The first third of Virgil’s Aeneid is set in perhaps one of the more surprising of situations, that of Carthage, in North Africa. For the Roman reader this would have had many, unsettling connotations given that Carthage had fulfilled the roll of Rome’s greatest enemy and had over the course of nearly a century of conflict inflicted the humiliations of Trasimene and Cannae and had come within a javelins throw of destroying Rome entirely, it may have been even stronger than simple uneasiness and it may be the case that “three wars had left an ineradicable legacy of fear and hate”[1]. That the Augustan reader would have had particular sentiments towards Carthage is undoubted and that the character of Dido would have inspired strong opinions in the reader is almost a certainty. Nonetheless Virgil’s decision to begin the tale of the founding of Rome in Carthage is likely to have been due not just how it would be received but that of the literary tradition he was heir to, the historical background of Rome and Carthage’s relationship and enmity, the political situation within Rome and within its immediate history and, most difficult to judge, his own aims and intentions.
The Carthaginian Queen Dido is a controversial figure in the Aeneid and her inclusion is likely to have caused a little consternation amongst its readers, indeed “the Virgilian Dido, and the readers’ sympathy for her, threatens the fabric of an Augustan reading”[2] Dido is both a character in her own right as well as being a more concentrated and individualised version of Carthage and there are many ways in which she can be viewed. Gnauer points out that “Virgil has sometimes combined several Homeric characters into one…in Dido…Arete, Alcinous, Circe, Calypso (and of course Medea)”[3] and indeed she does seem to fulfil the various roles through the course of the first third of the poem. As Alcinous in her welcome and insistence that Aeneas recount the tale of his wanderings, as Calypso in her ‘entrapment’ of Aeneas and desires for marriage and as Medea in her fury as a woman scorned, we can see the elements of her character reflecting those of characters who have preceded her. Dido is certainly not limited by these past associations, her unrequited love for Aeneas inspires her to anger and in a parallel to Medea’s killing of her and Jason’s children she damns both her descendents and those of Aeneas to all-encompassing war.
“litora litoribus contraria, fluctibus undas
imprecor, arma armis: pungent ipsique nepotesque”
However from this parallel it is clear that Virgil is not constructing her character within narrow confines based on the activities of her predecessors, allusion to past characters may exist but it does not stymie the development of Dido’s character nor her actions, it is after all a parallel not a repeat and Dido’s reasons for cursing Aeneas can be understood with reference to her own passions and feelings. Virgil breathes new life into the historical character of Dido by, if not altering the myth himself, picking up on a little known variant of it, in legend Dido committed suicide not over a frustrated desire for Aeneas but because she was bound into marriage to an African prince and saw no other way out equally the historical reality of Aeneas calling in at Carthage during his exile from Troy has been subject to poetic license given that the Trojan war was meant to have taken place (according to the ancients) during the 12th century BCE whilst the foundation of Carthage took place some three centuries later during the 9th century BCE. Such factors point to Dido’s character being given considerable breathing room within the literary tradition as well as the historical.
Whilst it is true that Dido acts in a manner akin to “the Hellenistic woman in love, excitable, histrionic, giving rein to her emotions”[4] this is more down to the furor that she has been assailed by and it is difficult to see how Virgil could have constructed a neat aetiological myth regarding the historical fact of Roman-Punic hostilities if Dido had not been possessed by such a frenzy. This leads to the idea that the limitation that does face Dido’s character is that which is included within the story itself, fate and more specifically the destiny of Rome itself. She is not alone in being subordinated to the will of fate indeed she is joined in her role as collateral by the Rutulian prince Turnus who also falls victim to furor an almost demonic possession, which drives him into a war he is destined to lose. Allecto, it would appear, does not discriminate on a gender basis. In this sense Dido, like all historical characters is limited by historical realities, namely the Punic wars and importantly Roman sensibilities. Horsfall sums this up when he states
“in the creation of Virgil’s Dido we can see at work a tradition which has nothing to do with the heroines of Greek literature…but which has its roots in Roman History and Roman prejudice”[5]
Juno also acts through Dido, even when it is not she herself who acts-Venus inspires Dido with love for Aeneas because she fears the intention of Juno. Juno proposes a dual race of Trojan-Carthaginians, an action which would have prevented Aeneas from reaching Italy and ultimately would have prevented the Roman race from existing in the manner that it did (something that Juno knows she cannot do). This again has important political effects for it suggests that not only was it against the fated order of things that Trojan and Carthaginian be reconciled, it also suggests that conflict was to be the inevitable lot of Rome and essentially the midwife of Roman power, something that Virgil states explicitly in Aeneid 6
(hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos
The scene is also important with reference to Aeneas for the Aeneid tracks the course of its eponymous hero from his moment of despair amidst the storm sent by Juno to the sudden rage that prompts him to execute the defeated Turnus; his dalliance with Dido in the construction yard that is Carthage is a necessary episode in the development of his character. Why though should this episode come at the beginning of the poem?
