Enduring Love vs Fleeting Desire

I

Some topics are understood differently depending on the register they're perceived by. Some stories can be interpreted differently depending on which character the audience anchors the story's gravity on. A narrative carries a slightly different meaning if each of the character’s lives has a different backstory and meaning.

I’ve been reading Virgil's Aeneid for about fifteen to twenty years, and yet I still can read it differently. I read it again recently, through a growing fascination for Dido's character (who is part of Books I-VI). For context, Virgil’s Aeneid is the Ancient Roman national epic, antecedent to the founding of Rome, which also makes it an epic poem of the city of Rome. I re-read Books I-VI because I had read a few lines by Dante about the fickleness of women’s love that I didn’t agree with:

Per lei assi di lieve si comprende

Quanto un femmina foco d'amor dura

Se l'occhio o 'l tatto spesso non l'accende.

— Dante, Canto VIII, Purgatorio, La Divina Commedia

Through her example, it is easily known

How briefly the fire of love in woman lasts,

If sight or touch do not keep the embers blown.

Translation by me

They remind me of Ninon de L’Enclos’ lines, who like Ovid, wrote of desire, rather than love:

“The heart must be occupied with some object.

If nature does not incline them in that direction

their affection merely changes its object” — Ninon de L’Enclos.

I don’t think love is so fickle. I think the novelty of passions can be, but I disagree with that’s how women are in love.

L'amore mio per te arde sempre sotto la cenere

My love for you always burns beneath the ashes.

—  Giusseppe Ungaretti

Dante didn't perceive a subterranean psychology. Dante was describing a surface-level fire. He didn't understand that the fire isn’t extinguished, but often simply covered over in hopes to throw grief into oblivion. I thought of Virgil’s Aeneid as a way to contemplate those lines. Eventually, I came to a total opposite view of Dante and Ninon’s lines.

I found that it is not a story of Dido's heartbreak, and Aeneas’ betrayal, as it’s often retold, but a story of Dido’s enduring love to Sichaeus. It made me think about the difference between the volatility of passion, especially when it arrives with novelty, and the endurance of a deep love. I think it’s one of the most dramatic and beautiful stories of enduring love. More so than the myth of Cupid and Psyche, or Orpheus and Euridice. Dido had the strength to live on with love intact. They simply loved, and that love was disrupted by a string of life's turbulent misfortunes. But it’s rarely perceived that way, because the anchor of gravity is always retold from a shallow aperture of melodramatic heartbreak. The smaller the aperture of the lens, the deeper the depth of field, the more broadly we see the story, the more we see it’s not even a tragedy, but a testament of enduring love.

Modern relationship conversation is not about love. It's about desire and self-love. That's great for business because people will keep oscillating between these two things. Playing games to attract, then leaving out of self-love. Two incompatible states that will inevitably reject each other. This is an essay about the eternity of deep love versus the volatility of passion. Love without desire it does not exist. But in enduring love, desire is merely part of a broader architecture. Desire alone is shallow, and is extinguished once satisfied.

This isn’t a Feminist reading. It's not that I'm looking at this from Dido's perspective. I'm looking at it more from Sichaeus' perspective who chiefly represents the gravity of enduring love, since he appears before, during, and after the events. Many famous works of art have been inspired by Dido’s story. The most innovative poet of the English stage, the Renaissance playwright Christopher Marlowe wrote his first play Dido: Queen of Carthage. The greatest English composer Henry Purcell wrote his semi-opera Dido & Aeneas. Even in the ancient Roman times, the Dido narrative is misunderstood, such as in Ovid's Heroides. The focus in these works is misled by focusing on the emotional context of grieving heartbroken love. I don’t recognise Virgil’s Dido in Marlowe, Purcell, Ovid, or any others.

In his La Divina Commedia , Dante puts Dido in the second circle of Hell, where she is condemned among the lustful to be hurled for eternity in a relentless storm:

“And this I learned was the never-ending flight

For those who sinned in the flesh, the carnal, and lusty

Who betrayed Reason to their appetite

…

The other is Dido, faithless to the ashes

Of Sichaeus, she killed herself for love.”

Dante, Inferno, Canto V

Contrary to Dante’s view of Dido as lustful, his contemporaries Petrarch and Boccaccio portray Dido as a faithful wife to Sichaeus. Essentially, ever since the Renaissance, desire has been confused with love. From the High Renaissance onwards the story becomes exclusively a melodrama of Dido’s imploding passion leading to her suicide. Though readers are emotionally moved by the ending of Book IV, her story is much broader, and even continues beyond her death in Book IV, since we see in the Underworld in Book VI.

Truthfully there are two stories overlapping. Virgil focuses objectively on the divine mission of founding Rome. In the Aeneid, the theme is Pietas (Higher Duty). The whole of Aeneid is anchored on duty towards a divine responsibility. Aeneas’ encounter with Dido is seen by the gods as a deviation from his pietas. Even Virgil says that Dido is seen as forgetful of her royal duty; both irresponsible by putting private passions above public duty. This encounter is the deviation, which in the Aeneid, would mean a loss of the founding of Rome. For Virgil’s national epic, Dido was a problematic intervention. The gods make this explicitly clear, having to fly down from Olympus twice to try to recall Aeneas back to his purpose. Aeneas is reminded twice to leave; once when awake and again within a dream. After all, Virgil’s audience would have been thinking of General Antonius and Cleopatra, and the Civil Wars of recent years.

