Camilla

The badass warrior maiden of the Volcians, Camilla appears in book 11 of Virgil’s Aeneid. Even though she is incredibly powerful and a terrifying figure on the battle field, we only see Camilla from lines 498 to line 840 … whereupon the last mention of her is her dying breath. Literally, the final reference to this fantastic warrior is directly about her breath, as Virgil writes “her life left her with a groan” (line 832).

When Camilla appears to fight for the Latins against the Trojan invasion, we first see her approach Turnus (the leader) to discuss strategy. One of the most interesting notes Virgil makes about Camilla comes now, where he says “she leapt down from her horse, and all her squadron followed her example, dismounting in one flowing movement” (line 500). This perfectly shows how much authority and respect Camilla had, given her army literally just copy every move she makes. The woman doesn’t even need to yell orders, her army trust her SO MUCH that they simply mimic her. A woman! Fabulous. When she gets off her horse, Camilla walks towards Turnus to offer to go into battle first, suggesting that her army can be used to learn how the Trojans fight before Turnus rides into the thick of it. As we would expect, Turnus declines Camilla’s courageous offer, but as he does so he says “come share with me in the heat of battle” (line 511), which just shows how there was no one in this scene looking down on Camilla for being a woman. In fact, each character had made respect for her as a warrior, before noting that she’s a woman … well, everyone apart from Virgil, but we’ll get there.

As the pair are riding off into battle, the narrative switches suddenly to give us a view of Diana, goddess of the hunt & moon, who is talking to Opis. Diana tells the reader — and Opis, of course — that Camilla is one of her favourite mortals, however our Warrior Maiden is fated to die in this scene (line 540). Remember, we only JUST met her not more than fifty lines prior to this! Diana gives us Camilla’s entire life story in order to explain why she has to die here, including how Camilla’s dad was actually exiled, and the name “Camilla” comes from her mother’s name, Casmilla. We hear of how Camilla’s father must flee where he’s from, running away amidst flying arrows and charging military men, when he gets to a river. Obviously, Papa Warrior Maiden realised he has to get his baby Camilla to safety, but he can’t cross this river holding her because that’s just crazy talk and will never work. Camilla’s dad therefore picks up a spear someone threw at him not more than ten seconds ago, yells to the sky for Diana to ensure his daughter’s safety, ties the baby Camilla to the middle of the spear in a cloth and then chucks the thing across the river (line 550). With the guide of Diana, Camilla survives the flight as her father swims across the river, and then the pair live in the mountains together. It’s very Mowgli-esque, with Camilla being described as completely at one with nature — so much so that she wears a “tiger skin” instead of a cloak to keep her warm (line 578).

As Diana tells the story, we hear that many men and women who helped raise Camilla actually wished to see her married. Given the importance of family structure within ancient society, these themes are shown in Papa Warrior Maiden’s attempts to convince his daughter to live a normal life in Etruria. As you can guess though, Camilla ignores literally everyone and instead only “cared for Diana” to honour how the goddess had once saved her life (line 583). Rounding off the end of this weird interjection, Diana reiterates that Camilla’s fate is to die here. The goddess instructs Opis to watch the battle closely however, as whoever kills Camilla will “pay to [Diana] an equal penalty in blood” (line 593) — DUN, DUN, DUUUUUN!

Thankfully now Virgil cuts back to the battle scene, just as mayhem breaks out. Our Warrior Maiden is in the thick of it, Virgil writing that she’s “exulting in it” (line 648). Camilla is described in almost an identical manner to the Amazons as she fights, having not one, but two weapons: the first being a double headed axe, and the second being the golden bow and arrows of Diana (line 652). To be totally honest here, Virgil isn’t even trying to hide that Camilla is the latin equivalent of the Amazons — he literally writes “Amazon Camilla” in line 649 and then later on says “they were like the Amazons of Thrace” in line 659. To accentuate how Amazonian-like Camilla is in battle, Virgil even gives us a list of a bunch of men she kills right off the bat from like 664 through to line 689. It’s in this section that we get to see just how incredible she is as a warrior, with Virgil writing “Every dart that flew from her hand, a Trojan fell” (line 677/8). What. A. Beast.

