The Aeneid’s Dido is a tragic character who has been represented countless times in literary responses, art, and music, with Virgil and Ovid being two authors who add their descriptions to the mix. However, Virgil and Ovid both expresses two radically different depictions of the character of Dido, supporting their different characterizations with a myriad of rhetorical techniques. In Virgil Dido is depicted as extremely emotional and unstable, whereas in Ovid she is portrayed as more logical and fair. These differing representations of the same person lead one to consider who the real Dido is and what is really influencing her final hours on earth.
Virgil’s Dido is depicted in an extremely passionate state, expressing her strong, and sometimes irrational emotions. She even begins her soliloquy
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However, she quickly changes her mind, interjecting with interrogative questions, “What am I saying? Where am I? What madness takes me out of myself?” leading one question her state of mind (117). Dido is clearly in a distressed state, having just been left by another man. However, in contrast to the death of her earlier husband, Sychaeus, who died at her brother’s hand and she had no control over, Aeneas is choosing to leave her on his own volition. As someone who takes pleasure in being in control, as seen in her ruling of her city, this lack of control over Aeneas’ actions and lack of power to make him stay puts her in a troubled frame of mind. This erratic behavior and language continues through the text, including the introduction and emphasis of death imagery. As Dido begins doubting her own actions of letting him into her city and life she wishes she would have killed him earlier and “Annihilated father and son and followers and given my own life on top of all!” (118). She does not only want Aeneas to die for wronging her, but also the rest of the innocent Trojans, destroying the whole race. In her curse she wishes that the future generations “may contend in