But if we slightly dislocate Dido from Aeneas’ story and see the story of her own character within the same events – not telling Virgil’s story, nor Aeneas’ story, but looking at what Dido goes through – it’s not a love story between Dido and Aeneas at all, but between Dido and the enduring love of her murdered husband, Sichaeus. From Aeneas’ perspective the narrative between Books I-IV are about the founding of Rome. But for Dido, we arrive to her story of building a new city after having emigrated to a new country. after the death of her husband, who she reunites with in Book VI. This pulls apart the very idea of this being a romantic story of the love between Dido and Aeneas.

“Envy is destroyed by true friendship, flirtation by true love” François de la Rochefoucauld.

What may appear to readers as a love story, is two different life narratives that briefly overlap and then diverge back into their original paths. Their brief passion doesn’t unite Dido and Aeneas, it disturbs each of their individual narratives. It’s intensity without continuity. It is a story about what happens when love appears in a life where love already exists, and in a life where a passionate encounter cannot be allowed to remain. Aeneas is an intense but artificial interlude — a passion engineered by the gods — and Aeneas is more or less what today would be a called rebound partner for Dido. Not a love. Whereas Sichaeus represents a deeper, enduring fidelity that survives death itself. Virgil in this way distinguishes between passion that overwhelms and a love that endures. Ultimately, disagreeing with the lines Dante gives to Nino Visconti quoted earlier.

So, I want to walk you through the story from Dido’s perspective, of volatile passion versus enduring love.

J. M. W. Turner "Dido Building Carthage" (1815)

II

The whole impetus for the story of Virgil’s Aeneid, is the resentment of Juno (Zeus’ wife. Hera. In Roman Mythology, Hera is Juno and Zeus is Jupiter or Jove). Juno was on the Greek’s side during the Trojan War. Seven years have passed since the Greeks won the Trojan War, and Aeneas fled burning city of Troy. During that time, Aeneas and his ships have been knocked about the seas and islands. The opening lines of the poem establish this:

“Arms and the man I sing, who, forced by Fate,

And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,

Expelled and exiled, left the Trojan shore.

...

What goddess was provoked, and whence her hate;

For what offence the queen of heaven began.

To persecute so brave, so just a man;”

When we meet Juno at the opening of the book she is still consumed by resentment towards the Trojans and bitter that they will have a future glory of founding Rome. So, she persuades the god Aeolus to create a sea storm to wreck the ships of Aeneas’ fleet. Neptune eventually sees this storm and overrules Aeolus (because Neptune ranks higher) to calm the seas. So, Aeneas and what remains of his ships wash up wrecked on the shores of Carthage, which is a beloved city of Juno’s.

“Against the River's mouth, but far away,

An ancient town was seated on the sea —

...

Carthage the name — beloved by Juno more

Than her own Argos, or the Samian shore.”

Disguised as a farmer, Venus, his mother, tells Aeneas about Queen Dido of Carthage when he is surveying the land, that Dido is from Tyre, and how she came to be building city-state of Carthage.

"Who fled from Tyre to shun her brother's hate.

Great were her wrongs, her story full of fate;"

Within this speech, she tells us about Dido’s former husband Sichaeus:

"Sichaeus, known

For wealth, and brother to the Punic throne,

Possessed fair Dido's bed; and either heart

At once was wounded with an equal dart."

Dido’s husband, Sichaeus, was murdered at a sacred alter, of which he was also the priest, by Dido's brother King Pygmalion of Tyre. The events were hidden from Dido, and she was left grieving for her dead husband without knowing the true cause of his death. The ghost of Sichaeus appears to Dido in the night and tells her in detail the true cause of his death. He insists that she leave, but not without first finding his buried wealth to escape with. Dido escapes from Tyre by ship and ends up in Libya where she uses that wealth to build the Tyrian colony of Carthage. The appearance of Sichaeus to her as a shade, to encourage her to flee to Libya, to find his hidden wealth, to build the city of Carthage, is an act of fidelity by her husband, faithful to her in his death.

Virgil explains the multitude of reasons for Juno's hatred towards Aeneas. Meanwhile, Carthage is not only a beloved place of Juno, but Dido makes frequent offering to Juno there. Meaning this arrival could potentially be dangerous to Aeneas. So, Jove also helps, after reassuring Venus that Aeneas is fated to succeed. Jove sends Mercury/Hermes (but Dryden uses the epithet Cyllenius) to grant the Trojans safe entry to Carthage. This is because hospitality is important to Jove.

"[Jove] said, and sent Cyllenius with command

To free the ports, and [open] the Punic land

To Trojan guest; lest, ignorant of fate,

The queen might force them from her town and state.

