3—
Dido
History told of the voluntary suicide of Queen Dido, whereby she kept faith with her
husband Sicharbas beyond the grave. When she saw no other escape from an en-
forced marriage with Iarbas, she mounted the funeral-pyre. Some poet, perhaps
116 Naevius,[1] freely reworked this story in the style of Hellenistic love-poetry, and sent
to the funeral-pyre not the ever-faithful widow but the woman that Aeneas has loved
and abandoned. Virgil has adopted this version, and consequently it has become
famous, but the consciousness that it is a poetic fiction has not been lost; no
historian, as far as we know, has granted it so much as a mention.[2] Even in Virgil the
original picture of Dido shines through beneath his new over-painting; not only in
the importance that Virgil still assigns to the motif of her loyalty to her dead
husband: when Dido laments that she has allowed her sense of shame to die and has
ruined her reputation, the one thing by which she had been hoping to gain immor-
tality (4.322), there is a memory – no doubt unconscious – of that Dido who went to
her death for the sake of loyalty, and so won for herself immortal fame.
Thus when Virgil incorporated Dido into his epic, it was certainly not because he
was forced to do so by the strength of established tradition.
Nor was he constrained to do so for technical reasons, such as the need to provide
someone to listen to Aeneas' story; Acestes, for example, could have fulfilled this
function. It was simply that Virgil regarded a love story as an integral part of an
epic. Circe and Calypso, Hypsipyle and Medea urgently demanded a counterpart if
Aeneas' experiences were not to look jejune in comparison with those of Odysseus
and Jason; moreover, Virgil's ideal was the greatest possible richness and the utili-
117 zation of all possible epic motifs. As soon as Virgil's attention was drawn, by some
earlier poetic version, to the woman who founded Carthage, we can imagine how his
gaze will have lingered on her, spellbound; she was indeed ideally suited to the
poet's purpose. History knew, of course, of other liaisons of Aeneas: he is said to
have fathered a son by the daughter of Anius (Serv. on 3.80), and in Arcadia they
knew of two daughters born to him by Codone and Anthemone (Agathyllus cited by
Dion. Hal. 1.49); but what were these unknown girls compared with the most
powerful queen known in the history of the west, the founder of the only city which
was to threaten Rome? And what a perspective this struggle between Rome and
Carthage, a struggle that was to affect the history of the entire world, gave to the
encounter, first friendly, then hostile, of their two founders! But as soon as Virgil
had envisaged the possibility of including Dido, then she was the obvious person to
listen to Aeneas' tale – possibly Naevius suggested this idea too.[3] Virgil was doubt-
less proud of having discovered new and fruitful developments of the Homeric
device of recounting adventures: Dido's burgeoning love impels her to her urgent
questioning, and Aeneas' narrative of his deeds and disasters vastly intensifies her
love, which thus becomes the motivation of the action.[4]
The tragic outcome of this love was taken over by Virgil from his predecessor. If
it was Naevius, he can hardly have provided more than the barest skeleton of events;
118 the treatment is entirely Virgil's. There is probably no part of his epic where he
stands at a further remove from Homer than here; and he seems to have been fully
aware of what he was doing. If it was indeed his ideal to come as close as possible to
early epic without losing those improvements and new developments of later times
which he valued, then here he was entering a world which had really only been
discovered since Homer's time: the portrayal of love as a passion which both floods
the soul with rapture and at the same time destroys it. Homer does not say much
about love; goddesses may not send their beloved hero on his way gladly, but
nevertheless they do so with the carefree spirit that is characteristic of Homer's
divinities: Calypso provides food for the journey, Circe gives directions for the
journey, there are no fond words of farewell.[5] Apollonius, who is quite modern in
his portrayal of Medea's vain struggle against overwhelming passion, nevertheless
does not go far beyond the restrained tone of the ancient epic in his account of the
episode on Lemnos, even though in itself it is analogous to the tale of Dido. We are
given the farewell words of Hypsipyle and Jason, it is true, and there is talk of tears
and the clasping of hands; but the couple seem to understand each other perfectly.
