Dido's Love In The Aeneid By Virgil

Although they couldn’t control the fact that fell in love, Dido and Anna turned out to be very selfish. In Dido’s case, she seemingly forgets all about her city. It stops growing because she is no longer there to make sure people are doing their jobs: “Towers, half-built, rose no farther; men no longer trained in arms or toiled to make harbors and battlements impregnable. Projects were broken off...with cranes unmoving stood against the sky.” She put the lives of a whole city on the line because if any of her enemies had noticed they could have attacked. Dido also let go of her power and ignored her reputation, instead she wanted to only focused on Aeneas. All of this resulted in the lost of the power that she held and work for so long to

If Dido had taken the time to think everything thru, she may have still have been with Aeneas but could have possibly controlled her feelings enough to still function. Unfortunately Dido definitely couldn’t control how intense her love for him was and lost herself completely. Virgil compared her to a doe with an arrow of love stuck in her, something she was having a hard time understanding but couldn’t let go of. She felt guilt after she slept with Aeneas but considered it a marriage in her mind, although this idea was in fact one sided. Aeneas even says later that he never agreed to marry her, and if he could have a do over he would have stayed in Troy to rebuild it, rather than be with her. Of course Dido doesn’t take the news well and she quickly descends into madness. As ____ says, “Aeneas’ view of her as ‘frenzied’ is justified.” Because Dido goes off the deep

At this point she has lost everything about herself that was first introduced. She regrets ever meeting him, or even letting him into the city in the first place. Dido laments that she didn’t have had all the Trojans killed the moment they came into her city thus preventing this pain she is feeling. Dido has lost everything because of him and it is only now that she can see that. Dido thinks for a long time about what she should do now that Aeneas has forgotten her. She knows that she can no longer even consider marrying any of the neighboring kings because they will no longer have her. Carthage will no longer take her seriously if she were to just go back to the way it was because she isn’t the pure widow anymore. Society, she feels, has made their decision against her and she has no choice but to go in last respectable way possible: suicide. Anna, her one companion through everything, is forced to unknowingly set up Dido’s death. Dido betrayed Anna’s trust, much like Aeneas betrayed hers. Using a Trojan sword, probably Aeneas’s, to stab herself, she sent a clear and bloody message for her people. Never forgive the Trojan’s or those descendent of Aeneas for they are the ones who have done this to the