Down from the steep of heaven Cyllenius flies,

And cleaves with all his wings the yielding skies.

Soon on the Libyan shore descends the god,

Performs his message, and displays his rod.

The surly murmurs of the people cease;

And, as the fates required, they give the peace.

The queen herself suspends the rigid laws,

The Trojan pities, and protects their cause.”

To further ensure Aeneas’ personal safety at Carthage, Venus requests her son, Cupid, to make Dido be consumed with passion for Aeneas, so that Dido will take care of him whilst he is there, since the place of Carthage is sacred to Juno.

“But Venus, anxious for her son's affairs,

New counsels tries, and new designs prepares:

That Cupid should assume the shape and face

Of sweet Ascanius, and the sprightly grace;

...

And thus, alarmed, to winged Love she spoke:

...

Him now Dido now with blandishment detains;

But I suspect the town where Juno reigns.

For this, 'tis needful to prevent her art,

And fire with love the proud Phoenician's heart —

A love so violent, so strong, so sure,

That neither she can change, nor art can cure.

....

The god of love obeys, and sets aside

His bow and quiver, and his plumy pride.”

John Dryden’s 17th century translation which I’m using here, often refers to Dido as the "unhappy queen" but she's introduced as "The beauteous Dido" and her movement as "She walks majestic, and she looks their queen."

“Unhappy Dido little thought, what guest,

How dire a god she drew so near her breast,

But he, not mindless of his mother's prayer,

Works in the pliant bosom of the fair,

And moulds her heart anew, and blots her former care

The dead is to the living love resigned;

And all Aeneas enters her mind.”

Cupid, whose name means desire, is the god of desire and passionate love. The child of Venus and Mars. While modern popular culture often portrays him as a harmless symbol of romance, his original role was more implosive and compelling erotic force. Cupid does not destroy the memory of Sichaeus, his dart of love only supresses the priority of that love for Dido. Before Aeneas arrived, Dido was already building a city out of the advice and means of a fidelity to her dead husband.

“The prince with wonder sees the stately town

...

The toiling Tyrians on each other call

To ply their labour: some build a wall

...

Admired the fortune of the rising town

Their striving artists, and their art's renown.”

Virgil expresses how Aeneas appears, both to us and to Dido.

“The Trojan chief appeared in open sight,

August in visage, and serenely bright.

His mother goddess, with her hands divine,

Had formed his curling locks, and made his temples shine,

And given his rolling eyes a sparkling grace,

And breathed a youthful vigour on his face;

Like polished ivory, beauteous to behold,”

And when Dido saw him:

“The Tyrian queen stood fixed upon his face,

Pleased with his motions, ravished with his grace;

Admired his fortunes, more admired the man;”

Dido hasn't moved on from Sichaeus. Aeneas becomes the numbing passion because he feels like the man she already lost. Aeneas is a rebound passion.

"But anxious cares already seized the queen;

She fed within her veins a flame unseen

The hero's valour, acts, and birth, inspire

Her soul with love, and fan the secret fire.

His word, his looks, imprinted in her heart.”

Yet not only is Cupid’s dart working in her chest, but she’s already conflicted, having been emotionally worn out by the grief of her previous marriage.

“Of hapless marriage – never to be cursed

With second love, so fatal was my first–

For this one error I might yield again;

For since Sichaeus was ultimately slain,

This only man is able to subvert

The fixed foundations of my stubborn heart.

And to confess my frailty, to my shame,

Somewhat I find within, if not the same,

Too like the sparkles of my former flame.

...

No! He who had my vows, shall ever have,

For, whom I loved on earth, I worship in the grave."

And she’s not saying it with passion and desire. She’s saying it heartbroken, conflicted, and confused.

“She said: the tears ran gushing from her eyes.”

Dido’s sister then does not discuss love but the dangerous circumstances that beset then to which Aeneas would be move towards her safety of survival. Anna’s logic is Dido is a widow surrounded by enemies so Aeneas could be utilised as a protector, for security and stability. As Ninon de L’Enclos says “You think you are loved because you are lovable, but it is only because you are a man.”

“For since Sichaeus was untimely slain,

This only man is able to subvert

The fixed foundations of my stubborn heart

…

Somewhat I find within, if not the same,

Too like the sparkles of my former flame.”

“We women enter the world with this necessity of loving undefined, and if we take one man in preference to another, let us say so honestly, we use less to the knowledge of merit than to a mechanical instinct which is nearly always blind” — Ninon de L’Enclos.

“This pomp she shows, to tempt her wandering guest;

Her faltering tongue forbids to speak the rest.

When day declines, and feasts renew the night,

Still on his face she feeds her famished sight;”

In Aeneid Book IV, Dido had gained Aeneas’ heart through splendour, hospitality, and intimacy. Dido threw banquets, told stories, and displayed the wealth of Carthage. She created an environment where Aeneas could "dissolve in ease." It worked perfectly while Aeneas was a broken refugee. He was looking for a port, and she provided the most beautiful one on earth. Through Cupid's dart. Aeneas overcomes her stubborn heart (the ruins of her first husband).

