Camilla- Roman HeroHero"Handmaid of Diana"

The River Crossing

Virgil tells the whole story in the Aeneid's eleventh book. Camilla's father Metabus was king of the Volscian city of Privernum until his own people drove him out for tyranny. He fled into the wilderness with his infant daughter. When he reached the Amasenus in flood, pursuers closing behind him, he bound the baby to a spear shaft, vowed her to Diana, and hurled the weapon across the river. The spear stuck in the far bank. Metabus swam across and found his daughter alive.

Diana held him to the vow. Metabus raised Camilla in the mountains, fed her mare's milk, and put a javelin in her hand as soon as she could grip one. She grew up barefoot in the forests, a huntress sworn to virginity. Virgil says she could run across a field of standing grain without bending the stalks, or skim the surface of the sea without wetting her feet.

Chloreus's Armor

When the Italians rallied against Aeneas, Camilla brought her Volscian cavalry to Turnus's coalition. While Turnus set an ambush in a mountain pass, Camilla led the horsemen against the Trojan forces on the plain. She swept through their ranks with javelin and battle-axe, killing one rider after another.

Then she saw Chloreus. He was a Trojan priest riding in golden and purple armor, his weapons inlaid, his horse caparisoned in bronze scales. Camilla chased him across the battlefield. Whether she wanted the spoils for Diana's shrine or simply could not look away, Virgil does not say. While she pursued Chloreus, the Etruscan Arruns crept into javelin range. He had been stalking her, waiting for exactly this kind of opening. His throw caught her beneath the exposed breast.

Camilla pulled the shaft from her body. The iron point stayed lodged between her ribs. She sent her companion Acca to Turnus with a last message: she was falling, and he must take command. Then she died.

Opis

Diana had been watching from above. Before the battle began, she had given her nymph Opis sacred arrows and a single instruction: if Camilla fell, kill the man who did it. When Arruns turned from Camilla's body and tried to slip away through the chaos, Opis drew the bowstring. The arrow found him. He died in the dust without anyone noticing, and his companions left his body where it lay.