Nisus and Euryalus

Their foray among the enemy, narrated in book nine, demonstrates their stealth and prowess as warriors, but ends as a tragedy: the loot Euryalus acquires (a glistening Rutulian helmet) attracts attention, and the two die together.

They also appear in Book 5, during the funeral games of Anchises, where Virgil takes note of their amor pius, a love that exhibits the pietas that is Aeneas's own distinguishing virtue.

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.

[9] The foray by Nisus and Euryalus is a well-developed, self-contained episode[10] 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,[11] at the funeral games held for Aeneas's father, Anchises, during the "Odyssean" first half of the epic.

[14] 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,[15] and the waste of young lives in war.