Dido: Encyclopedia II - Dido - Virgil's Aeneid

Dido - Virgil's Aeneid

Virgil's back-references in his Aeneid generally agree with what Justin recorded. Virgil names Dido's father as Belus, this Belus sometimes being called Belus II by later commentators to distinguish him from Belus son of Poseidon and Libya in earlier Greek mythology. If the story of Elissa/Dido has a factual basis and is synchronized properly with history then this Belus stands for Mattan I who was father of the historical Pygmalion.

Virgil (1.746f) adds that the marriage between Dido/Elissa and Sychaeus, as Virgil calls Dido's husband, occurred while her father was still alive, that Pygmalion slew Sychaeus secretly and that Sychaeus appeared in a dream to Dido in which he told the truth about her death, urged her to flee the country, and revealed to her where his gold was buried. None of these details contradict Justin's account. Indeed they clarify it and are likely enough to have been part of the tale Justin was abridging.

But Virgil very much changes the import and many details of the story when he brings Aeneas and his followers to Carthage.

(1.657f) Dido and Aeneas fall in love by the management of Juno and Venus together for different reasons. (4.198f) When the rumour of the love affair comes to King Iarbas the Gaetulian, "a son of Jupter Ammon by a raped Garamantian nymph", Iarbas prays to his father, blaming Dido who has scorned marriage with him yet now takes Aeneas into the country as her lord. (4.222f) Jupiter dispatches Mercury to send Aeneas on his way and the pious Aeneas sadly obeys.

(4.450f) Dido can no longer bear to live. (4.474) Dido has her sister Anna build her a pyre under the pretence of burning all that reminded her of Aeneas, including weapons and clothes that Aeneas had left behind and (what she calls) their bridal bed (though, according to Aeneas, they were never officially married.) (4.584f) When Dido sees Aeneas' fleet leaving she curses him and his Trojans and proclaims endless hate between Carthage and the descendants of Troy, foreshadowing the Punic Wars. (4.642) Dido ascends the pyre, lies again on the couch which she had shared with Aeneas, and then falls on a sword that Aeneas had given her. (4.666) Those watching let out a cry; Anna rushes in and embraces her dying sister; Juno sends Iris from heaven to release Dido's spirit from her body. (5.1) From their ships, Aeneas and his crew see the glow of Dido's burning funeral pyre and can only guess what has happened.

(6.450f) During his journey in the underworld Aeneas meets Dido and tries to excuse himself, but Dido does not deign to look at him. Instead she turns away from Aeneas to a grove where her former husband Sychaeus waits. T. S. Elliot once called this "the most civilized moment in Western literature."

Virgil has included most of the motifs from the original: Hierbas/Jarbas who desires Dido against her will, a deceitful explanation for the building of the pyre, and Elissa/Dido's final suicide. In both versions Elissa/Dido is loyal to her original husband in the end. But whereas the earlier Elissa remained always loyal to her husband's memory, Virgil's Dido dies as a tortured and repentant woman who has fallen away from that loyalty.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Virgil's Aeneid", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki