Dido to Aeneas,” Ovid’s Heroides. Translation, with introduction and notes
Abstract
This poem comes from Ovid's Heroides, one of his early collections of poetry. In these poems, Ovid makes the heroines of Greek and Roman mythology speak, often to their lovers who have abandoned them. Many of the women who speak are connected to heroes of the Trojan War, from Ulysses to Paris. Ovid has clearly crafted this poem as a clever response to Vergil's Aeneid. Where Vergil gave us Aeneas's perspective on their love affair in Books One and Four, Ovid's response is purely Dido's perspective. Throughout the poem, Ovid clarifies ambiguities in Vergil's narrative and elaborates on Dido's powerful agency, first as queen of Carthage, and then as a woman who boldly chooses her own tragic fate.
Ovid has proceeded in the Heroides in a reverse chronological order of the Trojan War. He begins with Penelope's letter to Odysseus, and ends the Trojan War poems with Paris's and Helen's letters, whose affair would begin the war. Dido stands as the seventh poem.
Dido is the queen of Carthage, in what is now Tunisia, and has just lost her lover, her second husband, Aeneas, the leader of the Trojan refugees. Having fled persecution in Tyre, in Phoenicia (what is now Lebanon), she has settled in Africa and founded the city of Carthage, where she welcomed the Trojan refugees and offered to make Aeneas her consort. Aeneas, ordered by the gods, leaves her and Carthage to head for Italy. Ovid imagines her writing to Aeneas in the moments before she dies.
Document Type
Contribution to Book
Publication Date
2024
Recommended Citation
Damer, Erika Zimmerman. 2024. “Dido to Aeneas,” Ovid’s Heroides. Translation, with introduction and notes. In Women in Power: Classical Myths and Stories from the Amazons to Cleopatra, edited by Stephanie McCarter. Penguin Classics, 205-214.
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