DIDO.
The Carthaginian queen has been an eager listener to Æneas’s story. She
is love-stricken--suddenly, and irremediably. The poet has thought it
necessary to explain the fact by the introduction of the god of love
himself, whom, in the shape of the young Ascanius, she has been nursing
on her bosom. The passion itself is looked upon by the poet--and as we
must suppose by his audience--as such a palpable weakness, that even in
a woman (and it is to women almost exclusively, in ancient classical
fiction, that these sudden affections are attributed) it was thought
necessary to account for it by the intervention of some more than human
influence. Either human nature has developed, or our modern poets
understand its workings better. Shakespeare makes the angry Brabantio
accuse the Moor of having stolen his daughter’s love
“By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;”
but Othello himself has a far simpler and more natural explanation of
the matter--
“She loved me for the dangers I had passed;--
This only is the witchcraft I have used.”
So it has been with Dido. But she is terribly ashamed of her own
feelings. She finds relief in disclosing them to a very natural
confidant--her sister Anna. She confesses her weakness, but avows at the
same time a determination not to yield to it. The stranger has
interested her deeply, after a fashion which has not touched her since
the death of her husband Sichæus.
“Were not my purpose fixed as fate
With none in wedlock’s band to mate,--
* * * * *
Were bed and bridal aught but pain,--
Perchance I had been weak again.”
But her sister--suiting her counsels, as all confidants are apt to do,
to the secret wishes rather than to the professions of Dido--encourages
the passion. Perpetual widowhood has a romantic sound, but is not, in
Anna’s opinion, a desirable estate. Besides, in this newly-planted
colony, surrounded as they are by fierce African tribes, an alliance
with these Trojan strangers will be a tower of strength. The stout arm
of such a husband as Æneas is much needed by a widowed queen. His
visit--so Anna thinks--is nothing less than providential--
“‘Twas Heaven and Juno’s grace that bore,
I ween, these Trojans to our shore.”
By all means let them detain their illustrious visitor with them as long
as possible--his ships require refitting and his crews refreshment--and
the result will not be doubtful.
The advice suits with the queen’s new mood too well to be rejected.
Together the sisters offer pious sacrifices to the gods--to Juno
especially, as the goddess of marriage--to give their sanction to the
hoped-for alliance. The restless feelings of the enamoured woman are
described in one of the finest and most admired passages of the poem:--
“E’en as a deer whom from afar
A swain, in desultory war,
Where Cretan woods are thick,
Has pierced, as ’mid the trees she lies,
And, all unknowing of his prize,
Has left the dart to stick:
She wanders lawn and forest o’er,
While the fell shaft still drinks her gore.[25]
Now through the city of her pride
She walks, Æneas at her side,
Displays the stores of Sidon’s trade,
And stately homes already made:
Begins, but stops she knows not why,
And lets the imperfect utterance die.
Now, as the sunlight wears away,
She seeks the feast of yesterday,
Inquires once more of Troy’s eclipse,
And hangs once more upon his lips;
Then, when the guests have gone their ways,
And the dim moon withdraws her rays,
And setting stars to slumber call,
Alone she mourns in that lone hall,
Clasps the dear couch where late he lay,
Beholds him, hears him far away;
Or keeps Ascanius on her knees,
And in the son the father sees,
Might she but steal one peaceful hour
From love’s ungovernable power.
No more the growing towers arise,
No more in martial exercise
The youth engage, make strong the fort,
Or shape the basin to a port.”
The powers of Olympus here come again upon the scene. Juno sees, not
without a secret satisfaction, the prospect of an entanglement between
Æneas and Dido, which may detain these hated Trojans in Africa, and so
prevent their settlement and dominion in Italy. So Carthage, and not the
Rome of the future, may yet be the mistress of the world. She addresses
herself at once to the goddess of love--not without a sneer at the
success of her snares in poor Dido’s case; a sorry triumph it is
indeed--two divinities pitted against a weak woman! But come--suppose in
this matter they agree to act in concert; let there be a union between
the two nations, and let Carthage be the seat of their joint power; its
citizens shall pay equal honours to the queen of heaven and the queen of
love. Venus understands perfectly well that Juno’s motive is at any cost
to prevent the foundation of Rome; but, having a clearer vision (we must
presume) than her great rival of the probable results, she agrees to the
terms. There is to be a hunting-party on the morrow, and Juno will take
care that opportunity shall be given for the furtherance of Dido’s
passion. The royal hunt is again a striking picture, almost mediæval in
its rich colouring:--
“The morn meantime from ocean rose:
Forth from the gates with daybreak goes
The silvan regiment:
Thin nets are there, and spears of steel,
And there Massylian riders wheel,
And dogs of keenest scent.
Before the chamber of her state
Long time the Punic nobles wait
The appearing of the queen:
With gold and purple housings fit
Stands her proud steed, and champs the bit
His foaming jaws between.
At length with long attendant train
She comes: her scarf of Tyrian grain,[26]
With broidered border decked:
Of gold her quiver: knots of gold
Confine her hair: her vesture’s fold
By golden clasp is checked.