As Camilla tears up every single man that comes in her way, Jupiter sees this and is not thrilled. As the king of the gods, Jupiter gets involved in the action to ensure the battle plays out the way fate has intended, and so therefore puts immense anger into a couple of the Trojan guys to boost their courage in fighting against Camilla (line 727). Just the sheer fact that the King of the Gods gets involved is so utterly important to note, mainly because this NEVER happens. We often have gods intervene in war, however Jupiter is not one of them! This moment is interesting for us modern readers, because it implies that those reading this moment would have naturally been drawn to Camilla’s story, rooting for the Warrior Maiden to win the battle. However, she’s fighting for the wrong side — we’re supposed to be cheering for the Trojans to win. Jupiter’s involvement suggests that ALL OF US are with Camilla, therefore making her inevitable death a divine deed, rather than her just randomly being useless and being killed by a loser … well she does get killed by a loser, but the knowledge that it wasn’t entirely her makes this fact a little more palatable.

The loser to kill Camilla is this completely irrelevant guy called Arruns. You don’t even have to remember his name honestly, considering he never pops up again — never ever. Arruns is one of the men that Jupiter inspires with courage and anger, and he goes about killing Camilla in a very sneaky way. As Arruns sets out on his mission to take down the Warrior Maiden single-handedly killing all the Trojans, he notices Camilla get distracted by this other guy called Chloreus. Arruns hangs back to assess the situation and plan his attack around line 780, and it’s here that we see Camilla basically gets distracted by this guy because of all the gold he’s wearing? It’s completely bizarre and does not match her character whatsoever, considering she’s a warrior and not a magpie (someone let Virgil know — feel like this is important? Maybe just us?). What makes this moment worse is Virgil’s inclusion of line 782 where he says Camilla was “burning with all a woman’s passion for spoil” … EXCUSE ME!? You’re telling us that this woman who has been training her WHOLE LIFE for battle and has literally sworn a life of chastity so she’s never distracted by a man coming in her way — THAT WOMAN all of a sudden has some natural weakness towards shiny things because it’s part of her DNA as a lady?? Like … WHAT? And it’s this womanly weakness of hers that causes Camilla to run after Chloreus to seize his golden armour from his body, leaving Arruns wide open to attack her from behind. To ensure the deed is carried out, Arruns prays to Apollo to aid in guiding his spear into Camilla’s side, The God of Archery hears this loser’s prayer and then guides the thing right through Camilla’s breast (line 802). After this Arruns then runs off in fear, and we never hear of him again.

From lines 802-840, Camilla’s death is dragged out to one of the most overly dramatic scenes to have ever been written for such a random character. Just consider again that Camilla only popped up in line 498, and her final 38 lines in her 342 line narrative is literally just her dying. This little episode begins with Camilla attempting to pull the spear out of her side, but it’s stuck pretty deep (line 817). Realising that she’s now going to die, our Warrior Maiden calls over some random woman called Acca to give one of the strangest, most unimportant speeches of all time. To summarise it for you, she basically just says she’s dying in a super dramatic way … over and over again. Now, despite this moment being completely ludicrous given Camilla’s character arc and just the fact she’s the smallest role to have every existed in any body of writing, the speech she gives Acca does directly parallel the one given by Dido to Anna in book 4 of Virgil’s Aeneid. So yes, it’s important in regards to structure … but just utterly strange of Virgil to copy and paste the speech of an African queen and give it to the lain equivalent of an Amazon. It’s actually also really lazy on his part, come to think of it? How hard was it to write a new speech …? Whatever, not the point of this article.

Camilla finally dies after threatening to do so for 30 lines. The last line about our Warrior Maiden, in full, reads: “Her neck drooped and she laid down her head, yielding to death and letting go her weapons, as her life left her with a groan and fled in anger down to the shades” (lines 830-832). This is the exact same line Virgil uses when Turnus dies at the end of book twelve, and therefore is also the final line of the entire poem.

So is Camilla a woman we should be shouting from the rooftops in modern times when mentioning strong women from mythology? Sure, why not. But is she a woman who was ever celebrated in ancient times for being amazing? Nope, not at all. Camilla appears to be nothing but a brief interjection from Virgil for no apparent reason other than he needed to include some sort of Amazonian parallel to rival greek mythology. If that isn’t the reason for her inclusion, then it genuinely makes no sense at all.

For more information on Camilla you can check out the following sources:
Virgil’s Aeneid at this link (it’s the copy we use) … and that’s it.