Virgil even explicitly refers to it as desire, as an inflamed passion, a lust:

“A gentle fire she feeds within her veins,

Where the soft god secure in silence reigns.

Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves,”

What’s interesting is Virgil pulls the action back from the subjective emotion of the scene to the objective view of the two gods Venus and Juno talking about it. Juno looks on, who loves Carthage and hates Aeneas. Venus and Juno are the two who preside over marriage. So, Juno designs for Aeneas and Dido to be married. It sounds like Juno doesn’t care for Dido, but Juno’s plan is to keep Aeneas on Carthage so that he doesn’t fulfil his destiny of founding Rome.

“But when imperial Juno, from above,

Saw Dido fettered in the chains of love,

Hot with the venom which her veins inflamed,

And by no sense of shame to be reclaimed,

With soothing words to Venus she begun:

“High praises, endless honours, you have won,

And mighty trophies, with your worthy son!

Two gods a silly woman have undone!”

But Venus has already spoken to Zeus earlier, who assured Venus that Aeneas’ destiny will be fulfilled. So, Venus is steps ahead of Juno’s plan.

“The Queen of Love consents, and closely smiles

At her vain project, and discovered wiles.”

Back on earth, a royal hunt is underway, and Juno causes a storm to disrupt the hunt, separating the group, forcing Aeneas and Dido into a cave, where they have sex. The original Latin makes it explicit. The pair are said to come together in a cave:

“speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem

deveniunt; prima et Tellus et pronuba Iuno”

“The queen, whom sense of honour could not move,

No longer made a secret of her love,

But called it marriage, by that specious name

To veil the crime and sanctify the shame.”

This incites Fame, the goddess of distorted gossip, to spread the word of their marriage as a neglect of duty. Fame makes everyone speak about the pair:

“The loud report through Libyan cities goes.

Fame, the great ill, from small beginnings grows –

…

Things done relates, not done she feigns, and mingles truth with lies.

Talk is her business, and her chief delight”

As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke said “Fame is nothing but the sum of all the misunderstandings that cluster around a new name.”

Fame spreads the rumour as a shameful act of neglect of duty for private pleasures, which contrasts with the way that Virgil introduced her royalty in Book I.

“She fills the people’s ears with Dido’s name,

Who, lost to honour and the sense of shame,

Admits into her throne and nuptial bed

A wandering guest, who from his country fled:

Whole days with him she passes in delights,

And wastes in luxury long winter nights,

Forgetful of her fame and royal trust,

Dissolved in ease, abandoned to her lust!”

We’re told the whole city of Carthage comes to a standstill because she is lost into her passion:

“Meantime the rising towers are at a stand;

No labours exercise the youthful band,

Nor use of arts, nor toils of arms they know;

The mole is left unfinished to the foe;

The mounds, the works, the walls, neglected lie,

Short of their promised height, that seemed to threat the sky,”

This rumour of fame spreads far and wide until it reaches the ears of a local Libyan ruler called Iarbas, who was a rejected suitor of Dido. Until Cupid pierced Dido’s heart for Aeneas, Dido had rejected her suitors. At the beginning of Book IV, Dido’s sister Anna had mentioned Iarbas as a rejected suitor. Anna had said:

“The vows of Tyrian princes to neglect,

To scorn Iarbas and his love reject.”

So naturally, Iarbus reacts badly to the news that Dido has chosen a foreign, war-defeated refugee as a lover. Virgil narrates:

“He, when he heard a fugitive could move

The Tyrian princess, who disdained his love,”

Iarbas doesn’t love Dido. He has a desire that has turned to resentment from rejection, out of a male insecurity of not being sexually chosen. Iarbus says:

“A wandering woman builds, within our state,

A little town, bought at an easy rate;

…

Yet, scorning me, by passion blindly led,

Admits a banished Trojan to her bed!

…

He takes the spoil, enjoys the princely dame;

And I, rejected I, adore an empty name.”

Iarbas then, with resentment towards Dido and envy at the shipwrecked exile that is Aeneas, makes an offering to Jove in prayer to get rid of him. Jove turns his eyes toward the mortal earth and sees Aeneas and Dido amidst their passion:

"Then cast his eyes on Carthage, where he found

The lustful pair in lawless pleasure drowned,

Lost in their loves, insensible of shame,

And both forgetful of their better fame.”

Jove is annoyed because Aeneas is hindering Fate, which it’s Jove’s role to ensure is fulfilled, though he isn’t the writer of Fate. So, Jove sends Mercury down to persuade Aeneas to resume his destiny to travel to Hesperia (western Italy) and found Rome. When Mercury finds Aeneas, he is helping to build Carthage, wearing a sword that is purely for decoration not for war.

“Arriving there, he found the Trojan prince

New ramparts raising for the town’s defence.

A purple scarf, with gold embroidered o’er,

(Queen Dido’s gift,) about his waist he wore;

A sword, with glittering gems diversified,

For ornament, not use, hung idly by his side.”

