Pallas Represent Of Violence According To Aeneid

According to Aeneid Book 10, lines 595-603, the engravings on Pallas’ belt is a literal and

visual representation of the violent and gory murder of Aegyptus’ fifty sons by the hand of

Danaus’ daughters on their wedding night (Aeneid 10.595-603). The reason behind why Pallas

chose to wear a belt with those designs on it is unknown because the answer to that is not

mentioned in the text. However, if I didn’t know the story behind the belt and had to make one

reasonable guess as to why Pallas would wear it, I would say that it probably represented the

amount of violence and prevalent battles that he was fighting in at that time and his status as a

fierce, determined, and aggressive warrior (Aeneid 10.445-495). However, the belt
I made that assumption based on the fact that when people

look at frightening things, feelings of fear and intimidation can result. This may sound unusual

and unrelated, but Pallas having those graphic and violent engravings on his belt actually

reminds me of Entellus back in Book 5, because I remember hearing during one of our lectures

on that book that Entellus wanted to wear his huge, intimidating gloves in his fight with Dares

because he probably wanted to show Dares how tough he was (Aeneid 5.450). Based on both

situations, I think it’s possible that during Virgil’s time, some warriors of both combat sports and

actual battles liked to show off what they’ve got through their equipment because it could easily

instill reverence, awe, and fear into onlookers and enemies or opponents, and cause them to have

a certain respect for that warrior’s credentials.

The Augustan values in Aeneid that this belt and the situation of Aeneas vs
Nobody would ever want to feel responsible for someone’s death,

especially the death of a child, and even Evander wished that his son didn’t have to die

before him (Aeneid 11.185). I know that Aeneas found taking care of Pallas a huge

responsibility, especially because of how distressed Evander was while and after Pallas was

turned over to him (Aeneid, 8.655-665). After Aeneas witnessed that, he probably thought:

“I’m making a very important commitment here and must not let harm come to him.” I think

that a lot of Aeneas’ grief stemmed from the fact that he couldn’t have done anything to prevent

the tragedy of Pallas from taking place, and was reminded of that grief when he noticed the

belt.

Of course, we must not forget that Juno played a role in leading Aeneas to kill Turnus by

sending down one of her furies which crippled Turnus and gave Aeneas the upper hand

(Aeneid, 12.1020-1045). I also don’t think that Aeneas seeing the belt of Pallas was