The fortunes of the Rutulians, which had risen with the successes of Turnus related in the ninth and tenth books, had already begun to wane with the deaths of Lausus and Mezentius. The eleventh book contains the gradual preparation for the catastrophe. Though Virgil has taken hints from the later books of the Iliad, his development of the story is here both original and interesting. After the battles of the tenth book the last rites are paid to the dead on both sides; but even the mourning of Evander for Pallas does not seriously lower the key of triumph in which the description of his funeral is conceived, while the wailing of the Latins is unrelieved by any bright memories or anticipations. Nothing, it may be remarked, is said about the burial of Lausus, nor even about that of Mezentius: to whom it may be supposed that Aeneas had not refused his last request (10. 904). The mourning of the Latins is immediately succeeded by the return of the unsuccessful envoys from Diomed. Here Virgil has skilfully seized the opportunity of deserting Homer, and exaggerating, through the mouth of Diomed, the Trojan fame and exploits of Aeneas, at the same time that his narrative gains by the introduction of a fresh cause for the depression of the Latins, and the raising of hopes in that party among them which opposed Turnus.