Hypsipyle never counted on holding her beloved guest captive for ever; it does not
occur to her to chide him for leaving her. The essential thing here is the event;
Apollonius hardly even touches on the emotions involved. Virgil had chosen to use
the form of the epic because he valued it above all for the opportunity that it gave
him to create strong emotional effects. There was no lack of models and precedents:
in no area was the last flowering of Greek poetry more inventive than in searching
out all the dangers and misfortunes of consuming passion, love unknown or love
deceived or unlawful love, which drove its victim through sorrow, shame and
despair to suicide. Such themes, admittedly, had hardly ever yet formed the subject
of an epic: the Hellenistic period had created for itself a new vehicle, the epyllion,
119 that was ideally suited to the new material. Virgil's poem about Dido, complete and
self-contained, certainly had some kinship with that classical miniature form of
narrative: but it is quite clear that, despite the subject-matter, the poet was striving to
achieve and maintain the heroic tone of the epic. In this he was given invaluable
help by drama: there he could learn how to treat his material in an elevated style,
and he did not scorn this help.[6] The analysis which follows is an attempt to unravel
the technique of Virgil's tragic epyllion into its component parts.
1—
Scene setting:
Love
The fourth book is devoted to Dido. She dominates the scene to such an extent that
the epic hero plays a secondary role. At the beginning of the book we find her
caught in the toils of love. She attains her heart's desire; then comes the peripeteia
of the drama, leading to a rapid plunge from the heights of happiness and to the fatal
conclusion. The ground for this tragedy is laid in Book 1 in the full detail which is
one of the advantages that an epic poet has over a dramatist.
Dido's entrance is prepared in two ways. First, Aeneas hears about her from
Venus; the narrative is ingeniously contrived so that it not only informs us but also
120 wins our sympathies.[7] The listener is moved first to pity, then to admiration: here is
a princess wounded to the depths of her soul, who pulls herself together, and whose
misfortune gives her the strength to overcome her feminine frailty, to perform deeds
of masculine daring – dux femina facti [the enterprise was led by a woman] – and, a
mere woman, to venture to found a city amongst barbarian tribes, a city whose
beginning prefigures its future greatness. Secondly, Aeneas sees Dido's achieve-
ment, the city itself, and is astonished by its magnificent lay-out and the swarming
activity of the builders, in which the spirit of their queen is reflected (1.420-36); her
humanity, which honours the greatness of another race, and pities their sufferings, is
shown by the paintings in the temple, which also tell him that his own name and
achievements are not unknown to the queen (456ff.).
Only now does Dido herself appear, and her appearance fully lives up to the
expectations that Virgil has aroused in us: she enters in regal majesty with a royal
retinue, with royal dignity.[8] So far, Aeneas has only admired her works, but now he
sees her in action; so far, he has been hoping that she will show a sense of humanity
and nobility, and now these hopes are fulfilled by the reception which she accords to
the Trojan suppliants. Thus everything conspires to prepare the ground most propi-
tiously for the long-awaited personal encounter between Aeneas and the queen,
which now ensues.
All this is a piece of scene-setting which I believe to be without parallel in
ancient narrative literature. Individual details are borrowed from Odysseus' recep-
121 tion by the Phaeacians: just as Venus tells Aeneas about Dido, so Athena tells
Odysseus about Arete; Aeneas is astonished by the sight of Carthage, as Odysseus is
by the harbours and ships, squares and walls in the city of the Phaeacians ( Od .
7.43ff.). But it is easy to see how much more significant the two motifs have become
in Virgil, since they both prepare the way for what is to come: Aeneas is to fall in
love with the princess whom Venus praises so highly to him, and he is to take up
and continue her work of building the city whose greatness and progress he so
admires. Everything that he sees and experiences in the temple of Juno is calculated
to make Aeneas, and with him the reader, admire Dido more and more, and this has
no parallel in the Odyssey; Virgil's inspiration is a truly dramatic one: the poet
transforms everything that he has to tell us about his heroine into action, which is
carried forward by Aeneas. Thus not only has he already been won over to Dido
before he has even exchanged a single word with her; the reader, too, receives an
impression at her first entrance comparable to the impression that we experience in a
drama at the first entrance of a principal character, about whom intense expectations
have been aroused by an ingenious exposition – think for example of Tartuffe or
Egmont – and Virgil can count on the reader's ready acceptance of what the Fates
have in store for Dido in Book 4, since they have already begun to spin their thread.
