Dido With Passion For Aeneas example essay topic

DIDO AND AENEAS RELATIONSHIP Throughout the beginning of the Aeneid Dido, the queen of Carthage, and Aeneas, son of Venus and leader of the Trojans have an intimate relationship that ends in death. The relationship begins in Book I when Venus, the goddess of love, has her other son Cupid fill Dido with passion for Aeneas, to ensure Aeneas's safety in this new land. 'Meanwhile Venus / Plotted new stratagems, that Cupid, changed / In form and feature, should appear instead / Of young Ascanius, and by his gifts / Inspire the queen to passion, with his fire / Burning her very bones. ' (693) Venus did this to protect Aeneas and his son, in fear that Dido would have otherwise been cruel to them. As Aeneas tells his story he portrays himself as a hero, which makes Dido even more infatuated with him. The couple immediately finds that they have many things in common as well, both Aeneas and Dido fled from their homeland.

'I, too am fortune-driven / Through many sufferings; this land at last / Has brought me rest. Not ignorant of evil, / I know one thing, at least - to help the wretched. ' (664). At this time Aeneas notices that Dido is fair and just to her people which is the way he would like to be seen as a ruler of the Trojans. In the beginning of Book IV Dido tells her sister Anna that she lusts for the Aeneas, and that he is the only man that she would break a vow she made to her dead husband to be faithful.

'And my bridal bed, here is the only man / Who has moved my spirit, shaken my weak will. ' Soon after Dido makes this confession Juno, queen of the gods, and Venus, decide to join Dido and Aeneas sexually. They both do this for their own personal well being, but it does bring the couple together even more then originally intended. Dido's passion has gone out of control, which causes physical and emotional disorder. 'What woman / In love is helped by offerings or altars? / Soft fire consumes the marrow-bones, the silent / Wound grows, deep in the heart.

' (67) This is an excellent example of Dido's inability to control her passion, whereas she resembles the fire, and the wounds make the fire grow deeper. The reference to her marrow-bones is probably in place to reinforce the lust that cupid had burned within her bones earlier. Her burning passion for Aeneas makes her grow physically sick. Dido has realized that her relationship with Aeneas is over, and that her compelling passion for him will bring her to an end, and she is still unable to change the course of events. When Dido learns about Aeneas's departure she is overcome by rage, and despair which brings her to the decision that she will kill herself. 'Then Dido prays for death at last;' (488).

She has hoped that Aeneas would 'fall and die, untimely, / let him like unburied on the sand. ' (662). At this time she lies down on the funeral pyre and stabs herself with Aeneas's sword. Although Aeneas was a star - struck lover, he is driven by fate to his only true love, Italy, and it appears that he has replaced his love for Dido with the love for his future home.

'Shove off, be gone! A shifty, fickle object / Is woman, always. ' He vanished into the night. / And, frightened by that sudden apparition, Aeneas started from sleep, and urged his comrades: / 'Hurry, men' (603) Aeneas is the hero and is also portrayed in a humane sense. In the clutches of the strongest of all passions, a lover receiving love in return, he struggles between his love and his fated destiny. 'he is more than eager / To flee that pleasant land, awed by the warning / of the divine command. But how to do it?

/ How to get around that passionate queen?' (281). Once Aeneas leaves Carthage, and his love is dead the relationship between the two of them fizzles as well. In Book VI Aeneas has one last encounter with the ghost of Dido in the underworld. When he meets her here he is aware that she killed herself due to his abandoning her, and he tries to tell her that he left her unwillingly. This is an attempt to rekindle their relationship as friends and perhaps not lovers. Dido refuses to forgive him or speak to him and goes to the ghost of her husband for support.

Although, Dido and Aeneas had compassionate love that most couples strive for, neither of them were destined to be together which ended their relationship with death.