Practice Exam Set: Aeneid X Lines 490–509

Turnus stands over the body. He sends a message to Evander with the corpse: qualem meruit, Pallanta remitto — I return Pallas as he deserved. The words are a weapon aimed at a father who is not present. Then he strips the baldric — the great golden belt depicting the Danaids murdering their bridegrooms on their wedding night, an image of beautiful, catastrophic slaughter — and buckles it across his own chest.

At this point the narrator steps in directly, one of the very few moments in the Aeneid where Virgil speaks in his own voice to address the reader: nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurae et servare modum rebus sublata secundis — the human mind, ignorant of its fate and its future, cannot keep its measure when raised up by success. Turnus will one day wish, at a great price, that he had left Pallas and the baldric untouched. That day is the final scene of the entire poem. Aeneas, standing over the dying Turnus in Book 12, sees the baldric, remembers Pallas, and drives the sword home.

The baldric is the hinge on which the Aeneid turns. Everything that happens after this moment — every battle, every negotiation, every near-peace — moves toward the consequence of this single act of triumphant stripping.