To what extent do we have sympathy for Dido?
Dido has often been viewed as the tragic heroine in the Aeneid. Book four is where we see an in depth and extensive change in our character but also the first true and last insight to what Dido was like. Dido suffers from something that no person should ever go through and yet everyone eventually does go through it: a severely broken heart. While Dido is madly in love with an Aeneas himself is told that he must leave Carthage and his beloved Dido and continue with his journey to find the new Rome. This leaves Dido completely distraught and leads to her suicide at the end of book 4.
On the one hand it is possible to understand Dido’s plight because of the reasons for which she believes that Aeneas has left her and Carthage. These revolve around idea that he does not love her any more. However Aeneas does not actually feel this way, he in fact still loves Dido immensely but has been ordered by the gods to act in a different way and he has decided to abide to the gods. But therefore we can sympathise with Dido because we can understand why she’s feeling so distraught and so heartbroken. In her mind Aeneas is no longer in love of her and although she has done absolutely everything to make him love all her efforts seem to have been in vain. This is a very real emotion and one which is common today as it was in the time in which Virgil is writing. Thus, because we can associate with the way that Dido’s feeding it is possible to sympathise with her much more quickly than we could otherwise. Furthermore the audience can sympathise with Dido because while Aeneas has been fated to found a new Rome and new Roman people, he himself does not know when this will be. The fact that he executes the order of the gods and while still retaining free will and is a sign that he is abandoning Dido willingly. It is possible to take this in a way which says that he does no longer love, however he denies this in his own words. Thus once again and we can empathise with Dido because she is being left and her emotional bonds with knees are being cut for the sake of this man’s fate.
We can also sympathise with Dido because as mentioned above, she has done so much for Aeneas and yet he is willing to leave her behind at the instigation of the gods. Dido did not have to be so kind to these people of whom she did not know about or knew the existence of. She was not required to be hospitable to Aeneas and his Trojan exiles when they shipwrecked into this land. Not only did she provide them with a safe harbour, a new city, food, riches and all sorts of other delights but she put her emotions on the line for Aeneas. The brevity between all of these guests and the speed of Aeneas’s decision to leave Carthage emphasises how Aeneas has only used Dido as a means to an end. This allows us as a reader and an audience to sympathise with Dido because we are disgusted that Aeneas could possibly play with her emotions so pragmatically and then leave her with no choice but the suicide. Aeneas has taken everything that she could possibly offer both material goods and emotions and he has abandoned who the city of Carthage without even turning round to have one last look as he departs on his ships. These actions seem extremely cold-hearted which helps us sympathise more with Dido’s plight.
It is also possible for us to sympathise with Dido because she is not infrequently depicted as a plaything for the gods. Juno and Venus with the assistance of Cupid and use Dido to punish Aeneas and teach him a lesson respectively. In all the ways it was possible to show how Aeneas must change through ulterior means, shows us the fact that Dido herself plays such an important part highlights her existence as being a sacrificial victim. She is Aeneas’s ultimate test which he must pass like any other and once past like the tests before he must forget and move on. She is part of his story not the other way round. They do not have shared the fate and because Dido is only a part of the fate or fatum, she must be made as transitory as any other episode. In this way Dido is cheap and by the gods as a toy. This unnecessary cruelty which bears resemblances to Phaedra in Euripides’ Hippolytus, and creates much sympathy within the audience because it accentuates the fragility of Dido and of human life itself. Her fate is never hers, it is always tied to that of others and she is the subject of the will of others. This is the ultimate tragedy in Dido’s story.
However it is also possible to not feel much sympathy for Dido in the Aeneid. The first way that a total lack of sympathy can be achieved is through her characterisation as the opposite of a Roman. This is because Dido is everything a Roman should not be and should not want. Her Carthage is one of luxury where wine flows often and freely and undiluted feasts and one where many ordinarily every day implements are made out of gold, silver and ivory and dyed in purple. She is the antithesis of Rome and therefore it is a good thing that she is destroyed. She has to be destroyed because she represents everything that Romans view to be harmful. It is very clear here that the audience should relate Dido to the actions of Cleopatra and the East. Both these share similar traits with Dido in the fact that there are luxurious and excessive places. Dido’s destruction and with it the destruction of everything that is wrong in the Roman world is a victory for what is right and therefore we should not and cannot sympathise with Dido because she is just simply not right.
