ome understand Dido as a Vergilian Cleopatra, a vagina dtente of sorts that must be fought off in place for Aeneas to successfully meet his destiny.Others see her as a representation of Epicureanism, a way of thinking that Aeneas has to reject in favour of the popular Roman ideology of Stoicism.Still others perceive Dido as a tragic figure, a woman who falls deeply in bed with a man who truly loves her in fall and pursues a relationship with him despite both of their knowledge that he is bound for another fate.I contend that Dido is a victim caught in the crossfire of two goddesses: Juno, who has it out for Aeneas and would care for the king to resist him help when he lands on the shores of Carthage, and Venus, Aeneas`s mother, who ensures that Dido will aid in Aeneas`s mission by causing her to settle for the Trojan hero.In the end, Dido is collateral damage, sadly-but necessarily-destroyed in place to check the winner of Aeneas`s imperialistic charge.
There are tons of ways that Vergil demonstrates his sympathy for Dido`s plight and so paints her as a victim.The author portrays Dido as fresh and cautious, but also generous and fair, in her initial dealings with Aeneas and his men: "`Ease your hearts, Trojans, put off your fears. / The threats to my new kingdom here have constrained me / To carefully place guards on all the borders. / Who hasn`t heard about Aeneas`s family, / Or Troy-those brave men and the flames of war? / . . . / I`ll charge you off safe and well-supplied" (17).Vergil also allows us insight into Dido`s heartbroken and humiliated consciousness when Aeneas prepares to leave Carthage a twelvemonth later, in over 10 pages of the queen`s cursing herself for her foolishness to believe in Aeneas`s love and her shame in abandoning the storage of her first husband before she finally takes her own life.Most of all, Vergil depicts Dido as an ideal potential wife-at least within the context of first-century Roman culture that valued familial devotion and a patriarchal family structure.
My most persuasive bit of grounds for this title is that Dido comes to love Aeneas through his child, Ascanius, and is therefore positioned, first and foremost, as a good potential mother.Venus gains admission to Dido`s emotions by sending Cupid in the course of Ascanius to a feast given in Aeneas`s honor soon afterwards he lands in Carthage.Disguised as Aeneas`s son, Cupid crawls into Dido`s lap and easily captures her heart; Dido looks on Ascanius "with lust in her eye" and is "enchanted" by the small boy (21).As was Venus`s plan all along, "unlucky Dido" then transfers her passion for Ascanius to Aeneas himself (22).Had Venus hired one, a modern-day efficiency consultant would surely have here pointed out that she could have skipped a whole step if simply she had only charged Cupid to contain the work of Aeneas instead of Ascanius.Or, she could take simply given Aeneas a divine glow, as Athena grants to Odysseus before he meets Nausicaa (a tantrum that is often compared to Aeneas`s initial meeting with Dido, not incidentally).Desperate to protect her own child, though, Venus seems to recognize Dido`s maternal instinct as her biggest vulnerability and plans her class of action accordingly.In this way, of course, Dido is an ideal potential Roman matron, devoted to her would-be child as good as his father.
Besides loving Aeneas`s small son, Dido proves her worth as an ideal Roman wife in other ways.First of all, as any proper wife should, she expresses reluctance to empty the retention of her dead first husband instead of carelessly entering into a kinship with Aeneas right away; as she considers a future with Aeneas, Dido suffers "an unseen flame [that] gnawed at her hour on hour" (71).Once Dido gives in to her love for Aeneas, though, she centers her existence on this would-be second husband, even neglecting her professional duties as a king to act as a wife to Aeneas.Indeed, it seems that Dido desires for Aeneas to function as a co-ruler of Carthage, to possibly take over the projects that she formerly headed up, as she presents him with a visible symbol of Punic royalty, "a purple cloak with think gold stripes" (78) so like her own "purple robe," "edged with rich embroidery" (74).Dido is clearly willing to allow Aeneas a kingship and to bring her traditionally female place as second-in-command.
Portraying Dido as a potentially ideal wife who is used by the gods and by fate heightens the calamity of this story, an epic which details the sacrifices and death required for the founding of an Empire and, indeed, seems in parts to doubt the overall worth of this venture.In this way, all of the various scholarly perceptions of Dido carry some validity.She is both a tragic figure and interpreter of a variety of Epicureanism, a self-indulgence unbecoming of and visionary for a man as politically important as Aeneas.And, in some ways, Dido is also a figure of the castrating bitch type, a stand-in for Cleopatra who perhaps nearly caused the fall of Rome.Although Vergil characterizes Dido as a potentially loving and devoted mother and wife, she is besides a sexually attractive and aggressive woman, and, as such, she is likewise a potential trap, a risk to Aeneas and, by extension, to Rome.Indeed, Aeneas must pry open the vagina dtente and abandon Dido`s hold on his spirit in place to make his full potential as a reliable man of Rome.
Works Cited
Vergil.The Aeneid.Trans. Sarah Ruden.New Haven: Yale UP, 2008.
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