Mercury then has some sexist remarks against Aeneas, calling him “woman’s property” to make him feel emasculated.

“Who sways the world below and heaven above,

Has sent me down with this severe command:

What means thy lingering in the Libyan land?”

After all, however, Aeneas wasn’t stung by Cupid’s dart. It is his own agency to feel for her. Though it’s the gods that desire Aeneas to leave Dido, Aeneas chooses how and when to do this of his own free will. Dido has been the unfortunate pawn in all of this.

“Of Rome’s imperial name is owed by fate.”

So spoke the god; and, speaking, took his flight,

Involved in clouds, and vanished out of sight.”

Aeneas then decides on one of two lives. One being content to live on Carthage, and the other a destiny of Rome being unfulfilled.

“The pious prince was seized with sudden fear;

Mute was his tongue, and upright stood his hair.

Revolving in his mind the stern command,

He longs to fly, and loathes the charming land.”

After contemplating what to do, he decides to leave, and tells his commanders to prepare the fleet. His plan is to get ready to leave in secret so once he tells Dido, he can leave immediately. But Dido is not stupid and she senses something is going on.

“But soon the queen perceives the thin disguise:

(What arts can blind a jealous woman’s eyes!)

She was the first to find the secret fraud,

Before the fatal news was blazed abroad.

Love the first motions of the lover hears,

Quick to presage, and even in safety fears.”

Dido goes all over Carthage trying to find Aeneas, and eventually finds him near the ships, where she confronts him:

“Base and ungrateful! could you hope to fly,

And undiscovered scape a lover’s eye?”

She talks about how much she has sacrificed and risked for him. Given that there were Tyrian and Libyan suitors she rejected, who are now resentful. But Aeneas tries to defend himself. But avoids all accountability. No god put it into his head to leave in secret, they only told him to remember his destiny, but he speaks as if they did.

“This only let me speak in my defence:

I never hoped a secret flight from hence,

…

Fair queen, oppose not what the gods command;

Forced by my fate, I leave your happy land.”

When Aeneas breaks, he tries to soften the blow:

“Nor can my mind forget Eliza’s* name

Whilst vital breath inspires this mortal frame.”

*Eliza (Sometimes Elissa) is the original Tyrian name of Dido. But she has no patience for his defence.

“Thus while he spoke, already she began

With sparkling eyes to view the guilty man;

From head to foot surveyed this person o’er;”

Dido response is brutal. She literally compares him to shit.

“Not sprung from noble-blood, nor goddess born

But hewn from hardened entrails of a rock!”

Then proceeds to demean him some more before saying there is nothing lower.

“All, symptoms of a base ungrateful mind,

So foul, that which is worse, is hard to find.”

Yet, of course, from all she’s been through, she has no belief in any justice in the universe of any kind.

“Nor Juno views my wrongs with equal eyes:

Faithless is the earth, and faithless are the skies!

Justice is fled, and truth is now no more!”

Now she thinks of him with regret:

“I took the traitor to my throne and bed

Fool that I was!”

Dido thinks of all she’s sacrificed and risked, and fears what her future will be now:

“For you I have provoked a tyrant’s hate,

Incensed the Libyan and the Tyrian state;

For you alone I suffer in my fame,

Bereft of honour, and exposed to shame.

Whom have I now to trust, ungrateful guest?

(That only name remains of all the rest!)

What have I left? or whither can I fly?

Must I attend Pygmalion’s cruelty,

Or till Hyarba shall in triumph lead

A queen that proudly scorned his proffered bed?”

Dido even wishes Aeneas had left her a son who could take his place and have the likeness of Aeneas.

“Had you deferred, at least, your hasty flight,

And left behind some pledge of our delight,

Some babe to bless the mother’s mournful sight,

Some young Aeneas, to supply your place,

Whose features might express his father’s face;”

Yet Aeneas cowardly deflects responsibility to the gods and claims, which Dido finds this callous and dishonourable. She answers him:

"I rave! I rave! a god's command he pleads

And makes heaven an accessory to his deeds."

Then spitefully reinforces his own wishes:

"But go! Thy flight I no longer detain

Go! Seek thy promised kingdom through the main."

And follows it with a vengeful prayer, wishing violent waves to sink his ships, so then she will rise from the deep in satisfaction, as though all that passion of love from a broken heart now becomes a passion of hatred:

“Yet, if the heavens will hear my pious vow

,…

Dido shall come in a black sulphury flame,

When death has once dissolved her mortal frame;

Shall smile to see the traitor vainly weep:

Her angry ghost, arising from the deep,

Shall haunt thee waking, and disturb thy sleep.”

By the animosity of these lines, one can only imagine what the Ancient women who inspired her character were like in Ancient Rome from the fire and animation that Virgil gives Dido in response to rejection.

Sometimes, an undesired breakup, is felt emotionally so physically that it feels it may only be physically addressed. Whether more so in women or men I don't know. A person may aim to numb it, to quiet and cool it, even supress that feeling of loss. They aim merely to forget the emotion. The original love is never fully cleared but merely buried under new noise. Aeneas was new noise that clouds Sichaeus from Dido.