Dido, too, for her part, has long and gradually been prepared for the appearance
of Aeneas. It was from Teucer, after the fall of Troy, that she had first heard his
name, and it had been from the lips of an enemy that she had first heard his praises
(1.619ff.); she knows that he is the son of Venus. The battles around Troy and the
part that Aeneas played in them are known to her in every detail. She has used a
representation of them to adorn the principal temple of her new city, the temple in
which she herself is accustomed to sit upon the throne. And now she hears the king
praised by his own men, and hears of their unconditional trust in him; no wonder
that she is moved to wish to see him for herself. Scarcely has she uttered this wish
than he is suddenly standing before her like some divine apparition,[9] in a state of
122 exaltation brought about by his pride in what he has just heard, his joy that his
companions and he himself have escaped death, and his admiration for Dido's regal
manner: 'his divine mother had breathed the splendour of youth over him' is how
Virgil, in truly Homeric fashion,[10] explains this enhancement of his nature at that
moment, and the effect which his appearance will have on Dido.
Since the ground has been prepared on both sides, we might expect that mutual
love will flare up at first glance. In Hellenistic love poetry, the sudden arousal of a
passion, as quick as lightning, is actually a 'rule of artistic representation',[11] and this
rule is also obeyed by the narrative of Apollonius' epic, at least as far as Medea's
passion is concerned: she is struck by Eros' arrow as soon as she sets eyes on Jason,
and her whole being is immediately overwhelmed by love (3.275ff.), while Jason
ignores her completely at first, and it is only much later, during their secret conver-
sation, that he himself is inflamed by the tears of the woman (1077f.). Medea is won
over by the mere sight of him, by the heroic beauty of the man; indeed, in all the
Hellenistic love poets that is the only reason why people fall in love. We have seen
how Virgil has prepared the way for the mutual attraction of Dido and Aeneas by
much subtler psychological means; similarly he does not ascribe the power to ignite
123 a brilliant flame to a mere glance, despite the careful way in which he has assembled
the flammable materials. It is true that these two are not to be compared with those
youths and maidens who know nothing of Eros and, unprepared, fall victim to an
unfamiliar passion. Virgil has completely avoided all mention of Aeneas' feelings of
love. It is only at their separation that we are explicitly shown by means of small
touches how deeply in love he has been. For the rest, the poet allows the facts to
speak for themselves, after he has prepared the emotional ground as thoroughly as
possible: Aeneas' feelings of admiration, and his sympathy and pity for Dido's
former sufferings are combined with gratitude, which he expresses in extravagant
words (597ff.). Dido's subsequent behaviour, her heartfelt and obvious attraction to
the supposed Ascanius, and her passionate involvement with Aeneas' own fortunes
are enough to do the rest. Later, there is no longer any need to state explicitly that
her love is reciprocated: if a hero like Aeneas can forget his divine mission for the
sake of a woman, even for a short time, how overwhelming his passion must be![12]
124 Dido, too, has to forget, before she can open her heart to the new emotion: she is still
attached to Sychaeus, the husband of her youth, and feels that it is her duty to remain
faithful to him, and she fears that if she forms a new attachment she will be doing
wrong to her first husband. So it would be inappropriate for her, too, to be suddenly
pierced by an arrow shot at her by Eros, in the way that many other poets,[13]
including Apollonius, had depicted the onset of love. Virgil follows the traditional
technique of Hellenistic love-poetry in so far as he characterizes overwhelming love
as the result of an intervention by Amor in person; but he chooses a form which
contrives to portray the rapid but gradual invasion of this new love;[14] throughout the
125 first night, while Aeneas talks of his deeds and sufferings, and, as we saw above,
talks his way into Dido's heart, Amor lingers between the two in the guise of
Ascanius. But Virgil has also taken care that this intervention by the divinity appears
necessary. It is not only a matter of conquering a woman's heart, which would
probably not have withstood the heroic appearance of an Aeneas in any case, but it
is a matter of Venus taking precautions against Juno's wiles (1.671ff.), since Juno
could have used Dido as a means of expressing her hatred: and the only sure defence
against the hatred that springs from the will of one god is love hat is sent by
another.[15]
2—
Dido's Guilt:
Anna:
Passion
Dido's love has first to fight against her sense of duty. Her conversation with her
sister (4.9ff.) allows us to witness that struggle, and the victory of love. Virgil has
used her traditional faithfulness to her first husband to create a conflict within Dido
herself which is of the greatest importance for the action. If Dido's death is to give
the impression of poetic justice, she must be burdened with some form of guilt. This