It is important to consider that Aeneas’ state of mind by the time he arrives on Libyan shores is fragile to say the least. During the storm his spirit appears to have finally shattered resulting in a wretched desire to have met his death at the hands of Diomedes back in the dust of the plains of Troy. Whilst he has managed to put on a brave face on for the troops he seems to be speaking more to himself when he says “My comrades, hardly strangers to pain before now, we have all weathered worse”[6]; it is clear that his emotions equate to exhaustion, fatigue and despondency, in short the man is an emotional wreck. Thus he is at his most susceptible to the charms of Dido; this is his moment of weakness increasing the reader’s sympathy for his affair.
To refer back to the gestalt nature of Dido’s character and the elements which reflect both Roman history and prejudice we may concentrate specifically upon the characteristics of Cleopatra, the mistress of both Caesar and Anthony, that are inherent within her. It can be seen that Aeneas is faced with a similar decision, which in effect wracked the two most powerful men in the Roman empire; to rule as a foreign king and surrender himself to self-indulgent passion or to deny the immediate impulse, master ones passions and follow the will of fate, the much admired quality of pietas. Aeneas is at once Anthony and Octavian and the victory of his self-control over wild emotion, strongly illustrated by the simile of an oak tree withstanding a storm, is an allusion to the victory of Octavian over the man who would be king; Marc Anthony. Again this should appear at the beginning because the victory over himself (allegorical with the Octavian’s victory in the civil conflict) is a necessary precursor, the sine quae non to the founding of Rome (allegorical with Octavian’s ‘re-founding’ of Rome ) indeed “Aeneas’ renunciation makes the second half of the Aeneid possible”[7]
Not only this but the contrast between the characters of Dido and Aeneas makes for a juxtaposition of Phoenician and Roman characteristics, which is best positioned at the beginning of the poem for Virgil is asserting to the reader the reasons why Rome is and Carthage was. Whether Virgil truly was an Augustan is of course impossible to tell but the Aeneid presses home the importance of certain Roman virtues and it is likely that even if Virgil was not a true Augustan in a partisan sense then not only did he do a good job of hiding it but he was an Augustan in a principled sense or as Brooks Otis posits “He really saw in Augustus…order from Anarchy, self-control from selfish passion”. As Virgil may have seen these qualities in one man so too he may have seen the qualities and virtues in the power that was Rome, so Otis continues.
“He also saw in Rome the paradigm and goal of all historical activity, in Roman pietas, virtus, and consilium the only hope of peace and social order, of humane behaviour associated with strong government” [8]
So it is with the victory of Aeneas’ self control and the loss-of-control from Dido that we are presented with the Roman and the Carthaginian archetypes. Aeneas withstands the storm and having won this crucial battle over himself goes onto fulfil his destiny, Dido submitting to the whirlwind of emotion takes her own life and “her death convulses the nation-as if with her death, her city and people were dying too”[9]. Dido’s character is informed by Roman prejudice as regards Phoenician traits and Virgil presents us with the reason for Rome outlasting its rival.
It would take an insensitive reader not to feel sympathy for both Dido and Aeneas as the victims of capricious, jealous gods; their love is at odds with what fate has in store and it is not only impossible for them to be together but for their people to live in peace. Virgil has told us that the founding of Rome will not be without its twists and turns in the line tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem[10]; in love and war Aeneas faces the difficult choices that his descendents will continue to face in the long and rocky road to empire.
