Dares

Dares is a haughty Trojan fighter who enters the funeral games as the visible challenger to Entellus. His appearance in the boxing contest turns athletic competition into a test of martial reputation: he carries himself with erect pride, trusts his nervous arms and heavy gauntlets, and expects victory to confirm his honor. His defeat, however, makes him an emblem of confidence brought abruptly against experience and strength beyond ordinary human measure.

Identity and Introduction

Dares first appears in the lists as a conspicuously proud combatant. He stalks forward with his head held high, presenting his bearing as part of his claim to superiority. The description joins physical readiness to public self-display: he is not merely prepared to fight, but eager to be seen as the fighter who deserves the contest’s prize. His arms wield the heavy gauntlets, making the bout appear at first to be a fair meeting of trained bodies and tested courage.

The contest is embedded in the funeral games held in honor of Anchises, so Dares’s performance carries a ceremonial as well as athletic significance. The announced reward for the conqueror is a portion of the chief’s spoils, while the loser is to receive a sword and helmet. Victory therefore promises material distinction and martial fame; defeat threatens the public honor that Dares has made central to his identity.

The Challenge to Entellus

Dares’s opponent is Entellus, an older and formidable boxer whose body and reputation belong to an earlier heroic generation. Entellus admits that his spirit remains unchanged and still responds to martial fame, but his blood has grown cold in his veins. Dares’s presence nevertheless helps awaken the veteran’s dormant pride. The younger challenger becomes the immediate cause of Entellus’s return to the arena, not because Dares is shown plotting against him, but because his confident display makes withdrawal impossible for a man whose honor is being tested before the assembled spectators.

The conflict is thus a rivalry shaped by unequal kinds of strength. Dares represents active display, youthful readiness, and the confidence of the present moment. Entellus represents retained valor, bodily force accumulated through a long martial past, and the refusal to let age be mistaken for fear. Dares’s erect posture and powerful gauntlets announce one version of heroism; Entellus’s answer reveals another, in which honor survives even when the body has begun to betray its former vigor.

Defeat in the Boxing Match

Once Entellus prepares for the fight, he strips off his quilted coat and bares a body composed of mighty bones and brawn. The gesture makes the contrast with Dares concrete. Dares arrives already displaying his equipment and confidence, whereas Entellus removes a covering and allows his physical solidity to become the answer to the younger man’s challenge. The contest’s visual balance shifts before the blows are fully exchanged: what seemed to be a contest between gauntlets becomes a confrontation with exceptional bodily power.

The boxing match ends decisively against Dares. The narrative attributes Entellus’s superior force to divine assistance and declares it madness to contend with strength that has been given or heightened by the gods. Dares’s failure is therefore not presented simply as cowardice or lack of skill. He is placed in a contest whose apparent human equality is overturned by a power beyond his calculation. His pride becomes a tragic misjudgment of the scale of the opposition.

When the gauntlet fight is over, Dares’s faithful friends carry him from the shore. The image reverses his entrance into the lists: he had come stalking upright, head erect, while he leaves unable to depart under his own power. His mouth and nostrils pour a purple flood, converting the spectacle of martial display into the visible cost of defeat. The games preserve the ceremonial setting, but Dares’s injured body reveals how quickly public honor can become physical vulnerability.

Change and Ending

Dares’s arc is brief but sharply structured. He begins as a proud challenger whose posture and equipment promise command of the arena. He then meets Entellus’s revived strength, loses the contest, and is removed by his companions in a condition that makes the reversal unmistakable. No later recovery or renewed challenge is supplied in the evidence. His ending is therefore defined by humiliation, injury, and enforced withdrawal rather than by reconciliation or a second test.

The change is primarily a change in status. Before the bout, Dares is the active claimant to the prize and the public embodiment of confidence. After it, he is the defeated body borne away from the shore. The contrast gives the funeral games a darker edge: even an event designed to honor the dead can produce a living participant whose reputation is damaged before the crowd.

Narrative Role and Significance

Dares functions as the foil through whom Entellus’s concealed or declining power becomes legible. Entellus’s statement that his soul remains the same gains dramatic force because Dares has supplied the challenge that tests it. The younger boxer’s pride also clarifies the poem’s distinction between appearance and force. Dares looks ready, armed, and self-assured; Entellus, once uncovered, proves that the greater power lies in the veteran body and in the divine favor behind it.

His defeat further disciplines the idea of martial fame. Dares seeks honor through visible dominance, but the contest shows that fame cannot be secured by posture, equipment, or confidence alone. Against Entellus, and especially against strength understood as divinely supported, Dares’s self-presentation becomes part of the irony of the scene. He enters as though the arena will confirm his superiority and leaves as the evidence by which another man’s enduring heroic force is measured.