Virgil’s motive for inventing Aeneas and Dido’s doomed love affair is to provide a poetic and romantic explanation for the hatred that existed between Rome and Carthage. The Punic Wars, which occurred between Rome and Carthage in the third and second centuries B.C., would seem to be the fulfillment of the curse Dido places on Aeneas and his posterity when he abandons her and sails to Italy to fulfill his destiny.
In addition, Virgil has another important reason for telling this poignant love story: He wants to present Aeneas not only as the embodiment of Roman virtues, but also as a living, breathing human being. We have already seen how Virgil is willing, when the occasion warrants—for example, in his description of the fall of Troy—to show Aeneas as haunted by the same doubts and fears as are other people. Aeneas is not born a hero; he becomes one, and the noble result appears all the more admirable because of the many obstacles he has to overcome.
However, simply to show Aeneas stumbling in the dark would have been a rather negative demonstration of his humanity. Virgil knew that the most effective way to display the hero’s humanness would be to portray him in the grips of the strongest of all passions, as a lover whose love is reciprocated. Aeneas’s struggle between his love for Dido and his need to prove worthy of his fated mission—which he pursues at the price of sacrificing the personal happiness he craves as much as any man or woman—saves him from becoming a mere one-dimensional character. Later in the Aeneid, when he is in danger of appearing to be an unbelievably perfect hero, our recollection that he was capable of loving Dido and reluctantly left her sustains his characterization as a flawed, mortal man.
Had Jupiter not sent Mercury to goad Aeneas into action, it is possible that Aeneas would have remained in Carthage and never would have completed his mission. However, once the Trojan prince realizes his error of remaining too long with Dido, nothing will interfere with his determination to fulfill his destiny: “As the sharp admonition and command / From heaven had shaken him awake, he now / Burned only to be gone, to leave that land / Of the sweet life behind.” Facing Dido’s wrath once she learns of his pending departure, Aeneas transforms himself from a star-struck lover back to a fate-driven voyager. When he tells Dido that Italy is his only true love, we understand that he has replaced his love for the queen with love for his future homeland. Finally, Virgil’s characterizing Aeneas as “duty-bound” recalls this same epithet that the hero used to describe himself in Book I. Although Aeneas is “shaken still” with love for Dido, he returns to his ship and sails to Italy as Jupiter decrees.
Aeneas’s responsibilities as a father to Ascanius are called into question in this book, as they were in the previous one. Knowing that the familial relationship between father and son is of great importance to Aeneas—as it is to Virgil—Jupiter questions Aeneas’s honor as a progenitor who has seemingly forgotten his son’s rightful ancestry. When Mercury, instructed to inform the Trojan warrior in person of Jupiter’s concerns, finds Aeneas clothed in Carthaginian finery, the messenger god berates him for failing as a father: “If future history’s glories / Do not affect you, if you will not strive / For your own honor, think of Ascanius, / Think of the expectations of your heir, / Iulus, to whom the Italian realm, the land / Of Rome, are due.” We know that Mercury’s rebuke spurs Aeneas’s resolve anew, for later in the book the Trojan prince, speaking to Dido, admits his temporary lapse as a father to “young Ascanius, / My dear boy wronged, defrauded of his kingdom, / Hesperian lands of destiny.” He vows never again to forget his responsibilities as a father.
In addition to Aeneas’s irresponsible behavior toward his son, his leadership abilities are also dubious in Book IV. His infatuation with Dido affects not only himself but his people, who languish in Carthage. Although Virgil never directly addresses the Trojans’s concern for their leader’s welfare, he offers clues that indicate the discomfort Aeneas’s people feel. When Aeneas informs three Trojan crewmen responsible for readying the fleet to prepare all ships for departure, they gladly obey and eagerly begin stockpiling the vessels. Metaphorically, Virgil compares the Trojans to ants, who work incessantly and without any rest to collect the food that will enable their colony to survive. The image recalls the Carthaginians in Book I, who built their city like bees constructing a hive. Both metaphors emphasize the organization and order needed if a community—such as Rome—is to prosper and run efficiently.
