On a pyre she has built to burn all that Aeneas has left her, Dido dies by her own hand on his sword. It is one of the great moments of the Aeneid, and augurs enmity and war for the future between Dido’s and Aeneas’s descendants. Hear the climax of the story here.
Dido, bereft, watches in despair as Aeneas and the Trojans ready their ships to sail away and leave her. Hear the poetry here.
Horace’s poem is addressed to his friend Septimius and praises the attractions of Tarentum on the heel of Italy, to which Septimius seems to have a connection. Hear it with a translation here.
Illustration: Maria, Testa di donna (Taranto), CC BY-SA 2.0