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THE A EN El D
But there are very strong qualifications which must immediately be made.
Quite apart from the fact that Turnus for all his violence is often presented
sympathetically there are three places in particular in this part of the poem where
Virgil goes out of his way to emphasize Aeneas' own lapses into the violence
which is a characteristic of his opponent. The first of these is after the death of
Pallas (10.5106°.), where Aeneas' behaviour is wild and savage in the extreme,
including the capture of eight of the enemy for human sacrifice at Pallas' tomb
(a horrible piece of barbarism which is fulfilled at 11.8iff.). The second is when
Aeneas is wounded (12.44iff.), and his fierce deeds in battle are in every way
similar to those of Turnus. The third, and perhaps the most significant of all, is
at the very end of the poem. This is a passage on which we must pause.
During the single combat between Aeneas and Turnus (i2.697ff.) we have
been constantly reminded of the duel between Achilles and Hector in Iliad 22.
Many of the famous passages have been recalled (//. 22.304—5 ~ Aen. 12.645—9;
//. 22.2O9ff. ~ Aen. 12.7256°.; //. 22.158ff. ~ Aen. 12.7636°.; //. 22.1996°. ~ Aen.
12.9086°.) and we are aware that the second Achilles (Turnus, cf. 6.89) is fighting
now against the second Hector (Aeneas), but that the outcome will be the
opposite from Homer's story. We recall that Aeneas is fighting to avenge
Pallas as Achilles was fighting to avenge Patroclus, but we know that the
character of Aeneas is different, more civilized, more just than that of Achilles.
Consequently we are confident that in the moment of victory he will show
mercy; he will not display the arrogant joy of Achilles (//. 22.3446°.); he will
surely spare the conquered.
This parallelism •with Homer makes it all the more shattering when Aeneas
does not in fact spare his victim, but rejects his pleas precisely as Achilles had
rejected Hector's. After a thousand years it is exactly the same in the end; the
victor, in his wild anger (is it' righteous' anger?), takes vengeance by killing his
victim. Much has been written on these final scenes, sometimes in defence of
Aeneas (he can do no other than remove from the scene a barbarous opponent
whose way of life cannot be accepted in the new order of things), sometimes
against him (he yields to wild fury, he gives in to the very kind of behaviour
which throughout the poem he has been combating in himself and others). But
two things are evident from Virgil's text: the first is that there is no other
motive for Aeneas' action than the desire to exact vengeance (940-1,945, 948-9)
even although Turnus has been brought low and is no longer one of the proud
(930). We are perhaps invited to think of Augustus' temple to Mars Vltor and
of his vengeance on the assassins of Julius Caesar. The second is that this action
is taken by the hero of the poem with whose behaviour and destiny all Romans
are closely identified: it is certainly not the case that the hero has turned villain
at the last (as some recent writers 1 have argued), but rather that in an imperfect
1 For example Putnam (1965) chapter 4.
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