Skow, Kate. “Infelix Dido: the fate of the female in Virgil.

” (Classics Senior Seminar, UC Davis,

Winter 2014).

In The Aeneid, Virgil creates Dido, an amalgamation of literary and historical female

characters, queen of future enemy Carthage, and serious threat to the founding of an eventual

empire. Before she can prevent Aeneas from fulfilling his divinely sanctioned quest however, her

agency is totally stripped away by the power of outside, godly forces. By Book IV, she has

devolved into his helpless, dramatic, and deranged girlfriend, a passive female out of control of

her own body. Dido is initially introduced as a formidable equal, if not better, of Aeneas; both

her resistance to be marginalized as a stereotypical female and the loss of the very agency that

differed her from stereotypes make her arc the most complex of Virgil’s entire epic and her

eventual suicide the most unsettling yet ultimately satisfying end to her story.

“The ruler here is Dido, of Tyre city, in flight here from her brother—a long tale of

wrong endured, mysterious and long” (I.464-6). From the very start, she is a leader. Aeneas,

journeying from Troy, eventually finds Carthage after a storm and makes a friend in Dido, but,

as ruler of the land, she holds power over him. Before this though, Venus explains the long and

mysterious tale involving her deceased husband and greedy brother. Dido has thus far remained

faithful to Sychaeus even in his death and in saying so, Virgil establishes her as a woman with

fidelity, in this way echoing her counterpart’s common epithet “pious Aeneas”1 (I.305).

Pygmalion, her brother, killed her husband out of blind avarice, kept it secret from Dido, and

encouraged her to leave the city of Tyre. She heeds this advice, but not before gathering men and

gold to travel with her. And here Virgil states succinctly but still perfectly capturing this Dido:

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dux femina facti—“a woman was leader of the deed”2 (I.364). The deed is the finding and

settling of Carthage, with Dido as queen.

As Aeneas is lost in the reminders of the Trojan War, the audience is physically

introduced to Dido for the first time. She “paced toward the temple in her beauty…with a throng

of men behind,” (I.676-7) emphasizing her awareness and power contrasted with Aeneas’

distinct lack thereof. And it is no accident that as she finds him, he is looking as his own image

in battle and Amazonian “warrior queen” Penthesilea (I.672). While Dido is not a true soldier,

this still foreshadows the fighting between Aeneas and her, and symbolizes the threat she

represents to the future empire. Nonetheless, Dido accepts the pleas of Aeneas and his crew to

take shelter in her city and shows them the utmost hospitality. But Venus’ anxiety over Dido’s

potential to prevent the realization of Aeneas’ mission spurs on divine intervention; the once

venerable queen Dido is now instead a victim of circumstance.

Venus ensures that Dido will not side with her rival “cruel” Juno, “on account of her

mindful anger”3 at the Trojans, by sending Amor in the guise of Aeneas’ son Ascanius (I.4, 895-

901). She demands that he “ensnare the queen” and “pin her down in passion,” consumed with

love for Aeneas (I.921-2). Amor succeeds; “he had begun to make Sychaeus fade from Dido’s

memory bit by bit, and tried to waken with new love, a living love, her long settled mind and

dormant heart” (I.982-5). The effect is a complete mental transformation, which also incites

physical changes. Once a dutiful ruler, she has now been reduced to being “wounded with

passionate love, nourishing the deadly blow with her veins and consumed by hidden fire”4 (IV.1-

2). Moreover, this opening sentence of Book IV utilizes multiple ablatives of means as well as

carpitur, a passive verbal form, further emphasizing the fact that events are happening to her by
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means other than herself, while she is now a passive figure completely stripped of her former

agency. This devolution continues; Dido abandons the work of her city for this love. “Towers,

half-built, rose no farther; men no longer trained in arms or toiled to make harbors and

battlements impregnable. Projects were broken off, laid over, and the menacing huge walls with

craned unmoving stood against the sky” (IV.121-6). As a queen, she has neglected her duty.

Once surrendering to Venus’ spell, Dido can think only of love.

