Editing Dido (section)

==Virgil's ''Aeneid''==
[[File:Dido throne MAN Napoli Inv8898.jpg|thumb|Dido seated on a throne, attended by handmaiden, looking at the personification of Africa wearing an elephant hide. Aeneas' ship features in the background. Fresco in [[Pompeii]]]]
Virgil's references in the ''Aeneid'' generally agree with what Justin's epitome of Trogus recorded. Virgil names Belus as Dido's father, this Belus sometimes being called [[Belus II]] by later commentators to distinguish him from [[Belus (Egyptian)|Belus]] son of [[Poseidon]] and [[Libya (mythology)|Libya]] in earlier [[Greek mythology]]. Classicist T. T. Duke suggests that this is a [[hypocoristicon]] of the historical father of Pygmalion and Dido, [[Mattan I]], also known as {{transliteration|phn|MTN-BʿL}} ({{transliteration|he|Matan-Baʿal}}, 'Gift of the Lord').<ref name="Duke 1969 pp. 135">{{cite journal | last=Duke | first=T. T. | title=Review: The World of the Phoenicians | journal=The Classical Journal | publisher=The Classical Association of the Middle West and South | volume=65 | issue=3 | year=1969 | issn=0009-8353 | jstor=3296263 | page=135 | url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296263 | access-date=25 May 2022}}</ref>[[Image:Dido Cochet Louvre ENT2000.10.jpg|thumb|left|200px|''Dido'', attributed to [[Christophe Cochet]], formerly at [[Château de Marly|Marly]] ([[Musée du Louvre|Louvre]])]]Virgil (1.343f) adds that the marriage between Dido and [[Sychaeus]], as Virgil calls Dido's husband, occurred while her father was still alive. Pygmalion slew Sychaeus secretly due to his wealth and Sychaeus appeared to Dido in a dream in which he told the truth about his death, urged her to flee the country, and revealed to her where his gold was buried. She left with those who hated or feared Pygmalion. None of these details contradicts Justin's epitome, but Virgil very much changes the import and many details of the story when he brings Aeneas and his followers to Carthage.

(1.657f) Dido and Aeneas fall in love by the management of [[Juno (mythology)|Juno]] and [[Venus (mythology)|Venus]], acting in concert, though for different reasons. (4.198f) When the rumour of the love affair comes to King [[Iarbas]] the Gaetulian, "a son of Jupiter Ammon by a raped [[Garamantes|Garamantian]] nymph", Iarbas prays to his father, blaming Dido who has scorned marriage with him yet now takes Aeneas into the country as her lord. (4.222f) Jupiter dispatches [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]] to send Aeneas on his way and the pious Aeneas sadly obeys. Mercury tells Aeneas of all the promising Italian lands and orders Aeneas to get his fleet ready. (4.450f)[[Image:Guercino Morte di Didone.jpg|thumb|right|250px|''Death of Dido'', by [[Guercino]], AD 1631.]] Dido can no longer bear to live. (4.474) She has her sister Anna build her a pyre under the pretence of burning all that reminded her of Aeneas, including weapons and clothes that Aeneas had left behind and (what she calls) their bridal bed (though, according to [[Aeneas]], they were never officially married.) (4.584f) When Dido sees Aeneas' fleet leaving she curses him and his Trojans and proclaims endless hate between Carthage and the descendants of [[Troy]], foreshadowing the [[Punic Wars]]. (4.642) Dido ascends the pyre, lies again on the couch which she had shared with Aeneas, and then falls on a sword that Aeneas had given her. (4.666) Those watching let out a cry; Anna rushes in and embraces her dying sister; Juno sends [[Iris (mythology)|Iris]] from heaven to release Dido's spirit from her body. (5.1) From their ships, Aeneas and his crew see the glow of Dido's burning funeral pyre and can only guess what has happened. At least two scholars have argued that the inclusion of the pyre as part of Dido's suicide—otherwise unattested in epic and tragedy—alludes to the self-immolation that took the life of Carthage's last queen (or the wife of its general [[Hasdrubal the Boetharch]]) in 146 BC.{{sfn|Edgeworth|1976}}

(6.450f) During his journey in the underworld Aeneas meets Dido and tries to excuse himself, but Dido does not deign to look at him. Instead she turns away from Aeneas to a grove where her former husband Sychaeus waits.

Virgil has included most of the motifs from the original: Iarbas who desires Dido against her will, a deceitful explanation for the building of the pyre, and Dido's final suicide. In both versions Dido is loyal to her original husband in the end. But whereas the earlier Elissa remained always loyal to her husband's memory, Virgil's Dido dies as a tortured and repentant woman who has fallen away from that loyalty.

Virgil consistently uses the form ''Dido'' as nominative, but derivates of ''Elissa'' for the [[oblique case]]s.