anger overtakes him. In the name of Pallas, Aeneas kills Turnus, whose spirit flies to the Underworld.
Books 11-12 Analysis
The beginning of Book 11 again hammers home the awful cost of war. While the Trojans burn their dead on the beach, a highly literary image reminiscent of the grieving Greeks in the Iliad, Virgil roots the reader in grim reality as well. The Italians burn some of their dead, but others are thrown into a communal grave. Virgil might be thinking of the Roman civil wars, in which such unceremonious (and borderline impious) burials may have been necessary. Such tragic scenes have come about in no small part because Aeneas and the Trojans have invaded Italy, but Aeneas resists taking responsibility. As he did with Dido, Aeneas trots out the usual excuse: This is not my fault; the gods told me to do it (compare “Stop enraging me, and yourself, with all this complaining, / Going to Italy’s not my choice” [Book 4, lines 360-61] with “I wouldn’t be here if fate hadn’t granted me this place to settle. / I’m not at war with your people” [Book 11, lines 112-13]).
Whatever emotional distance Aeneas tries to maintain from his actions is put to the test by stress and loss. In these final books we see glimpses of lion-hearted heroism in Turnus—at one point, Virgil compares him to a lion in Carthage, explicitly connecting him to Dido (Book 12, lines 4-5)—but Aeneas, on the other hand, shows some of his worst qualities. Most strikingly of all, he chooses to siege Latium, literally reenacting the worst thing that ever happened to him: the sack of Troy. Virgil is not sparing with the details of the carnage that results.
Meanwhile, Jupiter and Juno reconcile on Olympus. Juno is finally convinced to submit to fate—that is, the word of Jupiter—and Virgil restores cosmic balance by brokering peace between husband and wife. Ironically, the restoration of order in heaven is contrasted with the war still raging on earth. The end of the conflict will be achieved not through lawful rationality, but by Aeneas’s regression into madness (or, arguably, his growth into the role that was fated for him). The poem culminates with his merciless killing of his vanquished enemy, and its last lines focus not on Aeneas, but on Turnus, much as Book 4 ended with the focus on his thematic mirror, Dido. Virgil’s attention, then, can be argued to elevate the victims of war rather than the victors. Aeneas, meanwhile, is seemingly returned to the same mental state as when we first met him, raging in the burning city of Troy.
In many ways, we end our reading of the Aeneid with more questions than answers. Tradition says that Virgil considered the work incomplete and, on his death bed, even asked that the manuscript be burned. Some lines are certainly unfinished, and it is not clear if this is the ending the poet intended (though scholars largely agree that this is likely the ending Virgil had in mind; other revisions would have probably occurred earlier in the text). The reader is left with a challenging poem that consistently defies clear-cut interpretation. Is Aeneas a hero or a failure? Is Rome a civilization founded by the glorious realization of the will of the gods, or by horrific acts of human violence, or both? And how does all this map onto how Virgil saw the politics of his own day? Was Aeneas’s war worth it? Was Augustus’s? These questions are debatable but ultimately unanswerable.
