Practice Exam Set: Aeneid X Lines 791–810

Lausus does not think. He throws himself between his wounded father and Aeneas's descending sword, taking the blow on his own shield while Mezentius retreats. His companions surge forward — missiles, javelins, a wall of noise — to cover both of them. Aeneas is driven back by sheer volume of weapons, holding his ground beneath the storm. Virgil gives him a simile: a traveller sheltering under a river-bank or a rocky arch while hailstorms hammer the open fields, waiting for the weather to pass so he can continue his day.

The simile is precise in its implications. Aeneas is not defeated. He is waiting. And while he waits, he addresses Lausus directly through the noise and the weapons: quo moriture ruis maioraque viribus audes? fallit te incautum pietas tua — where are you rushing, to your death? Your devotion to your father is deceiving you. The warning is extraordinary. Aeneas knows what is coming — he has already seen the end of this. He tells Lausus the truth, clearly, before it happens.

Lausus does not stop. He cannot. The pietas that drives him — the same quality that defines Aeneas himself — is precisely what makes him incapable of retreating. Virgil has constructed the trap with devastating care: the son's greatest virtue is what kills him.