That rocky road would of course involve a long and protracted war with the powerful trading nation of Carthage and that the tale of the founder of the Roman race should begin with a storm and with Carthage is telling since it was through such a conflict that Rome gained her unchallenged pre-eminence in the Mediterranean. There is an eerie moment at the beginning of Aeneid 5 as Aeneas, sailing for Sicily, glances back toward the Carthaginian coast and sees the walls lit with flames, he doesn’t know what has caused them but he and his fellow Trojans are weighed down by a sense of foreboding and this is a foreboding that the Roman reader would have understood only too well. Importantly Carthage and Rome first came to blows over Sicily it was the beginning of Rome’s rise as an overseas empire, the beginning of the bitter, century long conflict between the two powers and the beginning of the end for Carthage. That Aeneas is heading for Sicily when he looks back and sees the walls of Carthage aglow is an interesting reversal of this process. The idea of the Roman descendants of Aeneas retracing his steps to initiate a more consuming conflagration is both a powerful and evocative image. There is little doubt that the tale of Dido and Aeneas is meant to be aetiological in nature, providing the ancient origins of the conflict and given that before Rome is even founded it has already managed to find itself an implacable foe who, if we are to take Dido’s actions in Book 6 as allegorical, flees from all attempts at reconciliation it stresses the inevitability and the necessity of the conflict. That “a breach of fides is involved is ironically fitting for the first Queen of Carthage”[11] speaks volumes about the Roman self-justification for the destruction of her enemy, Dido’s perfidia (being a characteristic of the stock fides punica) would act as evidence to a Roman that treachery and disloyalty were endemic in Phoenician blood and that it was impossible for an alliance to have lasted.
Initially the hospitium of Dido and the warm welcome that Aeneas receives in the new city of Carthage is clearly allegorical, Carthage and Rome not only concluded treaties in 508BCE and 348BCE centuries before the rift and conflict that occurred over Sicily, during the war against Pyrrhus (280BCE) the Carthaginian fleet actually aided Rome in her struggle. There is much truth in the statement that “A welcome followed by a rupture …is allegorical of the centuries of peace between Rome and Carthage”[12] .Why should this appear at the beginning of the poem? Simply because Rome, like Aeneas, had to overcome the challenge that Carthage should present in order to go on and fulfil its destiny. To continue with the allegorical aspect it must be noted that Aeneas begins in Carthage, reaches Italy and then faces war with his future allies the Latins. This is in keeping with the fact that within a century of Carthage’s fall Rome was at war with itself as Caesar and the Republic struggled for pre-eminence. If we return to Aeneas’s sense of foreboding as he watches the fire on the walls of Carthage we can draw a direct parallel between that and the foreboding that hindsight would grant to the Romans who returned home in 146BC with the wealth and the captives which would destabilise an already rickety republic.
The setting is important for it is in Carthage that Aeneas recounts the tale of the fall of Troy and there appears to be a genuinely tragic irony in this. Clausen suggests that “Dido’s death…is tragic in the strictest sense, for it conforms to a pattern discernable in Greek and especially Sophoclean tragedy”[13]. It is not difficult to spot the masterful sense of irony that Virgil evokes by having Aeneas tell the tale of an “ancient city falling, a power that ruled for ages, now in ruins” whilst sat in the administrative heart of Carthage. Even described in the form of a past event, as Virgil does with Aeneas’ wanderings before reaching Carthage, the fall of Troy was always going to be something addressed sooner rather than later and Virgil’s choice of location allows for this.
The role of Juno is inextricably bound up in that of Carthage not only with the city itself but through its representative Dido. Again there is every reason for these events to come at the beginning of the poem as the anger of Juno is a major driving factor of the story and it convenient to outline in the prooemium why it is that Aeneas is driven over the course of many years and lands in his journey to found Rome. Juno historically was identified with many of Rome’s enemies the Veii, Falerii and Carthage and it appears that the Romans, during the Carthaginian wars felt as though Juno herself was behind their repeated defeats. Ennius’ Annales had Juno fighting with Carthage against Rome[14] and Servius records the reconciliation between Juno and Rome in 207BCE, which allegedly turned the tide of battle against Hannibal’s forces. If the Aeneid begins with Carthage and the anger of Juno then it is very possibly a reflection of the reality of Roman power which at first appears to have been an almost reluctant imperialism. Given the choice Aeneas would have lived in peace in Troy but it was not to be since war was thrust upon him just as 3rd century Rome might happily have avoided the 1st and 2nd Punic wars but nonetheless became embroiled in them. Juno’s rage in both cases though an attempt to destroy Rome, ironically served the cause of Rome and of fate by providing them with the route to imperium sine fine. In Aeneas’ case he founds Rome and in Rome’s case it secures an empire through its defeat of Carthage. Aeneas, like Rome is driven on by fate and battered by the rage of Juno and in a sense this is what makes him who he is; through his trials and his difficulties he is broken down and built back up again until finally Juno relents and he is granted his three short years of peace in Lavinium, Rome is founded through hardship and toil, this is what makes it what it is it and its rise begins with Carthage.
