Pallas was the only son of King Evander of Pallanteum. Evander entrusted his son to Aeneas's care for the war against Turnus, and his grief-stricken lament over Pallas's body is one of the Aeneid's most moving passages.
In Aeneid Book 8, Evander entrusted Pallas to Aeneas as both warrior and surrogate son. Aeneas mentored the youth through the war in Latium, and Pallas's death at Turnus's hands drove Aeneas to his climactic act of vengeance.
Mezentius slew Pallas son of Evander in the war over Latium, a killing that predates Virgil's reshaping of the tradition.
⚠ Cato's Origines attributes the killing of Pallas to Mezentius; Virgil's Aeneid reassigns it to Turnus.
Turnus killed the young warrior Pallas in single combat and stripped his ornate sword belt as a trophy. The sight of that belt on Turnus later drove Aeneas to kill him in their final duel.
⚠ Pre-Virgilian tradition in Cato's Origines attributes this killing to Mezentius rather than Turnus.
Before facing Turnus in single combat, Pallas prayed to Hercules, who had once been Evander's guest at Pallanteum. Hercules wept at the boy's fate, but Jupiter forbade his intervention, declaring that each mortal's day is fixed.
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