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]