Basically, love sucks.
As we discussed in class on Wednesday, Aeneus and Dido’s love story is twisted and confused right from the beginning. Vergil uses this part of the story to expose, perhaps, that love, and maybe even life in general, isn’t happy-go-lucky all the time, and that, yeah, sometimes it does suck.
Dido is just one of those girls who can’t have her way with love. She is known as an established and confident ruler of Carthage, and rules alongside her husband Sychaeus, until he is murdered by Dido’s own brother, Pygmalion. After leaving, yet still focusing on her political responsibilities, she vows to never marry again in honor of her dead husband.
So before Aeneus even comes into the picture, love is already screwed up for Dido. And then she falls victim to Cupid’s arrow, and the two become lovers for awhile. Dido explains her “love-sickness” as a flame or inward fire, which, at a first glance, doesn’t mean much, since flames and fire are overly used, almost cheesy (think of every boy-band love song) description of love, but flames are also destructive and dangerous, which is what Dido’s love for Aeneus becomes.
In my opinion, Dido is kind of a wuss. For someone who founded her own nation and is upheld to be a respected ruler and queen, she sure let herself go when it came to matters of the heart. I understand that she really did not have control over her own feelings, since Cupid’s arrow is what caused them, but I think committing suicide was a little much.
Perhaps she deserves that ill fated death for totally neglecting her duties as queen and going back on her promise to her late husband, Sychaeus.
Sure, I’ve had my heart broken once or twice, and I’ve experienced love’s ups and downs. But I would never kill myself no matter how bad the pain was, because in a way that’s letting him win. I’ll back Dido on her decision to burn all of Aeneus’ crap, because who wants that stuff laying around as a sore memory? But in her decision to kill herself, she almost, in a way, robs herself of any dignity she ever had as ruler. Her suicide proves her inner weaknesses and the fact that she isn’t strong enough to overcome heartbreak. The pain she feels from Aeneus’ fleeing is described as slowly eating her away from the inside out....
The inward fire eats the soft marrow away,
And the internal wound bleeds on in silence. -Aeneid, 4.94
And the internal wound bleeds on in silence. -Aeneid, 4.94
Her story is the stuff cheesy love songs are made of.
Yeah, I found Dido a pretty poor representative of womanhood too. It's hard for me to accept that she could commit suicide and leave her sister, Anna as suddenly and decisively as Aeneas abandoned her. I know in class folks were divided, because Aeneas was a bit of a cad. And his excuse to her for leaving her was not anything that could justify himself to her. Regardless of whether he was mandated by the Gods, he fell too easily into ruling her kingdom with her when it was convenient, and then left her to face a throng of enemies by herself. I think the quote you ended with illustrates her pain perfectly. I guess we have Virgil's imaginative gifts to thank for helping to create the literary tradition of the hopelessly tragic female. Thanks a lot, Virgil.
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