guilt lies in her deliberately violating the duty of fidelity which she herself regards
as binding.[16] It is pudor [a sense of shame] which makes the new marriage im-
possible for her, and which, only too easily persuaded by Anna's specious
126 arguments, she proceeds to disregard. Similarly, in Apollonius, it is 
[a sense
of shame] that at first restrains Medea; but in her case it is only maidenly decorum
that prevents her from entering into a relationship with a strange man without her
parents' knowledge; when she has freed herself after a long struggle, she says of it
(3.784) [away with any sense of shame!]. Dido's pudor , on the other
hand, is something very different: it is a power which she acknowledges to be divine
and under divine protection. This is a specifically Roman way of thinking: a
woman's pudicitia corresponds as a moral ideal to a man's virtus , and of all our
evidence of the high regard in which the univira [a woman faithful to one husband]
was held,[17] none is more characteristic than the information that only 'matrons of
known modesty in their first and only marriage'[18] could make sacrifices at the altars
of Pudicitia. We know very well how far practice in Virgil's time fell short of this
ideal, but we may deduce from Virgil that, at least in the circles which still upheld
something of the old Roman values, the requirement as such was maintained. One
would dearly like to know the feelings with which Augustus heard these lines; he
was Livia's second husband and had been Scribonia's third;[19] but to judge by the
general tendency of his politics, and the way in which he kept his politics distinct
from his own private life, it is not at all unlikely that he took a sympathetic view of a
requirement which could only promote the reinstatement of the sanctity of marriage
which he strove after so passionately. In any case, Virgil intended to show that Dido
was a woman of the highest moral character by making her feel that this requirement
was a moral and religious duty; she fails in this duty after its basis, her love for her
first husband, has disappeared; but she does not escape the torture of a repentant
conscience (4.552) and she pays for her guilt by her death (457ff.); and she is
reunited with Sychaeus in the Underworld (6.474).
Tradition provided Dido with a sister, Anna. Virgil entrusts her with an important
127 rôle, important, however, for his narrative technique rather than for the development
of the action: the rôle of confidante. At first one is inclined to make comparisons
with Medea's sister, Chalciope, in Apollonius' poem, but she is a character who is
required by the action, and Medea does not confide in her: on the contrary, she hides
her personal feelings from her, and at the decisive moment, when she flees from her
country, she acts quite independently, without consulting her sister. Here, too, Apol-
lonius adheres strictly to the epic style. The confidante is a technical device,
invented for the purposes of the theatre, taken over as a stock figure by classicizing
tragedy from ancient tragedy ( Medea , Phaedra etc.). Her function is to allow the
audience to discover things which only one character can and does know; in this
way the author can share her hidden feelings with the spectator, and create and
overcome objections, without continually falling back on the device of the mono-
logue.[20] The epic poet can use narrative instead of monologue, or alternate the two, a
technique which Apollonius himself uses with great success. Virgil reserves mono-
logue for the emotional climaxes of his narrative; in the earlier stages of the Dido
episode he makes use of the confidante to transform epic narrative into dramatic
action. Virgil's confidante is not the trusty nurse or maidservant who stands at the
heroine's side in drama and who so often acts as the go-between in the romantic
literature of the Hellenistic age,[21] serving her mistress' passion with blind obe-
dience, taking no heed of duty or honour. There is usually something rather vulgar
about this figure, and anything of that kind would be inconsistent with Virgil's
concept of the elevated style that epic demands. He may on one occasion send the
nutrix [nurse] (Barce 4.632) on an errand, but her status is too inferior to that of the
128 queen for her to have any influence on her decisions, or to receive her humiliating
confessions and convey her requests to Aeneas: but Anna, the unanima soror [like-
minded sister], is ideal for all these purposes. Virgil also makes use of her to raise
the emotional level of the final scene, and to portray the effect of the terrible event,
something that he regarded as very important in every emotional scene: here the
grief of the deceived and forsaken sister (675ff.), in whose arms Dido is dying,
intensifies the effect that her death has on the reader. Of course, it is possible to
imagine what Book 4 would be like without the figure of Anna; it would not affect
the action to any great extent; but from an artistic point of view she is of great
importance, and it can hardly be true that it was only at a later stage that Virgil
added the scenes in which Anna appears;[22] since Virgil envisaged the action in
dramatic form from the very beginning, the confidante too had a place in it from the
very beginning.
