The subject of this Book is the attack made by Turnus and the Latian army on the Trojan camp while Aeneas is away. Various incidents are interwoven with it with more or less of ingenuity. At the opening of the attack a portent occurs, the transformation of the Trojan ships into sea-nymphs, just at the moment when they are threatened with conflagration. This, as Sir G. C. Lewis remarks, is evidently an echo of the story in the Fifth Book, the burning of the ships by the Trojan women. Virgil was doubtless glad to put the legend to a double use, whether the form which it takes on this second occasion was invented by him or borrowed from tradition. In any case he was likely to regard the metamorphosis as part of the supernatural machinery which is an epic poet's property. Even in Servius' time however the incident provoked question as being without precedent: and modern criticism will be more disposed to account for it than to justify it. No defence is needed for the next incident, which is indeed one of the crowning instances of Virgil's power of appealing to human sensibility. The hint of the episode of Nisus and Euryalus is from Homer's Doloneia: but the effect produced is due entirely to the art of the younger poet. In the Homeric story we sympathize neither with Dolon nor with his captors: the former fails where he did not deserve to succeed: the success of the latter is too complete and too bloody to call forth much enthusiasm.