Page 13 - GALIET Dido's Triplicity and Aeneas' Duplicity

historicism spins on symbolic Dido-Carthage/Aeneas-Rome parallels and on Rome’s national guilt and disgrace over the Punic Wars.15 Lastly, Farron’s romantic defence refutes that it is our romantic, solipsistic lens that favours Dido over Aeneas: we are as romantic as Romans. He finds Austin’s “austere” Apollonian Rome a fib: a decadent literary oeuvre of sadistic, orgiastic, Dionysian works, consumed with love’s grief, torments, shame, desperation and suicide.16&17 Equally, Farron’s defence of Roman individualism rests on Rome’s endless conflicts of interest between private and public life.18 Further, Farron concludes that our empathies for this Roman grand-dame of world literature19 are per saecula: from Ovid20 to Lucian;21 from St. Augustine’s weeping to Macrobius’ feelings; from Chaucer’s “Saint of Cupid” to Marlowe’s “slaughtered queen;” from Landor’s devoted criticism to post-modernism. Indeed, Farron adds, Book 4 revolves around Dido’s love and Dido’s infamy. With Dido we commiserate.
14 Farron posits that Aeneas’ devotion is weak. He shows little interest in his fated future: he wants to die in Troy, he delays his mission when Anchises refuses to leave and Creusa disappears, he weeps when he departs Troy, he feels envy for Andromache and Helenus in their Troyland, he contemplates giving up the call of duty and fate when ships burn, he is more fascinated with Daedalus’ carved doors and conversing with Deiphobus than visiting father.
15 Farron says that espite Carthage’s conciliatory disposition, Romans forced and gorged on the Third Punic War with monstrous cruelty and cynicism (Appian), livid anti-Carthagenian prejudices (Livy) and brimming invidia (Paterculus).
16 This is an analysis by Ricard Heinz. Farron. 42.
17Farron says thematic examples abound: the Aeneid’s Nisus and Euryalus tragedy; the Eclogues’ unrequited love and the Georgics’ power of love writings.
18 Julius Caesar fights the Tigurini to avenge an ancestral family feud18, he invades Italy to avoid defamation, and Cato, paragon of virtue, considers protecting two brothers-in-law from charges of bribery and harm to the Republic.
19 Heinze says that, “Dido is the only character created by a roman poet who was to pass on into world literature.” Farron. 44
20 Farron. Heroides 7 to his Tristia (2.535-6) 43
21 Farron. The Dance. (46) 43.
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