Pallas's funeral; Camilla dies

Dawn after the long fight. Aeneas dedicates the spoils of the dead Mezentius to Mars and prepares Pallas's body for the journey home. He chooses a thousand elders to escort it. The boy is laid on a bier of woven branches, carried out through the camp gates with horses following — the boy's own horse Aethon weeping, says Virgil. The procession reaches Pallanteum. Evander is waiting at the gates. He throws himself on his son's body. He cannot hold himself up. He sends the procession back with a single message to Aeneas: I am alive only to see you take vengeance for him.

A delegation arrives from the Latin king to ask for a truce to bury the dead of both sides. Aeneas grants it gladly — he was never at war with the Latins, only with Turnus. The Latin council meets while the smoke is still rising. Most want peace. Latinus urges it. Drances, an older noble who hates Turnus personally, makes a long speech against him. Turnus answers with rage and contempt. Word arrives mid-debate that the Trojans are moving on the city; the council breaks up. Turnus sets an ambush in a narrow pass and sends the Italian cavalry to face the Trojans in the open ground in front of the walls.

The cavalry battle that follows takes most of the book. Camilla is the center of it — in light armor, bare-shouldered like Diana her patron, riding without restraint. She kills warrior after warrior, her band of Volscian women behind her. Then Camilla, as great fighters do in the poem, is undone by her own success. She is fixated on chasing down a particular Trojan, gold-armored Chloreus, for his armor. She does not see Arruns, an Etruscan stalking her from cover, who has prayed to Apollo for the chance. He throws a single javelin from concealment. It hits her in the breast. She dies in the arms of her servant Acca with a last message for Turnus to come to the city. Apollo grants Arruns the kill but denies him the safe return; Diana's nymph Opis shoots him with an arrow.