Dido then leaves, leaving Aeneas speechless from guilt and pity. Virgil narrates:

"But good Aeneas, though he much desired

To give that pity which her grief required

...

Resolved at length, obeys the will of Jove."

Aeneas obviously recognises the relationship is over, and his focus is elsewhere, no longer participating in the emotional or sensual dynamic between them, and moves on with his larger destiny to travel to Hesperia. He goes to make sure everything is prepared to set sail.

But Cupid's dart is unmerciful. Dido, despite her harsh words is not finished in her desire, and sees all this happening:

“What pangs the tender breast of Dido tore,

When, from the tower, she saw the covered shore,”

Virgil makes reflective commentary on the turning nature of lover’s hearts that can swing between extremes:

“All-powerful Love! what changes canst thou cause

In human hearts, subjected to thy laws!”

Dido turns to her sister Anna asking her to go to Aeneas and tell him that she didn't really want him to go.

“Look, Anna! look! the Trojans crowd to sea;

…

A short delay is all I ask him now

A pause of grief, an interval of woe

Until my soft soul be tempered to sustain

Accustomed to sorrows and inured to pain."

Dido asks Anna because she says that Anna was Aeneas’ favourite Tyrian friend. Dido wants Aeneas to stay longer so his loving presence remains long enough for her to be over him when he can leave without her feeling the pain of it. Virgil says however:

"But all her arts are still employed in vain:

Again she comes, and is refused again.

His hardened heart nor prayer nor threatenings move;

Fate, and the god, had stopped his ears to love."

The first card in the game of desire is the invitation to 'play.' One person accepts, and the game is in play. In the beginning, sometimes disinterested can be turned to interest. However, once desire fades and someone becomes disinterested, focusing elsewhere, invitations become futile. They can only extend the invitation to someone new. Unlike love, desire is fickle, and even when flammable, it’s soon consumed.

Virgil narrates that Dido then sinks into existential despair:

“The wretched queen, pursued by cruel fate,

Begins at length the light of heaven to hate,

And loathes to live.”

There is a strange thing that happens when Dido is trying to make a prayer to the gods. The wine she pours turns to blood, and the milk becomes mud. And she hears voices from a marble temple erected in honour of her former husband, Sichaeus’, as if these voices invite her to death. She doesn’t tell anyone that these paranormal things happened, but she feels that it’s a bad omen. She hears foreboding owls screech throughout the night. She has recurring nightmares of Aeneas’ rejection andthe ensuing abandonment of her people. Virgil describes the black weight of her mind:

"To wander in her sleep, through ways unknown,

Guideless and dark; or, in a desert plain,

To seek her subjects, and to seek in vain:”

This passion that Cupid ignited, which was an idea by Venus to keep Aeneas safe, as the consequence of Dido’s existential mentality is now steeped in depression.

“Now, sinking underneath a load of grief,

From death alone she seeks her last relief;”

She then has a wild excitement that often follows depression, wherein Dido decides to try black magic, saying she has been taught it from a Massylian priestess. She tells her sister to help her prepared a magic ritual, which will “unbind the chains of love” and she will no longer feel a longing for Aeneas. She tells Anna to pile up some logs and bring all of Aeneas’ things so she can burn them on the fire.

“Erect a lofty pile, exposed in air:

…

Spoils, arms, and presents, of my faithless guest.

Next, under these, the bridal bed be placed,

Where I my ruin in his arms embraced:

All relics of the wretch are doomed to fire;”

But secretly Dido is asking Anna to help prepare her own funeral pyre where she can immolate herself. Anna has no idea because Virgil says Anna already saw Dido in such a state when Sichaeus died.

“Yet the mistrustless Anna could not find

The secret funeral in these rites designed;

Nor thought so dire a rage possessed her mind.”

Once everything is prepared, in the middle of the night, Dido appears without her royal clothing; she walks barefoot, her hair is loose and long, and she wears a long robe with a belt around the middle. Virgil says it was so silent that it was as if all the world was asleep except Dido. Dido then invokes chthonic deities, those gods from below the earth; Night, Darkness, Chaos, Hecate, and Diana. Pours libation to the ground and asks all the gods to witness her act who may care of injured love.

”Despair, and rage, and love, divide her heart

Despair and rage had some, but love the greater part."

Dido takes a moment, revolving in her mind what she should do, what other choice she has. The cruellest line Virgil gives is her reflection that had this not happened she would be fine:

“Had I continued free, and still my own;

(Avoiding love), I had not found despair,”

Not Aeneas who broke her heart to leave, but Cupid who ignited the passion in the first place. A passion that swung from desire to rage. Meanwhile, Aeneas is fast sleep, just thinking about setting sail first thing in the morning. Then Mercury (Hermes) appears to him again in his sleep, whispering into his ear to not wait but to set sail immediately because Dido has a hatred and he will receive the effects of it. There seems to be no concern for Dido, Mercury seems to imply that she is “obstinate to die” but seems to encourage Aeneas to leave before he suffers the effects of it.