Dido has confided in her sister in order to unburden her anxious heart. She feels
the power of new love growing within her, but she feels that it is wrong to yield to it,
and with a fearful oath she affrms her apparently steadfast resolve to resist it, as if
to give herself something to cling to; thus she herself pronounces judgement on
herself in advance. Anna, the unanima soror , knows very well what is really going
on in her sister's mind, and seeks to dispel her scruples, principally by representing
the fulfilment of her heart's desire as politically advantageous, indeed her royal
duty. But in view of Dido's religious scruples, she first suggests that she should
assure herself of Juno's approval by seeking her venia [pardon], or pax [peace], as
129 Virgil calls it a few lines later;[23] this then becomes the sisters' first concern. Once
the favourable outcome of the sacrifice has released Dido from religio [religious
scruple], she is freed from her doubts and scruples, and is able to work with a clear
conscience towards the fulfilment of her desires, and in the first place to seek to gain
time: then the rest will come about of its own accord. We now hear (56ff.) that Dido
follows her sister's advice with the utmost eagerness, and is insatiable in her praying
and sacrificing; she turns above all to Juno, cui vincla iugalia curae [who is con-
cerned with the bonds of marriage], who is able to dissolve the bonds of a former
marriage and validate a new one. She tries to read the will of the gods in the entrails
of the sacrificial animals.[24] But what is the result of these sacrifices? Are the entrails
favourable or unfavourable? Virgil does not tell us, and so his interpreters have
maintained both views with equal conviction and with equal justification. The fact is
that Virgil has evaded a difficulty at this point in a rather radical way. We know
from the final outcome that the sacrifices cannot have been favourable; otherwise
the gods would have been deceiving Dido, or the seer must have been mistaken. On
the other hand, if Juno is prepared to go straight ahead and ratify the marriage about
which they were consulting her, then the poet cannot possibly say that she refused to
130 accept the sacrifice. So he deliberately leaves the question unresolved. It does not
matter what the vates [seers] announce; they have no idea what is really agitating
Dido's mind,[25] and they no doubt believe that prayers and vows can calm her down,
when in fact she has been seized by the frenzy of love, and the flames of love are
consuming the marrow of her bones (65-7).
The symptoms of this passion, which are described in lines 68ff., are familiar to
us from the romantic literature of the Hellenistic period: torment and restlessness;
pretexts for being at least in the company of her beloved;[26] she stammers in his
presence;[27] she cannot hear enough of his voice; even when he is absent she still sees
and hears no-one but him; [28] even at night she can find no rest;[29] and all the time she
neglects the completion of her newly-founded city, to which her days have pre-
viously been devoted.[30] But Virgil is careful to avoid anything which might reduce
this heroic passion to the level of the sentimental and bourgeois, and he scorns
details which are better suited to the miniature technique of the epyllion than to the
131 broad strokes of the epic. Nor does the action stand still while Dido's symptoms are
described, for we hear what else is taking place in Carthage, how Dido's subjects
cannot remain unaware of her passion, and how her reputation is beginning to be
sullied (91); Juno therefore, in order to prevent anything worse and at the same time
to serve her own purposes, forms the plan of ratifying the marriage.[31]
The cave in which Aeneas and Dido seek shelter from the storm had its predeces-
sor in the famous cave on Corcyra, which served Jason and Medea as a bridal
chamber. There, too, according to Apollonius 4.1141ff., the nymphs sent by Hera
enhanced the glory of the celebration. This passage may have been the source of
Virgil's inspiration;[32] his mastery can be seen in the natural way in which he
motivates what comes about because of the will of the gods, in the vivid descriptions
of the splendid hunt and of the storm, and above all in the few lines (166-8) devoted
to the fateful wedding, at which flashes of lightning serve as torches and the joyful
cries of the nymphs high up on the wooded mountains serve as the wedding song.
As Virgil describes the hunt in detail and in magnificent colours, we might imagine
that he is merely using the resources of epic style, which glories in description for its
own sake; but the passage also has a deeper meaning: the pair are riding forth as if in
a wedding-procession, regally attired, glowing as though with youthful desire, with
a splendid retinue, and Virgil has sensed the tragic contrast, that Dido appears to us
in radiant happiness for the last time on the day which will fulfil her heart's desire
but which will also prove to be 'the first day of her death' (169).
