Practice Exam Set: Aeneid X Lines 439–456

Turnus cuts through the battle lines and claims Pallas for himself alone: solus ego in Pallanta feror, soli mihi Pallas debetur. He orders his own allies to stand back. Then he adds something that goes beyond battlefield pride — he wishes Pallas's father Evander were here to watch. It is a detail Virgil inserts without comment, and it does not need one. The desire for a father to witness his son's death is cruelty of a specific, deliberate kind, and it colours everything Turnus does in this episode.

Pallas watches the giant approach. He assesses the distance between them — between his own youth and Turnus's size and reputation — and he does not flinch. His response is not bravado but something quieter and more considered: either he will take the finest of spoils from Turnus's body, or he will die as a warrior should. His father, he says, would accept either outcome. Sorti pater aequus utrique est. Then he walks out to meet him across the open ground.

The blood of the Arcadian soldiers runs cold. Virgil notes it in a single phrase — frigidus Arcadibus coit in praecordia sanguis — and moves on. The scene is already decided. The reader knows it. Only Pallas does not.