Thursday, November 29, 2012

Dido and Aeneas

Dido and Aeneas, by Pierre-Narcisse Guerin (1774-1833), French Neoclassical painter

  The Roman poet Virgil used part of the story of Dido in his epic the Aeneid .
 In Virgil's account, the Trojan leader Aeneas was shipwrecked on the shore near Carthage at the time when Dido was building the new city. After welcoming Aeneas and his men, the queen fell deeply in love with him. In time, the two lived together as wife and husband, and Aeneas began to act as though he were king of Carthage. Then Jupiter  sent a messenger to tell Aeneas that he could not remain in Carthage. Rather, his destiny was to found a new city for the Trojans in Italy. Dido was devastated when she heard that Aeneas planned to leave. She had believed that the two of them would eventually marry. Aeneas insisted that he had no choice but to obey the gods, and shortly afterward, he and his men set sail for Italy. When Dido saw the ships sail out to sea, she ordered a funeral pyre to be built. She climbed onto to it, cursed Aeneas, and using a sword he had given her, stabbed herself to death.

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