Nisus and Euryalus

Nisus and Euryalus are among the refugees who in the aftermath of the Trojan War flee under the leadership of Aeneas, the highest-ranking Trojan to survive. Nisus was the son of Hyrtacus,Virgil, Aeneid 9.175, 234, 319 & 406 and was known for his hunting. The family cultivated the huntress-goddess who inhabited Mount Ida.Virgil, Aeneid 9.406–408 Euryalus, who was younger, has spent his entire life in a state of war and displacement.Mark Petrini, The Child and the Hero: Coming of Age in Catullus and Vergil (University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 21–22. He was trained as a fighter by his battle-hardened father, Opheltes,bellis adsuetus, Aeneid 9.201 of whom he speaks with pride. Opheltes seems to have died at Troy.

After their wanderings around the Mediterranean, the Trojans are fated to land on the shores of Italy. Some members of their party, especially the matres ("mothers"), are settled at Sicily before the Italian war, but the mother of Euryalus refused to be parted from her son and continued on.Virgil, Aeneid 9.284–286; Petrini, The Child and the Hero, p. 22.

Although Nisus and Euryalus are inseparable as a pair in the narrative, each is given a distinct characterization. Nisus is the elder, more experienced man. He is swift and accurate (acerrimus) in the use of projectile weapons, the javelin (iaculum) and arrows.

Euryalus is still young, with the face of a boy (puer) who hasn't started shaving, just old enough to bear arms. He was more beautiful (pulchrior) than any other of Aeneas's men at arms. Euryalus maintains a loving relationship with his mother. He refuses to see her before he leaves on his mission, because he cannot bear her inevitable tears, and yet his first concern amid promises of rich rewards is that she be cared for if he fails to return.Petrini, The Child and the Hero, p. 22.

The foray by Nisus and Euryalus is a well-developed, self-contained episodePetrini, The Child and the Hero, p. 21. that occurs in the "Iliadic" half of the Aeneid, set during the war through which the displaced Trojans established themselves among the inhabitants of central Italy. Virgil introduces the characters anew, but they have already appeared in Book 5,The race is narrated at Aeneid 5.286ff. at the funeral games held for Aeneas's father, Anchises, during the "Odyssean" first half of the epic.Although the games are an episode in the wanderings, they recall the funeral games for Patroclus in Iliad 23; Lee Fratantuono, Madness Unchained: A Reading of Virgil's Aeneid (Lexington Books, 2007), p. 131. The games demonstrate behaviors that in the war to come will result in victory or defeat; in particular, the footrace in which Nisus and Euryalus compete prefigures their disastrous mission.W.S. Anderson, The Art of the Aeneid (Bolchazy-Carducci, 2005, originally published 1969), p. 60.

The five runners are, in the order in which they would have finished, Nisus, Salius, Euryalus, Elymus, and Diores. Nisus, however, slips in the blood from the cattle sacrificed during the religious rituals that preceded the race. Recognizing that he can't recover his lead, he trips Salius to hand the victory to Euryalus. Nisus shows himself willing to sacrifice his own honor in order to help Euryalus, but the gesture demonstrates not only his loyalty but a willingness to cheat. Salius objects to the foul, and is given a consolation prize. Nisus receives compensation for his bad luck, and Euryalus gets the winner's prize. The incident is treated as comic, but becomes ominous in light of what happens to the pair later.Anderson, The Art of the Aeneid, p. 60.

Although the night raid of Nisus and Euryalus has a discrete narrative unity, it is closely related to major themes of the epic, such as the transition from boyhood to manhood, also present in the characters of Ascanius, Pallas, and Lausus,Petrini, The Child and the Hero, p. 21. and the waste of young lives in war. Nisus and Euryalus's killing spree through the camp of the Rutuli is one of Virgil's most brutal descriptions of combat (especially when Nisus beheads the military leader Remus with his warriors Lamyrus, Lamus and Serranus). The poetry of Euryalus's death – "as when a richly hued flower is cut down by the plough and withers as it dies, or when the rains beat down the poppy's head, weighed down on slack neck" – is a replay of the death of Gorgythion in the Iliad.

{{Reflist}}

• Dictionary of Classical Mythology. London: Penguin, 1990. {{ISBN|978-0-14-051235-9}}.
• Guy-Bray, Stephen. "Cowley's Latin Lovers: Nisus and Euryalus in the Davideis." Classical and Modern Literature: A Quarterly 21.1 (2001): 25–42.
• MacMullen, Ramsay. "Roman Attitudes to Greek Love." Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte. 31.4 (1982): 484–502.
• Makowski, John F. "Nisus and Euryalus: A Platonic Relationship." The Classical Journal 85.1 (1989): 1–15.
• Publius Vergilius Maro, Aeneid. Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910. [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0054%3Abook%3D1%3Acard%3D1 Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.]
• Publius Vergilius Maro, Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics. J. B. Greenough. Boston. Ginn & Co. 1900. [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0055 Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library].
• Virgil, Aeneid, V.294; IX.176-445.

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Category:Trojans

Category:Characters in the Aeneid

Category:Characters in Roman mythology

Category:LGBTQ themes in Greek mythology

Category:Mythological duos

Category:Same-sex couples