Literature and history

history dot come.

Hello and welcome to literature and history.

Episode 55, Among the Shades.

This is the second of four programs on Virgil's Aniad, an epic poem first put into circulation

in about 19 BC.

In the previous show, we heard the story of how Aniis, his father Ankysees, and his son Eulis escaped from Troy.

Together with a framing narrative about how Anius and his fellow Trojan refugees got swept down to the North African city of Carthage seven years later, where they met Queen

Dido. And now it's time to talk about what happened next. Many of the most haunting

and poignant moments of the Aniad take place in the part of the story that you're about to hear.

And a critical number of these moments involve Queen Dido of Carthage.

In the words of scholar David Scott Wilson Okamura, quote,

Dido has a way of taking books over, close quote,

whether these books are academic studies or the Aniyad itself.

St Augustine, in the Confessions, once berated himself for being more emotionally invested

in the romance between Dido and Aniyius than he was in his own religion.

Augustine wrote, quote, what is more pitiable than a wretch without pity for himself

who weeps over Dido and Anaeus, but not over himself,

dying for his lack of love for you, my God."

Close quote. While Virgil's coverage of Dido is fairly brief,

she is the figure who most of us remember years after we finish the Aniad,

even as Anius himself smudges together with other epic heroes and fades

...