Dido, love, and the leaving

Dido is in love and undone by it. She has not slept; she keeps Aeneas at her side day and night; the half-built towers of Carthage stand frozen because the queen has stopped giving orders. She tells her sister Anna everything. Anna, kindly, encourages her: the city is exposed, an alliance with this Trojan prince could only help. Juno and Venus, scheming for their own ends, agree to push the lovers together. During a great hunt the next day, Juno sends a storm that scatters the party. Dido and Aeneas, separated from the others, take shelter together in a cave. Virgil leaves what happens there to the reader; he says only that this day was the cause of all that followed. Dido, after, calls it marriage. Rumor flies through Africa.

Word reaches Jupiter that Aeneas has stopped. He is wearing Tyrian purple now, has built towers in Dido's city, has forgotten Italy. Jupiter sends Mercury down with an explicit message: leave at once. Mercury delivers the order. Aeneas, stricken, knows he has no choice. He gives quiet orders to ready the fleet in secret. Dido finds out almost immediately and confronts him. She speaks one of the longest and most painful speeches in classical literature — pleads, threatens, curses, mocks. Aeneas does not argue. He says, terribly, "I do this against my will," and tells her that Italy is not his choice but the gods'. He leaves her standing in the hall and goes to the harbor.

The fleet sails before dawn. Dido watches from the wall. She has a great pyre built in the courtyard on a pretext — she will burn the things he left behind. She climbs it. She calls down the curse — her people and his enemies forever, an avenger to rise from her bones — and falls on his sword. Her sister Anna runs to her and finds her dying. Iris is sent down by Juno to release her struggling soul. The Trojan ships, already at sea, see the smoke rise from the city. Aeneas does not know what it is. He keeps sailing.