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4 - Dido's Furies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2010

Sander M. Goldberg
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

Dido's mounting distress in aeneid 4 drives her to progressively wilder actions, and Vergil marks the escalation of her torment with similes of increasing violence. She grows from the pained bewilderment of a wounded animal early in the book,

uritur infelix Dido totaque vagatur

urbe furens, qualis coniecta cerva sagitta …

Unfortunate Dido burns and wanders senseless

throughout the city, like a doe struck by an arrow …

(68ff.)

to the rage of a madwoman:

saevit inops animi totamque incensa per urbem

bacchatur, qualis commotis excita sacris

Thyias …

She raged uncontrollably and raved throughout

the city, inflamed like a Bacchant aroused by

the mad rites …

(300ff.)

Eventually, not even sleep offers respite from her suffering. The narrative at that point takes us inside her mind to reveal even greater horrors in her dreams:

agit ipse furentem

in somnis ferus Aeneas, semperque relinqui

sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur

ire viam et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra,

Eumenidum veluti demens videt agmina Pentheus

et solem geminum et duplices se ostendere Thebas,

aut Agamemnonius scaenis agitatus Orestes,

armatam facibus matrem et serpentibus atris

cum fugit ultricesque sedent in limine Dirae.

Fierce Aeneas himself besets her

senseless in her dreams, and always left to herself alone,

always abandoned she imagines herself following a long

road and seeking her Tyrians in a deserted landscape,

just as mad Pentheus sees the band of Furies,

and twin suns and a double Thebes reveal themselves,

or as Agamemnon's son Orestes is hounded on the stage,

when heflees his mother, armed with torches and black snakes,

and the avenging Dirae cluster on the doorstep.

(465–73)
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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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  • Dido's Furies
  • Sander M. Goldberg, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Book: Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic
  • Online publication: 03 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720024.006
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  • Dido's Furies
  • Sander M. Goldberg, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Book: Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic
  • Online publication: 03 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720024.006
Available formats
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  • Dido's Furies
  • Sander M. Goldberg, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Book: Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic
  • Online publication: 03 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720024.006
Available formats
×