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Dido's Duty In The Aeneid

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Humans often struggle in balancing the demands of an important job or responsibility with their relationships and emotions. This decision is still present in today’s world as well as in the past, which “Book IV” of The Aeneid clearly illustrates. Dido finally lets herself fall in love again after the murder of her husband, Sychaeus, and is immediately invested in a messy relationship with Aeneas the Trojan hero. Later, Aeneas confronts a choice: accept his fate and fulfill his duty to the gods or stay with his love, Dido. Virgil uses Aeneas’s choice of duty over Dido to show that in relationships, work comes first despite the emotions present. Early in the book, it is established how important Aeneas’s duty is to him. Aeneas is meant to be fulfilling his fate by founding a city in Italy. It is obvious that before he met Dido he was very focused on his responsibilities. Virgil makes a point of this by writing: “duty-bound … took the course heaven gave him and went back to the fleet”. (521-526) Aeneas was under an immense amount of pressure because he knew his fate was to lay the foundation for the Roman Empire after the siege of Troy. Aeneas is meant to establish a kingdom for his son, …show more content…

Many articles have been written about how to cope when a spouse puts more work into their job than into their relationship. In the article “When Work Interferes with Love,” the author describes a one-sided relationship in which a woman’s husband was becoming consumed with his work. This relates to “Book IV” of The Aeneid because Dido and Aeneas were placed in a similar situation. When Aeneas tells Dido he is leaving she grows furious; the same thing happens in this article, “My husband works too hard. I feel neglected and start to complain.” Both fictional, and real couples in modern times face the dreaded demanding job that prevents one partner from putting work into the

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Aeneas is seen as a model of piety, but he is living in a sinful relationship with his mistress Dido, the queen of Carthage. In The Confessions, St. Augustine tells of his spiritual journey from his adolescence when he had no interest in virtue or Christianity

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Aeneas, however, is also simply pointing out that personal feelings don 't mean anything in the face of piously doing your duty and following fate. If he 'd chosen to follow his personal feelings, he 'd have never even started on this journey that led him to Dido. However, Aeneas’ choice to leave Dido seems like a weak move considering Dido defies her own fate because her own emotions are so powerful – this speaks to the idea that furor and human emotion unbridled is more potent and meaningful than being dedicated to pietas and accepting one’s fate. But it also ends disastrously

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In Homer’s Poem, The Odyssey, Penelope is the exceptionally patient and clever spouse of the infamous hero, Odysseus, and the mother of Telemachus. One poignant factor of Penelope’s character is her patience and devotion which is displayed throughout the poem. With her husband absent for a great majority of her life for the later of twenty years and his location unknown, Penelope stays, patiently awaiting Odysseus’ return, all whilst preserving their estate and raising her son by herself. Throughout this time, she had many persistent suitors in pursuit of her, abusing her husband’s absence.

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Honorable Aeneas fought until he could successfully carry out his destiny. Rome is known for their strength in war and fighting,

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The virtue of piety was a defining characteristic in Roman life, Romans carried out their everyday lives in accordance of the ideas of pietas which is one’s duty to their family, God, and people; these Roman values are displayed in Virgil’s The Aeneid through the actions of the character Aeneas, and challenged further in the Gospel of Matthew by Jesus Christ. The word “pietas” is a Latin word that means dutifulness, and refers to the balanced duty to a person’s family, gods, and people in Roman culture. The Romans believed that for these duties to be upheld then it must be implemented in one’s everyday life, and this belief of the Romans separated them from other ancient societies. In The Aeneid, Aeneas engages in all aspects of pietas throughout his journey to Italy to become the ancestor to the city of Rome.

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Aeneas, more than any, secretly Mourned for them all (Virgil 1). Aeneas suppresses his own human feelings and shows how “extraordinary” (Johnson 1) he is by doing so while also furthering his pietas - “the study fulfillment of his duty to god and man” (Sullivan 1). Although Aeneas is suppressing his feelings and is portraying his hope towards his people, Virgil writes about how Aeneas hurts and mourns because of his fallen comrades more than any of his men whom he is leading to Italy. This shows that Aeneas is not the perfect heroine that Virgil alludes to throughout this Augustan propaganda piece, but the opposite - a man who is hurting just as much as anyone else, a man who is following his orders, a man who is a soldier.

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(Virgil, 998). Virgil expresses Hektor’s sense of urgency during the fall of Troy, illustrating that Hektor has already experienced the consequences of following Homer’s Heroic Ideal of fighting back, and is encouraging Aeneas to not make the same mistakes that he and other Greek heroes have made. Later in his journey, the audience witnesses Aeneas make the pivotal decision to leave Dido behind in pursuit of his duty to his people to build their new city and home. He tells her “At my own will, I would be watching over The city of Troy, and caring for my people…

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