132
3—
Dido's Journey Towards Death:
Her Character:
Conclusion
Virgil describes Dido's journey towards death with all the artistry at his command.[33]
The peripeteia occurs immediately after the climax of the narrative which we have
just dealt with; the poet passes rapidly over the period during which the two lovers
live peacefully together, as though he were afraid of showing his hero neglecting his
duty. We only hear what Fama says (173ff.): she distorts the truth when she depicts
the pair as indulging in a life of luxury, unmindful of their duty as rulers; it is only
later that we discover that this is untrue, when Mercury finds Aeneas busy with the
work of building the city. The gossip reaches Iarbas, Jupiter listens to him and
dispatches Mercury, Aeneas immediately obeys his command; Dido hears about his
first secret arrangements for departure again from Fama, who thus completes her
fatal work. From this point onwards, we accompany Dido along the short path she
has yet to tread, which leads her to her death by way of every torment of the soul.[34]
133 Virgil had no need, nor did he consider it his duty, to display originality in the
way in which Dido expresses her feelings. Despite the fact that much ancient
literature has not survived, there is hardly a single essential feature in Virgil's
depiction of her emotions that we cannot find in his predecessors. Here, too, the poet
was borrowing his material; his personal contribution was the art by which he
transformed it, and this art was so great that Dido is the only figure created by a
Roman poet who was destined to have a place in world literature.
The material that was available to Virgil was rich enough. The grief of a forsaken
woman had again and again been the subject of Greek poetry of every genre and
style. From this mass of material, Virgil from the very first rejected anything which
was inconsistent with the dignity of his style as being either too realistic or not
realistic enough. Tragedy supplied the earliest example of the figure of the forsaken
woman in Medea. During the Hellenistic period there were many such characters of
the more dignified love-poetry, more at any rate than we know of today; but we can
name Ariadne, whose lament at the loss of her love had been made familiar to the
Roman public by Catullus;[35] Phyllis, well-known through Callimachus' poem; Oe-
none, whose unhappy fate is certainly known to us at any rate from a Hellenistic
version (that of Quintus of Smyrna), to say nothing of numerous other comparable
poems whose artistic merits have been totally obliterated because of the inadequate
information that we have about them. Of these, two, like Dido, committed suicide:
Phyllis hangs herself all alone (Ovid Rem . Am . 591), Oenone throws herself in the
flames of the funeral-pyre which is consuming the body of Paris. But Greek poetry
had also often enough recounted the story of unfortunate characters who commit
suicide for reasons other than disappointment in love, and Virgil drew upon at least
one of these figures, perhaps the most famous of all, the Ajax of Sophocles.
Virgil has made as much use as possible of the abundance of available motifs,
intent as ever on the enrichment of his portrayal. But he does not describe a gloomy,
134 irregular oscillation of the emotions: his Dido is not tossed this way and that by the
conflict of her passions. On the contrary, the tragedy strides to its conclusion in a
clear and controlled fashion. Here too, Virgil strives as far as possible for dramatic
effect. He narrates only the observable action; he does not describe emotions but
almost always lets the heroine herself express them. Indeed, he always directs his
attention above all to linking the progressive heightening of these emotions closely
with the development of the observable action. Each new phase in the outward
course of events leads to a new phase in her inner development; and each of these
phases represents as purely as possible one particular state of mind, uncontaminated
by any other. Her first words to Aeneas (305ff.) express painful surprise at his lack
of loyalty;[36] she has not yet entirely given up all hope of awakening his pity and
sense of obligation towards her. When she realizes from his words that everything is
now over, she says farewell in words of scornful hatred .[37] She cannot maintain this
135 iron façade for long. When Aeneas' preparations for departure begin to be made
openly, she abandons her pride – and the poet makes us realize what this means to
someone like Dido – she gives way to humble renunciation and begs for at least a
short delay so that she will not collapse in the pain of parting (429ff.).[38] This
136 extreme measure does not work: Aeneas remains unmoved; horrifyinlg omens of all
kinds appear and Dido decides on death. The preparations for it begin; Dido herself
takes part in them; we hear the thoughts that torture her on a sleepless night as her
hard-won repose is lost in the storm of her emotions, and these thoughts lead her to
the conclusion that death is really the only way out of her sorrow: she has finally
come to despair about her future.[39] And now, in the grey light of dawn, she sees her
fate sealed: the fleet is sailing away. The sudden sight rouses her to extreme anger ,
137 which is accompanied by a thirst for revenge :[40] what her vengeful hand cannot
achieve, the curse shall do. But Dido cannot end her life like this, in demented fury.
