Lavinia

Content Warning: This section discusses death by suicide.

During their marriage, Aeneas tells Lavinia about the worst moment in the war: when he arrived back at the Trojan camp, with Greek and Etruscan allies from King Evander, to find all the ships burned. Aeneas believed that all his men were dead but was relieved to find many hiding, ready for battle. Lavinia reflects that since Aeneas’s death, she has continued to weave the story of her own life.

The text returns to the war against the Trojans and their new allies. Turnus is fearless. Seeing Pallas, Evander’s son, fighting for Aeneas, Turnus kills him and takes Pallas’s belt as a trophy. Aeneas pursues Turnus in an attempt to avenge Pallas’s death, but Turnus disappears from the battlefield. Aeneas kills many others while hunting for him. Latinus requests a truce with the Trojans so that all the dead can be burned or buried. Aeneas wishes that they could call a lasting truce and questions why they’re at war in the first place. He challenges Turnus to single combat to settle their dispute so that no one else dies.

Lavinia and her people tend to the wounded. Lavinia, Amata, and Turnus’s sister Juturna attend a meeting between Latinus and his counselors.