What Virgil appeared to have been aiming for in his decision to begin his tale in Carthage and to include the character of Dido is a form of allegorical juxtaposition between Carthage and Rome, in itself this can be viewed as an attempt to assert national identity since in conflict a nation can define itself by its dissimilarity with the enemy and some (tenuous) national cohesion can be achieved, even if essentially it is a thin veneer barely concealing genuine social problems. Rome was not at war with Carthage when Virgil wrote the Aeneid it was reeling from twenty years of civil conflict and this conflict appeared to have been the result of its own success, in short Rome nearly imploded under the weight of her own imperium. The bipolarity of the Mediterranean during the bellum punica gave Rome it’s meaning and identity; to struggle against Carthage, to survive, to conquer and to do so as one nation and one people. Yet once this was achieved and she stood bestride the ancient world as overlord she suffered, not only from the very real socioeconomic issues that entailed from the vast influx of slave labour and the economic strangulation of the plebeian classes and smallholders in the face of the latifundia, but from a genuine crisis of identity. By placing Carthage at the beginning of the Aeneid Virgil charts the course of the Roman rise to power from its inception in the break in relations between Dido and Aeneas to the long, arduous war in the fields of Italy. There is an element of Virgil’s notion of a cycle of ages that events repeat themselves, golden ages come and they go and the souls of the dead “once they have turned the wheel of time for a thousand years: God calls them forth to the Lethe…so they may visit the overarching world once more”[15] in the Aeneid he tells the reader that all of this has happened before and by implication asks the question ‘does it have to happen again’?
It is perhaps out of place to refer to events that took place well after Virgil and Augustus were in their graves though it may be an indication of how Romans felt and continued to feel toward Carthage. Virgil’s, indeed Rome’s fascination with Carthage is peculiarly prophetic in that within 24 years of the final destruction of the city Rullus, Gaius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus founded the colony of Junonia. After the Augustan reconstruction project it became the capital of the province of Africa Proconsularis and grew into such a city that it was second only to Rome itself, the course of centuries provided the final irony that whilst Rome fell in 476CE, Carthage remained a functioning city of the Eastern Empire until it’s final fall to Muslim invasions in 697CE. E.L Harrison’s notion suggesting “Juno is confident that, in the conflict that will one day arise, the descendents of Trojans…will in fact themselves succumb to her own Carthaginians”[16]is not true in any straightforward sense but it does highlight the fact that the Roman destruction of Carthage in 146BCE failed to annihilate Carthaginian blood, Scipio Amelianus’ curse was quietly and quickly forgotten, Rome was drawn to reconstruct the city and its former greatness and in a sense she could never let her old enemy die.
[1] Horsfall. Pg 127
[2] Thomas Pg 155
[3] Knauer. Pg 394
[4] Clausen Pg 48
[5] Horsfall. Pg 143
[6] Virgil [195-223]
[7] G.N Knauer pg 401
[8] Otis. B,
[9] Clausen. Pg 57
[10] Virgil I, 33
[11] Horsfall. Pg 134
[12] Horsfall pg 143
[13] Clausen Pg 53
[14] Feeney pg 342
[15] Aeneid VI, [738-67]
[16] Harrison. Pg 114
Bibliography
Clausen W, Virgil’s Aeneid and the Traditions of Hellenistic Poetry, Berkeley, 1987
Feeney D.C, “The Reconciliations of Juno” in S J Harrison ed. Oxford Readings in Vergil’s Aeneid, Oxford 1990
Harrison E.L “The Aeneid and Carthage” in Woodman, Tony and West, David edd, Poetry and Politics in the age of Augustus, Cambridge, 1984
Horsfall N.M, “Dido in the light of history” in S J Harrison ed. Oxford Readings in Vergil’s Aeneid, Oxford 1990
Knauer G.N, “Virgil’s Aeneid and Homer” in S J Harrison ed. Oxford Readings in Vergil’s Aeneid, Oxford 1990
Thomas R.F, Virgil and the Augustan Reception, Cambridge, 2001
Virgil, trans Fagles R, Aeneid, Penguin, 2006
Virgil, Aeneid I-VI, Williams, Macmillan, 1972
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