ABSTRACT
Vergil’s portrait of Dido’s suicide as self-loss and abnegation clearly resonated powerfully with his Roman readership. Roman writers and artists, using the Aeneid as an inspiration for their own compositions, frequently went so far as to subordinate the epic impetus of its main narrative to the demands of the erotic drama of Book Four, a tendency indicating that, to the post-Vergilian artistic imagination at least, Aeneas’ imperial struggle was often less immediately engaging than Dido’s tale of self-dissolution. 1 The figure of Dido accordingly assumes center stage in subsequent Latin literature, to be investigated, reinterpreted, and reportrayed by authors who chose to follow in Vergil’s footsteps. Aeneas, by contrast, retains his epic and heroic status, but is left literarily inert, ossified by this shift in focus.
