Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T21:20:41.820Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dido, Aeneas, and the Concept of Pietas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Kenneth Mcleish
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Various attempts have been made, over the years, to assess the character of Dido, and explain her presence in, and extraordinary influence on, the Aeneid. Some critics have seen her as the heroine of an Aristotelian tragedy; others believe that Virgil emulated Pygmalion, and fell in love with his own creation; the most perverse of all call her a digression, a fatal flaw in the construction of the poem, and one which irretrievably weakens our view of Aeneas himself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , October 1972 , pp. 127 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1972

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 127 note 1 Criticized as melodramatic by Shaw in Plays and Players.

page 128 note 1 Cf. his behaviour in the storm (i. 92 ff.); his inner torment after the ships are burnt (v. 700 ff.), or the gross indignities (disobedience by his men, wounding) he suffers before the final conflict (xii. 311 ff.).

page 128 note 2 See below for comment on how this passage differs from its near-twin in iv. 141–50. Both Dido and Aeneas are presented to us as god-like beings—with the single absence of pietas to distinguish her from him. (One might also note that they are not only god-like, but god-dominated as well. In Book iv Aeneas is described as certus eundi [554]. whereas Dido is certa mori [564]. Their destinies are set out for them, whatever their characters or actions.)

page 130 note 1 The ‘ant-simile’ (iv. 402 ff.)Google Scholar is not strictly relevant to our purpose, as it is concerned more with the external appearance of movement than with inner emotion.

page 131 note 1 This simile is also reminiscent of ii. 304–8, where Aeneas compares himself to a lone shepherd on a hill top, watching flames or a flood engulf the farmlands below. The imagery is once again metaphorically significant.

page 132 note 1 It is here too that the great critical dilemma occurs. Book iv is poetically very fine, and Dido emerges from it as a real person, perhaps more sympathetic even than Aeneas himself. How much Virgil's head was at odds with his heart, has been the subject of speculation for centuries. The present article argues that in one respect at least his head remained fully in control. At the same time, the whole treatment of Dido and Aeneas in this book shows a depth of human understanding that makes nonsense of the black-and-white judgements critics are so often compelled to make.