Yelena
BARAZ The Allusive Triangle of Dido's
Suicide
The
tragedy of Dido is an old chestnut of Virgilian
criticism. Vergil
himself explicitly compares Dido at 4.469-473 to Orestes
and Pentheus, not as mythological figures, but as
characters on the stage, and the overall structure of the
Book has been analyzed as a tragedy along Aristotelian
lines. Much
attention has also been devoted to sustained allusions
Vergil makes to the character of Medea: falling in love
with Aeneas, Dido is likened to the young Medea of
Apollonius; in the bitter exchange of speeches with
Aeneas, and her turn to magic in despair, she is linked
to the older and resentful Medea of Euripides. In this
paper I will explore Dido's relationship to another
unexpected Euripidean character, the Corinthian princess
who burns and melts by Medea's design.
I will argue that this Euripidean connection sheds new light
on two important episodes, the gift-giving scene in Book
one and Dido's suicide in Book 4, and helps us explain
why Cupid does not inspire Dido's love for Aeneas by
shooting her with an arrow.
The
textual focus of my analysis is on the parallels between
the episodes of gift-giving in the Medea and in
Book I of the Aeneid.
In both cases, gifts that could belong to bride's attire, and
thus carry connotations of wedding gifts are given to a
woman who in fact occupies the bride's functional
position in the story. The
gifts are presented through the giver's children (Medea's
sons and Cupid in the guise of Ascanius), whose safety
and ability to remain in the land under the recipient's
control are in question. In
addition, one of the gifts in each case acknowledges the
recipient's royal status. More striking still, the
combined effect of the gifts and Cupid's touch on Dido is
reminiscent of the action of Medea's poison on the
princess. Vergil's use of venenum at 1.688 in
Venus' description of Cupid's intended influence on Dido
and haerere at 1.717 in the portrayal of the
physical contact between Dido and Cupid (cf. Creon's
inability to detach himself from his daughter's corpse
because the poisoned robe clings to him) is particularly
significant. Unlike
the simultaneous allusion to young Medea's falling in
love with Jason in Apollonius, the allusion to the
princess' fiery death combines with the poet's more
explicit indications of the doomed fate of the union to
which this scene will lead.
Alongside the correspondences in the act of gift-giving and
the nature of the gifts, the repeated references to the
doli of Venus and Cupid highlight their kinship
with the scheming ìMedeaî, thus emphasizing
the hostility of their intentions and contributing to the
foreshadowing of the tragic outcome.
The
effect of the triangulated allusions to Medea and the
princess is a highly complex portrayal of Dido.
She is both a helpless victim and a figure of heroic statue in
control of her own fate. The
two sides of this depiction culminate in Dido's suicide
at the end of Book 4: like the princess, she is consumed
by fire; like Medea, she is the one who wields the sword.
The desire on Vergil's part to maintain both allusive threads
until the end may also account for the apparent
inconsistency in the description of the suicide, in that
the pyre appears to be burning and not burning at the
same time. In the
end, the identity of the agent and the victim, created
though allusions to the Medea, expresses itself
perfectly in the act of suicide.