Eventually, Juno, in an effort to conspire with Venus, plans a hunting trip and storm that

will end in marriage. “Dido and the Trojan captain come to one same cavern. I shall be on hand,

and if I can be certain you are willing, there I shall marry them and call her his. A wedding, this

will be” (IV.173-7). Not fifty lines later, during the hunt, a storm indeed forces Dido and Aeneas

into that “self-same cave.” They consummate their love and “she thought no longer of a secret

love but called it marriage” (IV.227, 236-7). Now just a vehicle to accomplish divinity’s whims,

Dido makes no decisions in her own fate. It is only through unbecoming passion can the gods

curb her power and marriage can they try to tame that passion, thus removing the threat of Dido

entirely. During Aeneas’ first meeting with her, she is compared to Diana, goddess of the hunt,

with great beauty and a confident, tall stride amongst her devotees (I.678-85). Now she is the

hunted, “like a doe hit by an arrow,” and Virgil foreshadows that it is fatal (IV.96-7). What

began as a consuming wound, her love for Aeneas is going to eventually kill her.

The marriage however, even one so convincing to her, does not truly tame Dido’s

passion. And Jupiter, watching from above, sends down Mercury to remind Aeneas of his duty.

Aeneas too has little command over his choices, yet he does not so fiercely fight his destiny nor

is he made wild and irrational over what is happening to him, like Dido becomes. When she

realizes his plans to leave her, “she traversed the whole city, all aflame with rage, like a
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Bacchante driven wild by emblems shaken” (IV.410-2). This reminds us that even though she is

emotional and irate, the cause is a love that robbed her of her agency, the way a Bacchante is out

of control of her own body in service of the gods. The love that Dido feels is genuine, even if

embedded in her to serve divine purpose, in that she believes it to be true and its strength is

overpowering. But when Aeneas assures her he must leave through no fault of his own, Dido’s

passive yielding to forces outside herself finally ends; she resolves to act.

It is only through taking her own life that Dido takes back her agency that was stolen. She

alludes to this in conversation with Aeneas (IV.421, 444), and even assures him that she will

haunt him in death (IV.533). But with her sister’s unknowing help, her suicide is officially set in

motion: “Then unlucky Dido, truly having been frightened by the Fates, prayed for death…and

decided to die”5 (IV.450-1, 475). It is vital that the verb decrevit is in the indicative mood and the

perfect tense. It is not simply a wish or possibility, or even something for the future; she has

already made this decision. Her plan is indeed realized, which cannot be disrupted by anyone

else, despite her dying “before her time” (IV.964). By assuming the role of executioner, a job

usually reserved for the gods, and seeing it through herself, Dido reclaims the agency she once

had before divine intervention. Here, she channels Cleopatra, one of her models, as a foreign

queen who ruled strongly alone with male consorts, also driven to suicide by a tumultuous,

political love. Her death is obviously very personal, but it is also akin to that of Cato the

Younger, who would die before live in a world with Julius Caesar as leader; so too would Dido

rather die as even a futile impediment to Aeneas’ divine mission than live, and therefore approve

of it. Her suicide not only reestablishes her former agency, but also determinedly makes

Carthage a future enemy of Rome, Dido’s “unavenged” death to plague the cities for many wars

(IV.869). Now, like Aeneas’ founding mission with the promised future of Roman glory, Dido’s
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act lives on forever. Her suicide may be upsetting, especially with Aeneas sailing away as it

happens, but since she must die, in order to establish Carthage’s future in the same way Aeneas

must for Rome, death at her own hands, thereby reclaiming her agency, is the only satisfying end

to her life.

“Unlucky Dido” may have been in history and literature previously, but it is Virgil who

truly fleshes her out as the most interesting character in his Aeneid. When Aeneas, “duty-bound,”

leaves Carthage with intent to achieve his mission, he shows himself as her foil, underscoring

how Dido’s initial resistance to divine interference makes her succumbing to it so powerful but

also her eventual overcoming of it through suicide so triumphant, even if brief. While she can, of

course, be seen as a tragic heroine, she is also so much more than simply evoking pity or fear. In

the end, she is the one the gods can’t truly control; she resolves to act and ultimately, dux femina

facti.