Like everyone else, Queen Dido of Carthage, giving a lavish banquet in honour of Aeneas and his band of exiled Trojans, is unaware that she is entertaining a god unawares. It is Cupid, Aeneas’s half-brother, whom their mother Venus has sent in disguise to make Dido fall in love. The idea is to make it hard for Juno, Queen of the Gods and Aeneas’s enemy, to turn the Carthaginian hosts against their Trojan guests, but Venus has miscalculated. The consequences of Dido’s passion will include tragedy and death for her, and the beginnings of an enmity between Rome and Carthage that will leave a deep mark on centuries to come. The illustration, photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen, shows Cupid at and and a Maenad in a fresco from Pompeii.
Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here.
In a banqueting hall on Carthage, Cupid has been sent by his mother Venus to make Queen Dido fall in love with Aeneas, the heroic Trojan prince whose descendants will found Rome.
Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here.
See the illustrated blog post here.