99 New England Classical Journal 39.2 (2012) 99-112 The Death of Almo in Virgil’s Latin War Timothy Joseph College of the Holy Cross I n Aeneid 7, the Trojan leader has at last arrived in Latium, and Latinus has pledged his daughter Lavinia to the hero. Juno of course has other plans. She beckons the fury Allecto, who stirs up rage in Latinus’ wife Amata, in Turnus, Lavinia’s Rutulian suitor, and in the hunting dogs of Ascanius. After Ascanius’ arrow strikes the stag housed by the royal shepherd Tyrrhus (7.496–502), the Latin rustics respond with anger, and dqvj ukfgu nkpg wr hqt yct *90727Ï52+0 Xktikn pgzv fguetkdgu vjg Þtuv jwocp fatality of the Latin War, that of Tyrrhus’ son, Almo (7.531–34): hic iuuenis primam ante aciem stridente sagitta, natorum Tyrrhi fuerat qui maximus, Almo, sternitur; haesit enim sub gutture uulnus et udae (533) uocis iter tenuemque inclusit sanguine uitam. At this point a young man at the front of the battle line by a whistling arrow—one who had been the eldest of the sons of Tyrrhus, Almo—is laid low. The wound, indeed, stuck down in his throat, and it closed with blood the pathway for his watery voice and his delicate life. 1 In this essay I discuss how key themes of Aeneid 7–12, and of the poem as a whole, are highlighted in the above four verses. 2 I also consider the ways This essay is a revised version of a paper delivered at the 106 th Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of New England, at St. Sebastian’s School in Needham, Massachusetts, on March 16, 2012. I thank Ellen Perry, Aaron Seider, Richard Thomas, the NECJ referee, and NECJ editor Nina Coppolino for many helpful comments. I am also grateful to John D. B. Hamilton for his insights on Homer, in particular on the death of Simoeisius, and to Ann Suter on the practice of ritual bathing in the ancient world. 1 The text of Virgil is that of Mynors (1969). Translations are my own, unless noted otherwise. 2 The fullest modern treatments of Almo’s death-scene are by Fordyce (1977) ad loc., Scarsi (1984), Heuzé (1985) 92, Horsfall (2000) ad loc., and Jones (2005) 33–34. Virgil’s fourth-century commentator Servius remarked (ad 7.531) on the many ways in which the poet evokes pity in Almo’s death-scene: mouet . . . miserationem ab aetate cum dicit “iuuenis,” a uirtute dicendo “primam ante aciem”; mouet a dignitate, ut “natorum Tyrrhi fuerat qui maximus Almo”; a uulneris etiam crudelitate cum dixit “haesit sub gutture uulnus.” “[Virgil] stirs up pity from [Almo’s] age when he says ‘young man’; from his courage by saying ‘at the front of the battle line’; from his grandeur when he says ‘who had been the oldest of the sons of Tyrrhus, Almo’; and also from the cruelty of the wound when he says ‘the wound stuck down in his throat.’”