Varium et Mutabile

Voices of Authority in Aeneid IV

Boy Meets Girl

• We all know the story . . .• Tragic story of love• Dido and her demise

– In her authority

• Dido as a political figure replaced by Dido as a romantic figure

A Question of Guilt – Where does the fault lie?

Dido• Betrays her vow to

first hubby• Bad “king” –

spiritual disease• Surrenders to

passion• infelix

Aeneas• Incomplete

humanity- misleading

• Good “king” – not afflicted

• Remains steady• pius

Dido’s Perspective

• Book I– Paralleled to Aeneas – leader, exile, widowed– Dido at a distance

• Book IV– Paralleled to Juno – regina, caeco igni– 68-73 - First simile – Dido, victim, and Aeneas,

hunter– 60-66 – Dido as a sacrifice, but to whom?– 396 – Aeneas, turns away – we attend to her

while she dies

Allusion To and Use of Tragedy

• Aristotelian definition of tragedy – to force the audience into an ironic, even cathartic, relationship with the text

• Employment of foreshadowing, dramatic irony, and tragic figures

Allusion To and Use of Tragedy

• Book divided into complex plot– Hamartia – moral flaw – Dido’s guilt

regarding Sychaeus– Peripeteia – Mercury visiting Aeneas and

giving Jupiter’s mandate– Anagnorisis – Dido’s unawareness ->

Dido’s realization– Katharsis – our pity and fear for her

Patterns of Allusion

• Contribute to reader’s tragic anticipation• Fall of Dido comparable to Book II fall of

Troy– Burn, destroyed by an outsider, left by

Aeneas– Aeneas’ story in Books II and III infiltrate

Dido’s heart

• Aeneas, Book II victim of Greek guile, makes Dido victim in Book IV

Patterns of Allusion

• Dido compared to other tragic figures– Suffering of furor– Orestes– Pentheus in “Bacchae”

• Knowledge of Roman History– Punic Wars– Cleopatra

Overturn of Paradigms

• Book I– Juno complains of

lack of power– Neptune’s power of

orator displayed by speeches of Aeneas and Jupiter

– Carthage busy like ants

– Controlled by logos

• Book IV– Juno all in control– No speeches are

powered like an orator’s

– Carthage at a standstill

– Controlled by furor

Speech and Authority

• Dido at the beginning – compared to Nausicaa and Diana – directed, organized, in control, authority, in power

• As furor takes over, she loses these moral qualities and authority she once embodied

• The book itself grants a voice to furor’s cause – engages us as the audience on the side of difference and against the cause of empire

• A conflicted book from the rest of the text