Pallas- Roman HeroHero"Prince of Pallanteum"

Prince of Pallanteum

Pallas was the only son of Evander, the Arcadian king who had built a settlement called Pallanteum on the future site of Rome's Palatine Hill. When Aeneas arrived seeking allies against Turnus, Evander was too old to fight. He gave Aeneas what he valued more than his own life: his son, with a contingent of Arcadian cavalry. In the Aeneid, Evander clasps the boy and will not let go. He prays aloud to the gods that if they mean to take Pallas, they take him first. Then he collapses, and his attendants carry him inside.

Death at Turnus's Hands

Pallas found Turnus on the battlefield and challenged him. He hurled his spear. It grazed Turnus but did not wound him. Turnus threw back, and his spear punched through Pallas's shield and corselet and into his chest. Pallas pulled the spear from his own body and fell. Turnus stood over him and stripped the sword belt from the corpse. The belt was worked with gold: it depicted the fifty sons of Aegyptus murdered by the Danaids on their wedding night. Turnus buckled it across his own shoulder and wore it.

The Sword Belt

In the Aeneid's final lines, Aeneas stands over Turnus with his sword raised. Turnus begs for his life. Aeneas hesitates. Then he sees the belt. Pallas's belt, on Turnus's shoulder. He drives the blade in, saying: "Pallas strikes this blow. Pallas makes you pay with this, your guilty blood." The poem ends there, with the sword still in the body.

The Older Tradition

Cato's Origines, now surviving only in fragments, attributes Pallas's death not to Turnus but to Mezentius, the Etruscan tyrant of Caere. Virgil gave the killing to Turnus instead, and made it the hinge on which the entire epic turns.