By Meghan Reedy
When Dido’s entourage sees her fall on Aeneas’ sword, and thick blood foams out all over the sword and spatters her hands, a huge cry goes up—and then Fama goes wild through the shaken city.
… atque illam media inter talia ferro
conlapsam aspiciunt comites, ensemque cruore
spumantem sparsasque manus. It clamor ad alta
atria: concussam bacchatur Fama per urbem (663–66).
That phrase: concussam bacchatur Fama per urbem … It is now, as she is committing suicide, that Fama really notices Dido.
Surely, one thinks, Fama noticed her before now? After the wedding?
But it isn’t so.
Aeneas alone is the subject of Fama’s first report, venisse Aenean (191), while Dido is the subject only of a relative clause describing him, cui se … dignetur iungere Dido (192), and then they are treated together as a couple in the next two lines, inter se luxu … fovere regnorum immemores (193–94). When word gets to Iarbas, and we hear him talking to Jupiter, Iarbas doesn’t name her either. He is upset that ‘the woman’ has accepted Aeneas, but his focus too falls on Aeneas, as his rival. Dido is described chiefly in terms of Iarbas’ own generosity towards her (Femina, quae nostris errans in finibus … cui que loci leges dedimus …, 211–13), and she and her kingdom are ‘spoils’ (rapto, 217) by the time Iarbas is finished. Aeneas, on the other hand is referred to as ‘master’ and named (dominum Aenean, 214), and he is described personally (if in hostile stereotypes, 215–16). It is Aeneas who is Iarbas’ problem, because it is Aeneas who has taken what Iarbas wants, rapto potitur (217).
It ought to come as no surprise, I suppose, that Aeneas and his destined future are Jupiter’s central interest. When Jupiter, as a result of what Iarbas has said, is talking to Mercury, he refers just once, slightingly, to Dido’s city (Tyria Karthagine, 224) as the place where Aeneas is busy waiting for the wrong future. He makes no mention of Dido herself at all. When it comes his turn to speak, now to Aeneas, Mercury’s interest is largely determined by Jupiter’s, but not entirely. He does add a tiny implication of Dido in his initial question to Aeneas: tu nunc Karthaginis altae fundamenta locas pulchramque uxorius urbem exstruis? (265–67). Again, however, Carthage comes first – this time as the object of Aeneas’ own work, using the same epithet, pulchra, that was used of Dido herself when we first saw her entering her temple in Book 1, (forma pulcherrima Dido, 1.496). It is the adjective Mercury uses of Aeneas, uxorius, that snidely implies Dido’s existence; Aeneas is ‘overly wife-concerned’ (Dido, of course, being the wife). In 298, Fama is carrying more news about Aeneas—this time to Dido, so that she’s first to know that he’s leaving.
In the light of this, several things that Dido says and does in the long closing scene of Aeneid 4 take on a different hue. We can see, that is, that over the course of the morning as she is preparing for her suicide, Dido tells us and shows us a number of things she did or might have done or might do that one would think Fama would notice, or notice in the right way—but that actually Fama wouldn’t notice or didn’t or won’t.
At dawn, just after Dido has seen the first light whiten and the well-trimmed sails move off from her watchtower, and she knows the shores and harbor are empty (586–88), she beats her breast (manu pectus percussam, 598), and she asks, ‘will this stranger go and toy with my domain?’ (599–600). Then, she wonders about having her own navy chase him down (592–93); she mock-orders them to do it, ite, ferte citi flammas, date tela impellite remos! (593–94), but stops––quid loquor? aut ubi sum? she says next. ‘What am I saying? for that matter where am I?’ In this brief space, Dido tries out what it might be like if she did call out her navy, but she dismisses it as crazy-talk, quae mentem insania mutat? (595).
She has described, and then set aside, a possible version of her story in which she seeks vengeance militarily. What sort of story would that have made?
A little bit later, she wonders not about the future but about alternative pasts. Thinking back, could she not have treated Aeneas otherwise than she did? Cut him in pieces and sprinkled him on the sea in bits, for example (600–601)? Or killed his friends and father and son with a knife and served them to him as a meal (601–2)?
Now she has described two further, grisly versions of her story—these versions set aside before she even mentions them. What sorts of story would those have been?
A while later, once she is on the pyre and getting things set out there, she describes her real achievements: urbem praeclaram statui, mea moenia vidi, ultra virum poenas inimico a fratre recepi (655–66)—and she goes on to imagine still another version of this story: felix … si litora tantum numquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae (657–58). What would the story have been if the Trojans hadn’t arrived at all?
Even on the way to her pyre, she envisioned an alternative. When she asked the nurse, Barce, to have Anna do and collect some things for her, she offered the explanation that she was planning to burn every reminder of that Trojan, and move on: finem imponere curs Dardaniique rogum capitis permittere flammae (639–40). This alternative version is particularly captivating because it is so plausible, so possible at the moment that she says it. She really could do this; Anna believes that it really is her plan––and it is a plan that is as pragmatic and sensible as the reasons Anna gave when she encouraged Dido to begin her relationship with Aeneas. However, this too is not the story she chooses.
No. She chooses the story that best accords with her own close concern over her pudor, her commitment to her dead husband. She chooses the story that wins her tragic sympathy rather than the fearful fascination that comes (as it did to Medea) when you cut up and scatter a loved one into the sea.
She also chooses the story that will make her curse on Aeneas and future generations of Romans count: haec precor, hanc vocem extremam cum sanguine fundo (621).
She chooses the story that makes Fama ecstatic—a gory public suicide, with genuinely moving speeches dotted through. And it worked! The story of Dido and Aeneas is the most famous segment of the Aeneid, the most frequently emulated for centuries.
Further Reading
Feeney, D. ‘The Appearance(s) of Mercury and the Motivation of Aeneas’ in A Woman Scorn’d. Responses to the Dido Myth, ed. M. Burden (London, 1998) 105-30
Harrison, S.J. ‘Response to Khan’ in Religion and Superstition in Latin Literature, Nottingham Classical Literature Studies 3, ed. A. Sommerstein (Bari, 1995) 29-37
Johnson, W.R. Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil’s Aeneid (Berkeley, 1976) 66-72
Keith, A.M. Engendering Rome: women in Latin Epic (Cambridge, 2000) 114-17
Khan, H.A. ‘Demonizing Dido: A Rebounding Sequence of Courses and Dreams in Aeneid 4’ in Religion and Superstition in Latin Literature, Nottingham Classical Literature Studies 3, ed. A. Sommerstein (Bari, 1995) 1-28
Nugent, S.G. ‘The Women of the Aeneid: Vanishing Bodies, Lingering Voices’ in Reading Vergil’s Aeneid. An Interpretive Guide, ed. C. Perkell (Norman, OK, 1999) 251-70
Panoussi, V. Greek Tragedy in Vergil’s Aeneid: Ritual, Empire, and Intertext (Cambridge, 2009) 193-6
Perkell, C. ‘Ambiguity and Irony, the Last Resort?’ Helios 21 (1994) 63-74
Rauk, J. ‘Macrobius, Cornutus, and the Cutting of Dido’s Lock’ Classical Philology 90 (1995) 345-54