From Amor to Mors

Abstract The final book of the Aeneid begins with a sequential dialogic exchange between Turnus, Latinus, Amata, and Lavinia that harks back to their programmatic introductions in Aeneid 7. In the martial escalation that follows the dialogic exchange, Vergil consigns Amata and Turnus to mors with marked funerary elegiac gestures, thereby fulfilling the teleogical progression established in Aeneid 7. This chapter disentangles the complicated nexus of interwoven elegiac material, both amatory and sepulchral, that underscores the problematic role of amor, which ignites and fuels lethal violence throughout the second half of Vergil’s epic. Turnus may pay lip service to political and martial ideals in his desire for single combat with Aeneas, but his ferocious enmity stems from amor; he cannot bear for Lavinia to be betrothed to his Trojan rival. The urgent speeches of Latinus and Amata call to mind the queen’s unseemly amor for Turnus, which leads to her death. Vivid erotic imagery in the description of Lavinia, blushing hotly in response to her mother’s fervent speech, suggests that amor lurks within her silent, dutiful persona. The intergeneric and allusive texture of Aeneid 12 make it the conceptual capstone of the established thematic trajectory, which brutally confirms the perilous consequences of amor for the central Italian characters of the maius opus.