“Woman’s a various and a changeful thing.’

Thus Hermes in the dream; then took his flight

Aloft in air unseen, and mixed with night.”

Aeneas leaps out of his sleep and immediately commands his fleet to prepare to set sail before dawn. Aeneas says after waking from a dream "To the blessed orders, I resign my heart" recalling Mercury in his dream. But soon dawn, Aurora (dawn), rises, and from the palace towers, the queen looks toward the shore and sees the ships have all gone. That Aeneas fled in the night.

“Stung with despite and furious with despair

She struck her trembling breast, and tore her hair.”

She ignites into a fiery rage, first saying she should send ships in pursuit, then saying she should have torn him to pieces when she had the chance, or left him exposed to wild animals, or killed all his friends, or destroyed their fleet of ships. But she decides instead to pray to the gods that they avenge her death upon Aeneas. She prays that Aeneas has the exact opposite arrival to Italy. None of the hospitality that he was shown at Carthage, but that he meets a warlike people, who outnumber his army, and want nothing more than to kill him, for his army to be cowardly and to watch them die, before he is killed, and left unburied on the shore.

“These are my prayers, and this my dying will;

And you, my Tyrians, every curse fulfil.    

Perpetual hate and mortal wars proclaim,

Against the prince, the people, and the name.

…

Now, and from hence, in every future age,”

This is really important, as it's cleverly referencing the future Hannibal of Carthage who nearly destroyed Rome during the Punic Wars between 218–201 BC. Virgil literally has Dido say here:

“Rise some avenger from our Libyan blood.”

Which every Roman reading or hearing it, would think of Hannibal. The Roman poet, Silius Italicus nods to this in his own epic poem Punica, saying that Hannibal swore an oath to avenge Dido as cause for the Punic Wars.

Dido then says to Barce, who was the nursemaid of Sichaeus, to go find her sister Anna, so they can prepare a sacrifice. Again, Dido insists that this is a love spell to free her from her passion:

“Thus, will I pay my vows to Stygian Jove,

And end the cares of my disastrous love;

Then cast the Trojan image on the fire,

And, as that burns, my passions shall expire.”

As Barce goes to fetch Anna, Dido is in a state of where depression becomes mania or insanity Where rage becomes so self-directed it seeks out pain to both punish and please itself, feeling powerless to any other cause.

“Red were her rolling eyes, and discomposed her pace;

Ghastly she gazed, with pain she drew her breath,”

I’ll let Virgil describe her next action:

“Then swiftly to the fatal place she passed,

And mounts the funeral pile with furious haste;

Unsheathes the sword the Trojan left behind

(Not for so dire an enterprise designed).

But when she viewed the garments loosely spread,

Which once he wore, and saw the conscious bed,

She paused, and with a sigh the robes embraced;

Then on the couch her trembling body cast,

Repressed the ready tears, and spoke her last:

“Dear pledges of my love, while Heav’n so pleased,

Receive a soul, of mortal anguish eased:

My fatal course is finished; and I go,

A glorious name, among the ghosts below.

A lofty city by my hands is raised,

Pygmalion punished, and my lord appeased.

What could my fortune have afforded more,

Had the false Trojan never touched my shore!”

Then kissed the couch; and,

“Must I die,” she said,

“And unrevenged? ’Tis doubly to be dead!

Yet even this death with pleasure I receive:

On any terms, ’tis better than to live.

…

She said, and struck; deep entered in her side

The piercing steel, with reeking purple dyed:

Clogged in the wound the cruel weapon stands;

The spouting blood came streaming on her hands.

Her sad attendants saw the deadly stroke,

And with loud cries the sounding palace shook.”

Fame enters again to spread word of her death around the region, causes all the town to cry. Soon it reaches news of Anna, who quickly runs to where Dido is, and is equally devastated at Dido’s death as that she was also tricked to help it happen. What’s worse is that Dido’s not yet even dead. Anna tears her own clothes to try to stop the bleeding. Dido attempts to raise her head:

"Thrice Dido tried to raise her drooping head,

And, fainting thrice, fell grovelling on the bed;

Thrice opened her heavy eyes, and sought the light,

But, having found it, sickened at the sight,

And closed her lids at last in endless night.”

But Juno sees this and for the first time some compassion is shown towards Dido. Juno pities that she is dying so slowly and agonisingly. Juno sends Iris down (Juno's messenger goddess similar to what Mercury is to Jove) to “dissolve her life.” Virgil explicitly says that Dido’s cause of death was due to a rage of passion that plunged her into despair. Yet even in Death, Dido has a problem of Fate. It was not decided by the Three Sisters of Fate for her to die. So, there was no preparation for her soul to go to the afterlife. The passion of Dido was so strong that her action defied Fate, not only the Sisters, but Zeus who is to bring to fulfilment the Fates decree. So, Iris swoops down to Dido and cuts a lock of her hair in order to prepare her soul to be released from her body.

“Downward the [rainbow] goddess took her flight,

And drew a thousand colours from the light;

Then stood above the dying lover’s head,

And said: “I thus devote thee to the dead.