She makes her last arrangements, ensures that her sister will be the first to find her
body,[41] and mounts the pyre. Gazing at the silent witnesses of her shortlived happi-
ness she discovers the sublime peace of renunciation and takes stock of her life:[42] in
138 full consciousness of her own greatness and of the height from which she has fallen,
she takes her leave, unreconciled with her murderer, but reconciled with death.
All this is presented to us as vividly as possible in Dido's own words; only the
linking text is supplied by the poet. From the point of view of technique, it is worth
noting how Virgil has sought (deliberately, it seems) to avoid, or disguise, the
monotony of constant monologues. She confesses her love to her sister. The peripe -
teia is followed by her two speeches to Aeneas, then she entrusts the mission to her
sister. The considerations which lead to her final decision (534ff.) are presented not
in a monologue but as an account of her thoughts ( secum ita corde volutat [she
communed with herself in her heart]). The sight of the ships sailing away throws her
into a demented fury, in which she breaks out into wild cries. She comes to herself,
horrified to find that she is talking to herself: quid loquor? aut ubi sum? quae
mentem insania mutat? (595) ['What am I saying? Where am I? What mad folly is
distorting my mind?']. The monologue develops into the prayer and mandata
[orders], which are naturally spoken aloud. Her final monologue also begins with an
apostrophe, as in tragedy.[43]
Virgil will hardly have found individually characterized female characters in his
Hellenistic sources; nor can his heroine be compared in this respect with her great
tragic predecessors, Deianeira, Medea or Ajax. She is not depicted with any realistic
touches that might lead us to think that she was modelled on some living person, nor
does she have any peculiar trait of character. On the other hand she is certainly not
like some inert musical instrument from which, although it has no feeling, the poet
can coax sounds full of pathos. The listener is expected not only to be interested in
the state of her emotions, but also to feel personal sympathy for her, as the poet
himself unmistakably did. In short, Dido is an ideal portrait of a heroic woman as
conceived by Virgil. She therefore has to be portrayed in a way that is essentially
negative: she must not be represented as girlishly naïve or timorous;[44] or humble
(like so many of Ovid's portrayals of women), or sly, spiteful or barbarically savage
139 (the idea of physically attacking Aeneas to punish him for his faithlessness only
occurs to her when she is in a demented state of delirium);[45] moaning and lamenta-
tion, sentimental wallowing in her own misfortune, useless regrets that things have
happened like this and not turned out differently – Virgil uses all these standard
features of tragic monodies and melodramatic Hellenistic scenes extremely spar-
ingly;[46] only at one point, as we have seen, does Dido forget her pride. In contrast to
these negative characteristics, Dido is given what seemed to Virgil a truly regal
attitude: the deepest humanitas [sense of humanity] combined with magnanimitas
[greatness of soul], displayed magnificently in her last words. Otherwise he dis-
penses altogether with devices that might have appealed to a poet striving to
characterize his heroine – for instance, he could have transformed the masculine
firmness of purpose and energy which she had displayed after Sychaeus' death into
a dominating trait which she still possessed even in her misfortune; or he could have
developed her humanitas in accordance with contemporary[47] ethical ideas into a
generous forgiveness which would put her enemy to shame; or yet again, he could
have brought her consciousness of her royal duty, to which Anna appeals, into the
centre of her existence, so that everything else would seem unimportant by compari-
son: as it stands, we find, somewhat to our surprise, that the dying queen has no
concern at all for the future of her city.