The Trojans and Iulus gay
In glad procession take their way.
Æneas, comeliest of the throng,
Joins their proud ranks, and steps along,
As when from Lycia’s wintry airs
To Delos’ isle Apollo fares;
The Agathyrsian, Dryop, Crete,
In dances round his altar meet:
He on the heights of Cynthus moves,
And binds his hair’s loose flow
With cincture of the leaf he loves:
Behind him sounds his bow;--
So firm Æneas’ graceful tread,
So bright the glories round his head.
* * * * *
But young Ascanius on his steed
With boyish ardour glows,
And now in ecstacy of speed
He passes these, now those:
For him too peaceful and too tame
The pleasure of the hunted game:
He longs to see the foaming boar,
Or hear the tawny lion’s roar.
Meantime, loud thunder-peals resound,
And hail and rain the sky confound:
And Tyrian chiefs and sons of Troy,
And Venus’ care, the princely boy,
Seek each his shelter, winged with dread,
While torrents from the hills run red.
Driven haply to the same retreat,
The Dardan chief and Dido meet.
Then Earth, the venerable dame,
And Juno, give the sign:
Heaven lightens with attesting flame,
And bids its torches shine,
And from the summit of the peak
The nymphs shrill out the nuptial shriek.
That day she first began to die;
That day first taught her to defy
The public tongue, the public eye.
No secret love is Dido’s aim:
She calls it marriage now; such name
She chooses to conceal her shame.”
A rejected suitor of the Carthaginian queen,--Iarbas, king of
Gætulia,--hears the news amongst the rest. He is a reputed son of
Jupiter; and now, furious at seeing this wanderer from Troy--“this
second Paris,” as he calls him--preferred to himself, he appeals for
vengeance to his Olympian parent. The appeal is heard, and Mercury is
despatched to remind Æneas of his high destinies, which he is forgetting
in this dalliance at Carthage. If he has lost all ambition for himself,
let him at least remember the rights of his son Ascanius, which he is
thus sacrificing to the indulgence of his own wayward passions. The
immortal messenger finds the Trojan chief busied in planning the
extension of the walls and streets of the new city which he has already
adopted as his home. He delivers his message briefly and emphatically,
and vanishes. Thus recalled to a full sense of his false position, Æneas
is at first horror-struck and confounded. How to disobey the direct
commands of Heaven, and run counter to the oracles of fate; how, on the
other hand, to break his faith with Dido, and ungratefully betray the
too confiding love of his hostess and benefactress; how even to venture
to hint to her a word of parting, and how to escape the probable
vengeance of the Carthaginian people;--all these considerations crowd
into his mind, and perplex him terribly. On the main point, however, his
resolution is soon taken. He will obey the mandate of the gods, at any
cost. He summons the most trusted of his comrades, and bids them make
secret preparations to set sail once more in quest of their home in
Italy. He promises himself that he will either find or make some
opportunity of breaking the news of his departure to Dido.
This is the turning-point of the poem; and here it is that the interest
to a modern reader, so far as the mere plot of the story is concerned,
is sadly marred by the way in which the hero thus cuts himself off from
all our sympathies. His most ingenious apologists--and he has found
many--appeal to us in vain. Upon the audience or the readers of his own
time, no doubt, the effect might have been different. To the critics of
Augustus’s court, love--or what they understood by it--was a mere
weakness in the hero. The call which Heaven had conveyed to him was to
found the great empire of the future; and because he obeys the call at
the expense of his tenderest feelings, the poet gives him always his
distinctive epithet--the “pious” Æneas. The word “pious,” it must be
remembered, implies in the Latin the recognition of all duties to one’s
country and one’s parents, as well as to the gods. And in all these
senses Æneas would deserve it. But to an English mind, the “piety” which
pleads the will of Heaven as an excuse for treachery to a woman, only
adds a deeper hue of infamy to the transaction. It
“Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.”
But our story must not wait for us to discuss too curiously the morals
of the hero. Æneas has thought to make his preparations without the
knowledge of the queen--while she
“Still dreams her happy dream, nor thinks
That ought can break those golden links.”
But, as the poet goes on to say, “Who can cheat the eyes of love?” Dido
soon learns his change of purpose, and taxes him openly with his
“baseness and ingratitude. The whole of this fourth book of the
Æneid--“The Passion of Dido,” as it has been called--is of a very high
order of tragic pathos. The queen is by turns furious and pathetic; now
she hurls menaces and curses against her false lover, now she
condescends to pitiable entreaty. The Trojan chief’s defence, such as it
is, is that he had never meant to stay. He is bound, the pilgrim of
Heaven, for Latium. His father Anchises is warning him continually in
the visions of the night not to linger here: and now the messenger of
the gods in person has come to chide this fond delay.
The grand storm of wrath in which the injured queen bursts upon him in
reply has severely taxed the powers of all Virgil’s English translators.
They seem to have felt themselves no more of a match for “the fury of a
woman scorned” than Æneas was. Certainly they all fail, more or less, to
give the fire and bitterness of the original. The heroics of Dryden suit
it better, perhaps, than any other measure:--
“False as thou art, and more than false, forsworn!