His offering to the infernal gods I bear.”

Thus while she spoke, she cut the fatal hair:

The struggling soul was loosed, and life dissolved in air.”

Immediately in Book V, we resume the epic from Aeneas’ perspective, whilst his ships having sailed away from Carthage, but he looks back to the shore.

“Meantime the Trojan cuts his watery way,

Fixed in his voyage, through the curling sea;

Then, casting back his eyes, with dire amaze,

Sees on the Punic shore the mounting blaze:

The cause unknown, yet his presaging mind

The fate of Dido from the fire divined.

He knew the stormy souls of womankind;

What secret springs their eager passions move,”

Aeneas does not dismiss his feelings so much as he rediscovers his higher duty. In that moment, he stops being consort; it is a reordering of priorities, a life once again seen in proportions larger than the claims of feeling, than his emotional state.

Recall in Books II & III whilst Aeneas is recounting his escape from Troy, Aeneas' wife is called Cruesa, daughter of Troy's King Priam of Troy. Whilst Aeneas' family is escaping burning Troy, Cruesa falls behind and is lost in the burning city. She then appears as a ghost in Book II to prophecy his remarriage to Lavinia in Hesperia. Cruesa doesn't mention Dido. Showing that Aeneas and Dido, is a passionate transitory encounter, along his longer journey.

Yet, the story is not finished. In Book VI, when Aeneas goes to the underworld, one of the dead souls he sees is Dido’s.

“Not far from these, Phoenician Dido stood,

Fresh from her wound, her bosom bathed in blood;

…

With tears he first approached the sullen shade;

And as his love inspired him, thus he said:”

Aeneas still shuns accountability, and tries to reason that it’s not his fault. He tells her that it was the gods that both brought him to Carthage and encouraged him to leave, and they who also brought him to the underworld. Saying that he was “Commanded by the gods, and forced by Fate.”

“Love is extinguished by a resistance too severe or too constant” — Ninon de L’Enclos.

Virgil then describes Dido’s reaction:

"In vain, he thus attempts her mind to move

With tears and prayers, and late repenting love.

Disdainfully she looked; then turning round,

She fixed her eyes unmoved upon the ground;

And, what he says and swears, regards no more

Then the deaf rocks, when the loud billows roar:

But whirled away, to shun his hateful sight,

Hid in the forest, and the shades of night:

Then sought Sichaeus through the shady grove,

Who answered all her cares, and equalled all her love."

In death, now relieved of Cupid’s wound of passion, Dido returns to Sichaeus who she had truly loved before the gods intervened. Sichaeus also embodies François de la Rochefoucaud’s maxim that "we forgive as far as we love." It’s also worth noting that, Virgil’s Underworld operates differently to Homer’s. In Homer’s Odyssey, the souls of the Underworld need to drink blood to be able to speak and recount memories. But in Virgil’s they don’t. This is important because it means Dido can speak, but chooses not to. Watching her disappear into the shadows of the Underworld, Virgil tells us:

“Some pious tears the pitying hero paid”

Book VI

Once in the underworld, Dido reverts to the love that never truly left her heart. Sichaeus was enduring love. For Aeneas, once desire left, love was gone. For Sichaeus, so long as Dido exists love exists, in death as well as life. Dido returning to her dead husband shows that older love is stronger than new passions. Cupid's dart of desire was so strong, she killed herself over a man she will now not even speak to and now free of Cupid's curse will return to her husband.

 “When their lover departs, love remains” — Ninon de L’Enclos

III

In Dante's triple lines, Dante thought Nino Visconti’s Beatrice d'Este was fickle because she moved to a new man. But Virgil shows in his poem that the new man (Aeneas) was actually the fleeting one. The permanent resident of the woman's heart (Dido) was the enduring man (Sichaeus) all along.

Death and Divinity bookend the whole narrative of Dido. It was Juno, in Book I, who was the primary cause of Aeneas being shipwrecked on Carthage, and it was Venus’ idea for Dido to fall for Aeneas. It was the death of Sichaeus why Dido was building Carthage and it was in death she reunited with him. And it was due to Juno, sending Iris down, in Book IV, why Dido ended her life like a sacrifice – the cut lock of hair, the sword in the side that bleeds, the fire on the pyre – as Proserpina (Queen of the Underworld) must cut a lock of hair from those who die to release the soul from her body for the afterlife. Because Dido’s death was defiant of Fate but born of passionate rage, Proserpina hadn't prepared for her. The death of Dido ultimately becomes a divine act and a pious one. So, Virgil keeps the perspective of the narrative in the realm of gods.

Dido’s most intense love is not her deepest. Aeneas was an imploding passion, but not an enduring love. Dido and Sichaeus shows what remains when pleasure, presence, and possibility are removed. In a socially immature world, love is reduced to vanity and amusement, and every sentiment of depth is dismissed as “Romantic.” Dido’s story, within the Aeneid, shows that while passion belongs to the novelty of encounters, love belongs to the road of life, it endures across distance, time, and even death.