The Aeneid: Aeneas and Dido The love between Aeneas and Dido is not…

VuNgocHongAnBella The Aeneid: Aeneas and Dido The love between Aeneas and Dido is not…The Aeneid: Aeneas and Dido The love between Aeneas and Dido is not only important as a tragic influence in the epic, but because it most clearly depicts Aeneas’s pietas (piety, sense of duty). While Aeneas’s recounting of the Fall of Troy is a story that does emphasize his pietas in relation to the city, gods, and his family and comrades, Dido most clearly challenges, or tempts, Aeneas to abandon his sense of duty. Mercury’s warning to Aeneas that he must leave Dido emphasizes pietas and duty, and Aeneas suddenly conforms his mind to the will of the gods and his destiny, though he still loves Carthage and Dido: “Aeneas / was truly overwhelmed by the vision, stunned, / his hackles bristle with fear, his voice chokes in his throat. / He yearns to be gone, to desert this land he loves” (Book iV, lines 345 – 48). Similarly, when he is facing Dido’s sorrowful anger at the news, “warned by Jupiter now, his gaze held steady, / fought to master the torment in his heart: (IV, 412 – 13). Fulfilling the demands of pietas is not easy for Aeneas, and while he does conform his will, he suffers tremendously. The deep enactment of pietas in spite of his love for Dido is a crucial aspect of his heroic stature as founder of Rome.   Do you agree with Aeneas’s decision? Do you understand, sympathize with, or disagree with Dido’s reaction? Is is fair of the gods to expect so very much from Aeneas and for him to have to sacrifice and lose so much (his wife in Troy, Dido in Carthage) all to achieve his destiny? Is his pietas a virtue or a hindrance  – or is it a virtue when viewed from the viewpoint of the whole group of Trojan survivors and a hindrance for him as an individual? Reply    Arts & HumanitiesEnglish