We also should not sympathise with Dido because of dubious personal characteristics. She is described as a Bacchant, or a follower of Bacchus. This in being Eastern God is excessive- he drinks too much and is too openly sexual. By aligning herself with him, Dido is showing that she is also unrestrained in pleasure. Therefore she would not be a suitable match for Aeneas or indeed any Roman man and therefore we cannot sympathise with such a woman. Furthermore Bacchants are associated with sparagmos, that is the tearing apart of a person. This is a very negative influence and therefore must be eliminated from the world, especially one which is tempered with Roman stoicism and reserve us. Her suicide in for denotes how people and concepts that deal with unnecessary and madness induced actions should be dealt with. We should not sympathise with Dido because it is possible to see how in many ways she is other than human in her character.
The fact that Dido does not understand what Aeneas is saying, when he is preparing to leave is another reason why it is not possible to sympathise with Dido. Although Aeneas is not completely frank with what he has to do, he does tell her it is because the fates have ordered it. Dido is trying to intervene with fate by trying to not leave and this cannot be allowed to happen. If she is indeed that close to Aeneas then she should understand that he still truly loves her but he must leave for the good of his people and to make sure that his destiny is complete. She must understand as Aeneas explained to her that his Trojans are much like her, are in search of new home and deserving of a new home. Dido was in exactly the same position as Aeneas and therefore have she should have been able to understand that, much like herself, he put his people before his own feelings. While this may be extremely saddening and heartbreaking to hear, the fact that Dido has gone through the same struggles as Aeneas should allow her to accept and comprehend his choices much more clearly than any other man. The sadness and madness is devised from a stubbornness not to accept the facts that have been laid out before her and therefore it is not possible to sympathise with Dido in this case.
It is also not possible to sympathise with Dido because as Aeneas himself has recounted in his tales of the destruction of Troy that he sacrifices own ideals and possessions at a whim. Aeneas is frequently able to forego his duty and his identity for something which he rightly or wrongly perceives to be more advantageous. This can be seen when he trades armour with the Greeks in order to be able to ambush them more effectively. By changing his armour he is effectively changing his identity as a future Roman. He does this again when he wears the Carthaginian or Tyrian clothes while laying the foundations of Carthage. The links between what he has done the past and what Aeneas is doing contemporaneously suggest that he will once again act in an unjust way. The way that he ordered Creusa to follow his crew at a distance rather than have her directly by his side should have suggested to Dido that he would treat all women in the same way. He must have loved Creusa as his wife possibly more than he loved Dido, probably less but we are never explicitly told. It is very clear that Aeneas is most dedicated to his son Iulus and is the father Anchises. Women in his life have been subject to less than favourable fates. Creusa dies because of Aeneas’ oversight and Helen is almost killed by Aeneas when he confronts her. There is no reason why he should treat Dido in any better way but Dido overlooks this fact in her blind love for Aeneas. It is not possible to sympathise with one who has put themselves in a position where they can get hurt knowing and being recently told the history of that person. Dido has exposed herself to hurt emotionally unnecessarily and irrationally because she knew Aeneas’s background. Her demise can be looked at as stemming from her actions and therefore she brought the situation of herself. Her misgivings and her mistakes have led to her suicide and although some may we hope this last factor it must be remembered that it was in at least in part around fault.
Overall it is possible to see that while the Aeneas did act in what is seemingly a very pragmatic and selfish way, he was in fact doing the same thing that Dido did years ago, he is providing for his people and putting their needs first and foremost. He is willing to sacrifice his own emotional well-being for his Trojan exiles, similar to what Dido decided for her Tyrians in the years before founding Carthage. She should not be surprised that Aeneas would do such a thing especially considering that this full episode in Carthage was the only moment of respite that the exiles have had in a long time. In addition she does not notice how Aeneas treats women in yet she is still willing to expose herself to that kind of hurt. This is the sign of true love but also of an ineffective leader. She sacrificed everything she had for a moment of happiness which she must have known could not have lasted. She does not want to understand why Aeneas has to leave but she would rather let herself be tormented by her emotions. That is why it is not possible to sympathise completely with Dido.
The Classical Gentleman 