Jupiter, summoning the gods, instructs them about the policy they are to follow in dealing with the humans’s on-going war. Overruling both Venus and Juno, who argue in favor of the Trojans and the Latins, respectively, he declares that there is to be no further divine intervention. The war’s outcome must be left to fate.
Meanwhile, the fighting outside the Trojans’s camp grows more furious, and there are many casualties on both sides. With a fleet of thirty ships filled with Etruscan warriors and Evander’s forces, Aeneas begins the journey from Agylla to where the battle is being fought. During the night, before the fleet finally lands near the battle scene, the sea nymphs who were previously Aeneas’s ships approach the fleet. Their leader, Cymodocea, tells Aeneas about the siege of his troops that is now taking place.
When the Trojans see Aeneas arrive in his magnificent armor, they take heart. Turnus and the other enemy leaders do not panic, however, but launch an attack on Aeneas and his forces almost as soon as they land. A great slaughter follows, and Aeneas does his share of the killing. Pallas, proving his own courage, rallies his men when their spirits wane. He leads them in attacking the forces of Lausus, Mezentius’s son, whom he engages in a battle of equals: Both are young, brave, and handsome. Also, both are fated to die: first, Pallas at the hands of Turnus, who spears him and takes his richly illustrated swordbelt as a trophy; and then Lausus, whom Aeneas will slay. Foreseeing these deaths, Hercules grieves, but Jupiter consoles him by stating that all men must die, but in dying they can win the fame that comes from performing valorous deeds.
Enraged by the news of Pallas’s death, Aeneas slashes and kills his way through the enemy ranks in search of Turnus. Jupiter, waiving his rule against intervention, allows Juno to save Turnus by creating a shadow-Aeneas as a diversion. Turnus mistakes the fake Aeneas for the real man and pursues him on board a ship, which Juno then floats off to sea, preventing the Rutulian prince from risking his life in combat against his Trojan counterpart.
As Turnus rages with frustration aboard the ship, Aeneas, after a vain search for him, vents his bloodlust on the Etruscans’s former king, Mezentius, whom he wounds in the groin. Unable to continue fighting, Mezentius drags himself to safety while Lausus takes up the fight. Aeneas warns Lausus not to fight him, but when Lausus scoffs at this advice, Aeneas effortlessly kills him, only to be moved to pity by Lausus’s death and the young man’s selfless love for his father.
Mezentius, who receives Lausus’s body from his son’s comrades, is overcome by grief and remorse. Although he is gravely wounded and knows that he will probably be slain, he mounts his horse and rides off to fight Aeneas. He is determined to avenge Lausus’s death, which has made his own life meaningless, and to atone for his evil deeds. Mezentius fights bravely, but Aeneas finally kills him after felling his horse, which pins him to the ground. Before receiving the fatal stroke, Mezentius begs Aeneas to see that his body is buried in the same grave as his son’s.
