Cleopatra And Dido In The Aeneid

TO WHAT EXTENT WERE THE CHARACTERS OF AENEAS AND DIDO, IN VIRGIL’S AENEID, INFLUENCED BY MARK ANTONY AND QUEEN CLEOPATRA VII, PHILOPATOR OF EGYPT?

Dido and Aeneas, fictional characters in Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid, may be based upon true accounts of Cleopatra VII, Philopator of Egypt, and Mark Antony of Rome. In the final years of his life, Roman poet Virgil wrote the epic as Augustan propaganda, recounting the story of the founder of Rome, waylaid in his destiny by a beautiful, politically forward African Queen. In the epic, similarities exist between both Queen Cleopatra and Dido and Mark Antony and Aeneas. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Cleopatra and Mark Antony had a moderate historical influence on Virgil. Recognizable allusions

In superficial terms, the fictional North African queen led the Carthaginians, rival to the Roman Empire, posing a significant and worrying threat to Roman control of Mediterranean power and allowing allegorical similarities to be found. Cleopatra was the widowed queen of an African kingdom that, like Carthage, had challenged Rome 's right to dominate the Mediterranean. Cleopatra, having ancestry from the Ptolemy Greeks, was not a native of the kingdom she ruled, and likewise Dido immigrated from the Phoecia before the events of The Aeneid (Weeda, 2015). As surmised by classical historian A.S Pease, through the figure of the foreign queen who tries to seduce the Roman from his destiny and his home, we feel a certain vibration of the unforgettable Cleopatra (Pease, 1935). Further, it was Dido’s obsessive love for Aeneas that lead to the crumbling of her new empire, as, trying hard to escape from the love she dared not tell… work hung suspended (Virgil Book IV: 87-89). Dido, defined by Virgil with ignorance and goodness of heart (Virgil Book IV: 280-283), reflected the Roman perspective of women at the time, simultaneously providing a comparison to Cleopatra and stripping her of her agency as a political power. While it was not Cleopatra’s political love affair that led to the decline of the Egyptian empire, but a range of various other mitigating factors, to

It stands to reason that if Virgil was using Cleopatra as a functional model for Dido, a similar duality should exist for Aeneas. It is undeniable that Virgil’s characterisation of Aeneas lends him to represent the prototypical Roman male in his stoicism and pietas, his duty to his country (McMaster, 2011). In book four, Aeneas is content to live at wasteful leisure in African lands until a message from Cyllenian Mercury spurs him to action (Vigil Book IV: 250-283). Mercury, messenger of the Roman gods, tells Aeneas not to forget his destiny, nor the other kingdom which is to be yours, a reference to the foundation of Rome. Here, Aeneas represents a good Roman, and Dido the temptress whose role it is to divert to Africa those who were meant by Destiny to hold rule in Italy (Benjamin, 2013). The legendary first Roman, far from his home after the fall of Troy, is waylaid by Dido from his true fate of founding the mighty Roman Empire. Aeneas dutifully resists temptation and abandons her to continue to progress, duty and political destiny more important than romantic love; in stark contrast to Antony, who puts passionate love of his own Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, before duty to Rome (Lemasters, 2010). Perhaps this is because Antony does not have the gods guiding him and reminding him of his duty, as Mercury does