Not sprung from noble blood, nor goddess-born,
But hewn from hardened entrails of a rock,
And rough Hyrcanian tigers gave thee suck!
Why should I fawn? what have I worse to fear?
Did he once look, or lend a listening ear,
Sigh when I sobbed, or shed one kindly tear?
All symptoms of a base ungrateful mind--
So foul, that, which is worse, ’tis hard to find.
Of man’s injustice why should I complain?
The gods, and Jove himself, behold in vain
Triumphant treason, yet no thunder flies;
Nor Juno views my wrongs with equal eyes:
Faithless is earth, and faithless are the skies!
Justice is fled, and truth is now no more.
I saved the shipwrecked exile on my shore:
With needful food his hungry Trojans fed:
I took the traitor to my throne and bed:
Fool that I was!--’tis little to repeat
The rest--I stored and rigged his ruined fleet.
I rave, I rave! A god’s command he pleads!
And makes heaven accessory to his deeds.
Now Lycian lots; and now the Delian god;
Now Hermes is employed from Jove’s abode,
To warn him hence; as if the peaceful state
Of heavenly powers were touched with human fate!
But go: thy flight no longer I detain--
Go seek thy promised kingdom through the main!
Yet, if the heavens will hear my pious vow,
The faithless waves, not half so false as thou,
Or secret sands, shall sepulchres afford
To thy proud vessels and their perjured lord.
Then shalt thou call on injured Dido’s name:
Dido shall come, in a black sulph’ry flame,
When death has once dissolved her mortal frame,
Shall smile to see the traitor vainly weep;
Her angry ghost, arising from the deep,
Shall haunt thee waking, and disturb thy sleep.
At least my shade thy punishment shall know;
And fame shall spread the pleasing news below.”
But in this passage, if nowhere else, a French translator has surpassed
all his English rivals. Possibly the fervid passion of the scene, worked
up as it is almost to exaggeration, is more akin to the genius of the
French language.[27]
We cannot, however, do better than return to Mr Conington’s version for
the sequel:--
“Her speech half done, she breaks away,
And sickening shuns the light of day,
And tears her from his gaze;
While he, with thousand things to say,
Still falters and delays:
Her servants lift the sinking fair,
And to her marble chamber bear.”
The Trojans prepare to depart; but the enamoured queen makes one more
despairing effort to detain her faithless guest. She sends her sister to
ask at least for some short space of delay--until she shall have
schooled herself to bear his loss. Æneas is obdurate in his “piety.”
Then her last resolve is taken. She cheats her sister into the belief
that she has found some spells potent enough to restrain the truant
lover. Part of the charm is that his armour, and all that had belonged
to him while in her company, must be consumed by fire. So a lofty pile
is built in the palace-court; but it is to be the funeral pile of Dido.
As she looks forth from the turret of her palace at daybreak, she sees
the ships of Æneas already far in the offing; for, warned again by
Mercury that there will be risk of his departure being prevented by
force if he delays, he has already set sail under cover of the night.
For a moment the queen thinks of ordering her seamen to give chase; but
it is a mere passing phase of her despair. She contents herself with
imprecating an eternal enmity between his race and hers--fulfilled, as
the poet means us to bear in mind, in the long and bloody wars between
Rome and Carthage.
“And, Tyrians, you through time to come
His seed with deathless hatred chase:
Be that your gift to Dido’s tomb:
No love, no league ’twixt race and race.
Rise from my ashes, scourge of crime,
Born to pursue the Dardan horde
To-day, to-morrow, through all time,
Oft as our hands can wield the sword:
Fight shore with shore, fight sea with sea,
Fight all that are, or e’er shall be!”
With a master’s hand the poet enhances the glories of his country by
this prophetic introduction of the terrible Hannibal. The peaceful
empire of Cæsar, before whom East and West bow, is thrown into the
broadest light by reference to those early days when Rome lay almost at
the mercy of her implacable enemy.
“Then, maddening over crime, the queen
With bloodshot eyes, and sanguine streaks
Fresh painted on her quivering cheeks,
And wanning o’er with death foreseen,
Through inner portals wildly fares,
Scales the high pile with swift ascent,
Takes up the Dardan sword and bares--
Sad gift, for different uses meant.
She eyed the robes with wistful look,
And pausing, thought awhile and wept:
Then pressed her to the couch and spoke
Her last good-night or ere she slept.
‘Sweet relics of a time of love,
When fate and heaven were kind,
Receive my life-blood, and remove
These torments of the mind.
My life is lived, and I have played
The part that Fortune gave,
And now I pass, a queenly shade,
Majestic to the grave.
A glorious city I have built,
Have seen my walls ascend;
Chastised for blood of husband spilt,
A brother, yet no friend:
Blest lot! yet lacked one blessing more,
That Troy had never touched my shore!’”
So she mounts the funeral pile, and stabs herself with the Trojan’s
sword, her sister Anna coming upon the scene only in time to receive the
parting breath.