Practice Exam Set: Aeneid X Lines 883–908

The final exchange opens with Aeneas's prayer to his father's shade and to Apollo — then a charge. Mezentius answers with javelins, three great throws in wide arcs around the standing Aeneas, each one caught and held by the golden shield. The circling — ter circum astantem laevos equitavit in orbis, three times around — is not weakness. It is a man spending everything he has, knowing it will not be enough, spending it anyway. When the javelins are gone, Aeneas drives his spear into the horse's head.

Rhaebe falls. Mezentius is pinned beneath him. Aeneas stands over him with his sword drawn. What Mezentius says next is what makes Book X end the way it does. He asks for nothing for himself. He does not beg for mercy, does not offer ransom, does not invoke his ancestry or his gods. He asks only that his body be allowed to lie beside his son: corpus humo patiare tegi — allow my body to be covered with earth. He knows the hatred of his own people surrounds him. He asks Aeneas to protect him from that. One grave. With Lausus.

Iuguloque haud inscius accipit ensem — knowingly, he receives the sword in his throat. The last word of Book X belongs to a man who scorned the gods, committed unspeakable crimes, and in the end wanted only to be buried with his son. Virgil grants it to him without judgment.