Eager to get the war under way, Juno sends Iris, a lesser goddess, to inform Turnus that he must take advantage of the absence of Aeneas, who has gone to win the support of Evander and the Etruscans, by attacking the Trojans now. Immediately responsive, the Rutulian warrior marches against his enemy. Rather than risk combat in the open, the Trojans withdraw into their camp to guard the ramparts, as Aeneas advised them to do before he left for Pallanteum.
Unable to reach the protected Trojans, Turnus decides to burn their ships. However, before the ships can be set ablaze, Jupiter, in answer to a plea from his mother, changes them all into sea nymphs, who swim away unharmed. In acting as he does, Jupiter fulfills a promise he made to his mother years before, when Aeneas built the ships from pine trees taken from her grove on Mount Ida, near Troy, where the Trojans found refuge after their defeat.
Turnus is not disturbed by the fleet's transformation. In fact, he regards the ships's disappearance as favorable: The Trojans now have no means of escape. Because night is coming, he delays another attack until the next day and orders his forces to rest until then.
In the Trojans's camp, the inseparable companions, Nisus and Euryalus, who appeared in Book V as contestants in the foot race, volunteer and obtain permission to go to Aeneas in Pallanteum in order to inform him of the siege; hoping together to perform a glorious act of bravery, they are fearless. They go with the approval of their elders and Ascanius, who promises them that both he and his father will richly reward them.
