ucial importance of the duel to the end of the Trojan war. Moreover, it allows him to capture the feelings and thoughts of his characters into much detail thus, his audience can empathize with either character more. Virgil’s fewer number of lines creates a situation where the audience is deprived of the authority to know more about what prevails in the minds of his characters which consequently attracts less empathy for them. The significant difference in the number of the lines dedicated to the duel, which enables Homer to give his audience an insight into his characters, suggests that the antagonism between Achilleus and Hektor is perhaps more intense than that between Turnus and Aeneas.
It is also worth noting that in Aeneid’s duel, the death of Turnus brings the epic to a sudden end. In Iliad, Hektor dies by line 363(see Iliad 22, 363). However, Homer spends the rest of book 22, 23, and 24 discussing the aftermath of Hektor’s death, including the burial of Patroklus and his funeral games, which perhaps emphasizes how victims of duels are treated in the Greek tradition. In book 24 of the Iliad, we learn that Achilleus ties the body of Hektor to a chariot and drags it around the tomb of his late beloved Patroklus (See Iliad 24, 50-54). Achilleus does this according to the vow he made to Patroklus dead body. However, Apollo prevents the body of Hektor from going bad so that he can have a befitting burial. The inhumane treatment of Hektor’s body by Achilleus further emphasizes the antagonism between Hektor and Achilleus. The aftermath of the killing of Turnus by Aeneas is an episode Virgil excludes from the Aeneid. Thus, Virgil deprives his reader the opportunity to know what Aeneas does t...