VII. DIDO AENEAE. DIDO, driven from her home by the persecutions of her brother Pygmalion, who had killed her husband Sychaeus, took refuge in Africa, and there purchased land and founded the city of Carthage. While the town was still in process of building Aeneas was driven on shore there by contrary winds as he was trying to make his course along the western shore of Italy. Dido entertains him, falls in love with him and yields to his embraces. Aeneas after a time obeys his destiny in seeking once more his promised Italian settlements, and sails away without the knowledge of Dido. When she discovers it she resolves on suicide, and Ovid supposes her to write this letter to Aeneas, full of sorrow and remonstrance, before she destroys herself. [The story is well known from Virgil. And Ovid has been content to take all facts from him, as well as the spirit in which he conceives the character of Dido. He elsewhere briefly tells the same story, Met. 14, 75-81, Hanc (Scyllam) ubi Trojanae remis avidamque Charybdim Ausonium, Libycas vento referuntur ad oras. 1-2. The notion of a swan singing, and especially just before its death, is as old at any rate as Aristotle, who states it as a fact in natural history. The Maeander, a river in Phrygia, (mod. Mendere) which like the Cayster had as many swans as the Thames. M. 2, 252 Et quae Maeonias celebrarant carmine ripas Flumineae volucres medio coluere Caystro. Tr. 5, 1. 11: Utque jacens ripa deflere Caystrius ales abiectus is a strong word, 'cast down helpless,' i. e. dying. 4. movimus ista 'I have begun this appeal with heaven against me:' for Ovid's use of movere see index. 5. merita 'my services to you,' 'the favours I have granted you.' cf. 12, 192. 7. certus es ire: cf. 6, 51. 8. venti vela fidemque ferent: see on 2, 25. 9. solvere is used in an actual and metaphorical sense 'to break away from your moorings and your contract at once.' In 10, 78 we have solvere fidem in the latter sense, and in 7, 55 solvere retinacula in the former. 10. Itala regna sequi: this was the reason of Aeneas' departure. Mercury thus urges him to go, Aen. 4, 274, Ascanium surgentem et spes heredis Iuli Respice, cui regnum Italiae Romanaque tellus Debentur. ubi sint nescis. Aeneas had been sent to Italy by oracular warnings, but had twice already mistaken their meaning, and founded a city in the wrong country. 11. nova Carthago-crescentia moenia. When Aeneas lands in Africa he finds the Tyrian settlers engaged in building the new town of Carthage, Aen. 1, 423-428, and he exclaims O fortunati quorum jam moenia surgunt. This Virgil has arranged to suit his own purposes; but the truth seems to be that Carthage was not founded till long after the period of the Trojan war, and perhaps not more than half a century before the founding of Rome. 12. summa 'chief power,' cf. M. 13, 192 dati summa sceptri. Loers also quotes Plautus Truc. 4, 2, 15 solus summam hic habet apud nos. 13-14. 'You are of a roving, discontented, restless nature. Whatever you have accomplished you wish to abandon, and ever look forward to something still to be done. No sooner have you acquired one country than you must search the whole world for another.' 15. ut 'ever supposing that,' cf. on 1, 116. index. habendam 'in possession,' see infr. 163. And see 18. quam iterum fallas 'to break as you have broken before,' fides 'plighted word.' 19. quando: see on 1, 11. 21. ut, cf. on 13. Though everything turn out according to your wishes, and the accomplishment of your prayers does not keep you waiting, whence will you have a wife to love you as I have done? tua vota 'the accomplishment of your prayers,' the reaching the destined Italian home. [Palmer reads di tua vota morantur from Lennep, who argues that a personal subject to morantur is required. To his illustrations of this he might have added Juv. 14, 250 jam nunc obstas et vota moraris. Nevertheless this pregnant use of vota for the accomplishment of prayers' is so much in Ovid's manner that I should be unwilling to change without some authority.] 25. inducto 'waxed torches tipped with brimstone' as appears from M. 3, 373 non aliter quam cum summis circumlita taedis Admotam rapiunt vivacia sulpura flammam, Cf. Juv. 13, 145. uror 'I am on fire with love,' cf. 4, 19. 27-30. Though he is unkind, and though if I were wise I should care nothing for losing him, yet I do love him all the same.' 27. male gratus 'ungrateful', see index for male. 30. peius cf. on 6, 157, and see index. 31. nurui, i.e. herself, as having wedded Aeneas, the son of Venus and therefore the brother of Cupid. 32. castris militet 'let him serve in your camp,' i. e. let him be in love. Loers quotes Am. 1, 91 Militat omnis amans et habet sua castra Cupido. 33-4. 