We have a more detailed tale of necromancy, when Dido, deserted by
Aeneas, resolves on self-destruction. To delude her sister as to her
secret purpose, she sends for a priestess from the gardens of the
Hesperides, pretending that her object is by magical incantations
again to relumine the passion of love in the breast of Aeneas. This
priestess is endowed with the power, by potent verse to free the
oppressed soul from care, and by similar means to agitate the bosom
with passion which is free from its empire. She can arrest the
headlong stream, and cause the stars to return back in their orbits.
She can call up the ghosts of the dead. She is able to compel the
solid earth to rock, and the trees of the forest to descend from their
mountains. To give effect to the infernal spell, Dido commands that a
funeral pyre shall be set up in the interior court of her palace, and
that the arms of Aeneas, what remained of his attire, and the marriage
bed in which Dido had received him, shall be heaped upon it. The pyre
is hung round with garlands, and adorned with branches of cypress. The
sword of Aeneas and his picture are added. Altars are placed round the
pyre; and the priestess, with dishevelled hair, calls with terrific
charms upon her three hundred Gods, upon Erebus, chaos, and the
three-faced Hecate. She sprinkles around the waters of Avernus, and
adds certain herbs that had been cropped by moonlight with a sickle of
brass. She brings with her the excrescence which is found upon the
forehead of a new-cast foal, of the size of a dried fig, and which
unless first eaten by the mare, the mother never admits her young to
the nourishment of her milk. After these preparations, Dido, with
garments tucked up, and with one foot bare, approached the altars,
breaking over them a consecrated cake, and embracing them successively
in her arms. The pyre was then to be set on fire; and, as the
different objects placed upon it were gradually consumed, the charm
became complete, and the ends proposed to the ceremony were expected
to follow. Dido assures her sister, that she well knew the unlawfulness
of her proceeding, and protests that nothing but irresistible necessity
should have compelled her to have recourse to these unhallowed arts.
She finally stabs herself, and expires.