Virgil's renunciation of detailed characterization is consistent with the way that
he does not attribute Dido's voluntary death to one single motive, but heaps up
every imaginable one; sorrow at the loss of her beloved is by no means the motive
that predominates. Here Virgil, whether consciously or unconsciously, is under the
spell of tradition. For, strangely enough, although poets, particularly of the Hellenis-
tic period, frequently described the suicide of young people who are unhappy in
love,[48] and although on the other hand Greek epic and Greek poetry in general
140 frequently described the faithful wife who voluntarily followed her husband to
death,[49] there are very few examples of girls or women inflicting an injury on
themselves purely because they are disappointed in love, or their love is unrecipro-
cated.[50] Rather, in the majority of cases, the hero or heroine suffers from a sense of
shame because of some wrongful or humiliating deed: the threat of dishonour, or
horror at their own action makes life unendurable.[51] We have seen that Virgil also
introduced a motive of this kind: non servata fides cineri promissa Sychaei (522)
[the vow which I made to the ashes of Sychaeus is broken] is the thought which sets
the seal on Dido's decision. But that is not all: there is also shame at the insult she
has suffered (500ff.), the loss of her reputation for chastity, her greatest claim to
fame (322); fear of being abandoned to the enemies who surround her, now that she
has even lost the trust of her own subjects (320ff., 534ff.); the horrifying omens of
every kind, which increase her fear (452ff.) the voice of her dead husband (457ff.).
All these rage within her, and she succumbs to their combined onslaught, not to one
single sorrow. Was Virgil seduced here too by the sheer richness of the motives
available to him? Or did he think that it was impossible to accumulate too many
causes to account for the death of his heroine, to outweigh such a heroic life? Here,
too, he has taken care to preserve unity within this multiplicity: the whole of this
disaster arises from one deed, and it is one man who has turned this deed from a
blessing to ruin. We can only admire the skill with which we are made to see the
far-reaching consequences of Aeneas' act, one after the other, without being wearied
by any longwinded narrative. And this very skill, which allows a situation which has
been brought about by a single deed to unfold in every direction like some growing
141 plant – this skill irresistibly but imperceptibly convinces the listener of the necessity
of the tragic ending, whereas other great poets achieve this effect by letting it
emerge from the growth of a deeprooted and individually depicted character .
It still remains for us to look at the way in which Dido prepares and accomplishes
her death. There was a traditional version of the final scene, which Virgil must have
had in his mind's eye:[52] Dido has had a funeral pyre constructed for her on the
pretext that she intended to dissolve her former ties by means of a sacrifice to the
dead; and on this pyre she kills herself by the sword.[53] Virgil needed only to
substitute another pretext that was connected with Aeneas in order to make it
convincing. He replaced the sacrifice to the dead with a magic one, that was still
142 suited to the Underworld, so that it could serve as a preparation for her own descent
into that realm.[54] But, to the Roman mind, there was something mean and vulgar
about magic; they knew of the old witches and wizards who carried on their disrepu-
table trade with love-charms.[55] Virgil must therefore have felt it necessary to
transform the whole scene into something great and heroic. The maga [witch] is no
common witch, but one who has 'guarded the temple of the Hesperides,' and knew
how to tame the dragon (483-5);[56] this helps to convince us that she also possesses
143 the other powers of which she boasts: love-magic comes first, but this is followed by
magical powers which go beyond those that are normally mentioned and begin to
suggest an almost divine omnipotence. The magic ceremony is then performed in a
style that is correspondingly elevated: for this occasion no ordinary altar will suf-
fice, but a funeral-pyre, surrounded by altars, is constructed; Erebus and Chaos are
invoked, as well as Hecate, the goddess of magic; 'in a voice like thunder' she calls
up three hundred gods from the depths. And the sacrifice is so sacred that Dido
herself is not too proud to participate as the servant of the gods.[57] For the rest, the
magic rite brings about exactly what Dido intends: a death amidst all the mementos
of the brief period of joy that her love had brought her.
In tragedy we do not normally witness a death on the stage, but are only affected,
like the hero's nearest and dearest, by the impact of the terrible event. So too in
Virgil.[58] We do not see Dido plunge the sword into her breast.[59] Virgil's narrative
144 passes over the decisive moment: her handmaidens see her collapse under the mortal
blow. Lamentation resounds throughout the halls, and spreads like a raging fire
through the streets and houses of the city: we are made to feel the full significance of
the death of a woman like Dido, and it is made explicit in Anna's words: exstinxti te
meque , soror , populumque patresque Sidonios urbemque tuam ['Sister, you have
destroyed my life with your own, and the lives of our people and Sidon's nobility,
and your whole city too'].[60]