Virgil - Aeneid 4

I have been thinking about the beginning of Book 4 of The Aeneid, mainly because I am in the midst of preparing it for my Year 13 Latin class. It struck me that although this is Dido's book in many ways, she is not named for a while...and this got me to musing (instead of preparing my work as I should have been!)


I was looking at the first 8 lines where we get a vivid description of Dido and her emotional turmoil at the time (indeed it is sad that this powerful queen is introduced to us as male sana or 'barely sane'). Virgil has not named Dido at this point. It is not necessary to name her since he has already introduced her to his audience in book 1, so it is obvious who she is. However, it is still somewhat unusual considering that this is the beginning of  a new book (chapter) with two chapters inbetween that did not focus on Dido but on a retelling of the Trojan War and his subsequent wanderings by Aeneas, that Virgil does not remind us of the main character of this book at the start. Why is this? Is it perhaps an attempt to dehumanise her so that we feel less sympathy for her at the end of the book when she kills herself? This would make sense in some ways - after all, to the Roman audience, Dido was not a character to pity; she was a potential obstacle to Aeneas that could have prevented him from laying the seeds of the Roman empire, much like Circe or Calypso in Homer’s Odyssey but with effects that would have been much more widespread. However, although this argument is logical, it contradicts the detailed characterisation that Virgil later gives to Dido, in which he creates a woman who is clearly deserving of our sympathy. Perhaps it is to create suspense in not naming her; but this argument too falls flat as the audience would have known her identity and therefore, would not have been shocked when her name was finally revealed. Perhaps he simply felt he did not need to name her, as the audience would have known who she was, but this feels like a weak argument to use to explain the absence of her name at the beginning of a book that is essentially her book. Perhaps Virgil wanted to focus on her position rather than her name; this would explain why he chose to call her regina in line 1 instead of Dido. By the end of book 4 (her  book) Dido has lost everything; her love for Aeneas even jeapardises her queenly nature and accomplishments as she is willing to give Aeneas half of her rule, and also neglects her growing city, and therefore, her duties as  its ruler, because of her love for Aeneas. Virgil might have chosen to emphasise her character as queen here in contrast to what is later to come. This might also serve the added purpose of showing the audience that it was a queen who fell in love with Aeneas. Aeneas gains the love of no ordinary women, but of a queen, much as Odysseus gains the love of a goddess and a witch. This would emphasise his heroic status and link him clearly to the Homeric hero; this would be appropriate considering the numerous links made between Odysseus and Aeneas elsewhere in The Aeneid.