'Or at any rate let him, whom I have begun to love (and I am not ashamed of the fact), afford a subject for my passion,' i.e. let him allow me to go on loving him though he does not love me. The connection is 'let him fall in love with me (31-2) or at least let him so behave as to allow me to love him.' The editors all quote Am. 1, 3, 2 aut amet aut faciat cur ego semper aтет. Ah nimium volui! tantum patiatur amari. We may quote verse 19 in the same poem to show more fully the view meant to be expressed: the poets says to his unwilling mistress Te mihi materiam felicem in carmina praebe etc. 'Only let me have the privilege of singing of you, and I will make you famous' etc. i.e. Suffer yourself to be the subject of my love even if you do not return it. ego is out of its place to mark the emphasis which belongs to it, and draw the contrast sharply with ille in the previous line. [I cannot agree to retain quae for quem, and thus admit a very awkward anacoluthon. Nor do I feel able to take Madvig's emendation into the text, i.e. amorem for amare. The sense seems to me complete without it. 'I am not ashamed to own that I began to love him first, I only ask that he will let me go. on doing so.'] 36. matris, sc. Venus. 37-40. The idea is suggested by Aen. 4, 365 where Dido says to Aeneas: Nec tibi diva parens, generis nec Dardanus auctor, Perfide; sed duris genuit te cautibus horrens Caucasus, Hyrcanaeque admorunt ubera tigres. Cf. M. 9, 613 neque enim te tigride natus: Nec rigidas silices solidumve in pectore ferrum, Aut adamanta gerit nec lac bibit ille leaenae. Tibullus 3, 4, 85 Nam te nec vasti genuerunt aequora ponti...nec te conceptam sacra leaena tulit, cf. also 10, 131-2. It comes originally from Homer, Il. 16, 33, οὐκ ἄρα σοίγε πατὴρ ἦν ἱππότα Πηλεύς...οὐδὲ Θέτις μήτηρ γλαυκὴ δέ σε τίκτε θάλασσα...πέτραι δ' ἠλίβατοι. 40-3. He is again using Virgil Aen. 4, 309 quin etiam hiberno moliris sidere classem Et mediis properas aquilonibus ire per altum. 42. See how Eurus is rousing the evertere aquas would be to eversas is proleptic. waters and making them rough.' make the waves tumble. 43. malueram for maluissem, as we have erat and fuit for essem: cf. on 1, 108. 'I should have preferred if I had had the choice.' 44. iustior 'kinder.' See on 3, 133. 45-6. tanti 'worth so much.' quid non tu reris inique 'what is there that you do not estimate wrongly ?' For the use of reor with the idea of 'estimation' cf. Tr. 5, 6, 35 elige nostrorum minimum minimumque laborum Isto quod reris grandius illud erit. [The readings proposed for this line are almost as many as there are editors. The best MS (P) has quid non terreris, with the first syllable of terreris indistinct, I have therefore guessed tu reris as being the nearest to this word, which would have no meaning.] 46. ut pereas depending on tanti, cf Am. 2, 5, 1 Nullus amor tanti est-abeas pharetrate Cupido-Ut mihi sint totiens maxima vota mori. dum me fugis: cf. Virg. Aen. 4, 313 Mene fugis? 47. constantia magno 'that will cost you dear.' dum me careas 'so long only as you can get rid of me.' vile of small account.' Cf. 12, 187. 49. ponent 'will subside.' The intransitive use of ponere seems confined to this particular connection, Aen. 7, 27 venti posuere. Ib. 10, 103 Zephyri posuere. 50. caeruleis: the colour attributed to sea-gods, and hence to whatever belonged to them. M. 2, 8 caeruleos habet unda deos. Virg. G. 4, 388 caeruleus Proteus. Triton curret, i.e. there will be calm. The idea is from Virgil Aen. 1, 144-147, where Cymothae and Triton busy themselves with remedying the damage done by the storm, and Neptune their father, after calming the disturbed waters, rotis summas levibus perlabitur undas. 52. duritia: cf. 4, 85. 53-4. 'What would you have done if you had known nothing of what the power of the angry sea was?' How ill is it that you trust the water whose nature you have so often learnt before! male to your own misfortune,' cf. 9, 99. expertae: expertus as a passive seems nearly unexampled before the Silver Age. 55. ut although,' as in 15. pelago suadente: the reverse of pelago negante 2, 100. retinacula solvas: cf. sup. 9, 'hawsers.' 57-58. Cf. Hor. Od. 3, 2, 26 Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum Vulgarit arcanae sub isdem Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum solvat phaselum. 59. laesus for laesus fuerit, see index under sum omitted. 60. Cytheriacis aquis. The sea near the island of Cythera, Hes. Theog. 192 πρῶτον δὲ Κυθήροισι ζαθέοισι ἔπλητ ̓, ἔνθεν, ἔπειτα περίῤῥυτον ἵκετο Κύπριν. 61-2. 'I fear that my ruin (wrought by you) may prove your own, and that so unwillingly I may be the cause of your destruction.' 63. sic melius, i.e. by your living with all the pangs of an uneasy conscience. Ovid's Dido is no less eager for Aeneas' punishment than Virgil's (Aen. 4, 382), but Ovid represents her, with perhaps more of refinement though less of nature, desire that his punishment should not be death but the pangs that come from remorse, and the evil reputation of being the cause of her death, |