In this content I want to suggest some ways in which Vergil engages with tragedy in Book 4 of his epic Aeneid. This is only one genre in play within the book: so for example, as Stephen Harrison explores in his Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace, in Book 4, tragic elements are combined with elements from the genre of love‐elegy. I’ll be looking at some general ways in which the genre is engaged with and also some individual tragic intertexts. But, of course, it is not enough to identify that there is generic play: we also should consider the effects.

First, we should note that engaging with tragedy is something for which there was ample predecent in Vergil’s predecessors: the Hellenistic author Apollonius had evoked the Euripidean Medea in his epic Argonautica, setting his poem as a kind of prequel to the tragedy where Medea starts on the journey to become a matricidal, scorned woman.  There are, of course, various parallels built up between Dido and Medea (and this is Medea in her Apollonian, Euripidean and Ennian incarnations). Furthermore, Vergil’s Republican epic predecessors had engaged with tragic intertexts and forms: note that they commonly wrote both epic and tragedy: so, for example, Ennius wrote Medea Exul and the epic Annales. Catullus had used the tragic Medea as one of the models for Ariadne in poem 64 and the “abandoned woman” Ariadne is one of Dido’s models. Epic and tragedy have a long history of intertwining before Vergil and the Aeneid furthers this.

Vergil evokes the genre of tragedy generally and evokes specific intertexts. Specific intertexts include both Greek plays and Latin ones: the fact that we have lost so much of Latin tragedy should not blind us to the high probability that Roman tragedies were important models, including those Roman tragedies that reworked certain Greek plays.

One aspect which has been explored by critics is the way Vergil evokes the tragic Medea: the Greek tragic Medea, from Euripides’ play Medea and the Roman tragic Medea from plays such as Ennius’ Medea Exul. The Vergilian Dido is both a vulnerable woman falling in love, a Medea figure from her Jason days, and also a powerful love-scorned woman who takes vengeance. This gives power to her character and emphasises the menace that she poses.

Vergil’s Dido takes vengeance through a curse she utters against Aeneas and his descendants; the tragic Medea takes vengance through infanticide. But even here, Vergil nods to the tragic Medea. Medea killed her children; after wishing she could have killed Aeneas, an angry Dido wishes she could have killed Ascanius and served him at a feast:

“Could I not have seized him [Aeneas], torn him limb from limb, and scattered the pieces on the waves? Could I not have put his comrades to the sword, and Ascanius himself, and served him up as a meal at his father’s table?”(tr. Gildenhard)

(Aeneid 4.600-602, “non potui abreptum diuellere corpus et undis / spargere? non socios, non ipsum absumere ferro / Ascanium patriisque epulandum ponere mensis?”)

Dido’s wish is particularly troubling since we think of the potential threat to the succession (even though Ascanius will not actually be the line from which the Roman race will eventually come, he is at this moment the sole heir).

Additionally, the sparagmos, the rending of a body, mentioned here is familiar from tragedies such as in Euripides’ Bacchae where Pentheus is torn apart by his mother Agave and her companion maenads. Regarding epic intertexts, we might think of the death of Medea’s brother Apsyrtus who is killed and his corpse scattered on the sea to slow down those chasing the Argonauts from Colchis.

Another specific intertext is Sophocles’ Antigone. In his book Harrison looks at how the conversation between Anna and Dido recalls the start of this play where Antigone and her sister Ismene talk amongst themselves. Harrison notes that there are formal parallels between the scenes: the shared initial position and the pair of speeches given by Dido and Anna correspond in debating spirit and approximate length to the pair of speeches given by Antigone and Ismene. Harrison goes on to note that in both cases the sisterly conversations (where there is a stronger protagonist and the weaker confidante) result in a tragic decision and a consequent series of events which lead to the protagonist’s death (in the case of Dido, due to her resolve to give into her passion for Aeneas; in the case of Antigone, due to her determination to inter the corpse of her brother, Polynices). There are, further, parallels between Antigone and Dido, for instance, they have forceful personalities and as royal princesses, their political and personal lives are interlinked. Of course, Dido is in doubt at the start whereas Antigone is sure what her her actions must be: Harrison argues that this shows that Anna is a more persuasive character than her model Ismene, partly perhaps because Anna has features of other tragic confidantes who for the best reasons urge their protagonists to disastrous courses of action. For Anna as nurse-style figure of the tragic stage, we might in particular think of Phaedra’s nurse in Euripides’ extant Hippolytus who will go on to abet Phaedra’s desires. This is somewhat ominous since in tragedy it is rare for trusted figures to give sound advice.

As well as Anna reminding us of the nurse figure from Euripides’ Hippolytus, there are other links which critics have made to Euripides’ tragedy. The doomed lustful Phaedra is a potential model for Dido (relevant here is the Cretan background of the deer simile at Aeneid 4.68-73). Furthermore, when Juno appears at the end of the book to help smooth the passage of Dido to the underworld, she acts not only as a deus ex machina from tragedy but the timing of her intervention may look to Euripides’ Hippolytus. As Harrison comments,

“… like Artemis’ entry at the end of that play, Juno’s intervention here is too little too late for a goddess supposedly attached to the fortunes of her protégée.”

(Harrison, Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace 2007: 210)

Book 4, then, closes as well as opens with tragic intertexts, flagging up the tragic nature of the episode.

There are formal ways in which we might think of Book 4 as a tragedy, including the tripartite division into 3 acts, with at regina marking the breaks. There are aspects we might associate with tragedy such as tragic irony: in his The Epic Distilled: Studies in the Composition of the Aeneid, Horsfall defines tragic irony as action unfolding when the audience is in possession of information not available to the participants. He gives as an example, Aeneid 4.376ff., when Dido dismisses the divine instructions given to Aeneas. What is the effect of this? Pathos?

One aspect noticeable here is metageneric markers: that is to say, flags signalling to the reader that Vergil is engaging with tragic material. It is no coincidence that the Carthaginian building of theatre foundations is part of the backdrop to the setting of Dido’s tragedy or that the word “scaena” (found as a technical theatrical term) is used to describe the backdrop of Carthage in Book 1, line 164. Another instance of a metageneric marker comes in Dido’s dream. We have just heard that Dido hears the ill-omened song of a screech owl, called a “doleful song of death” coming from her previous husband’s shrine. Another instance of an ill-omen presaging her suicide is the dreams in which she feels herself being hounded by Aeneas, It is no coincidence that she is compared in a simile to figures famous from the stage: Pentheus and Orestes.

“as she slept a savage Aeneas drives her in her frenzy. It seems to her that she is always alone and abandoned, always going on a long road unaccompanied, searching for her Tyrians in a deserted land; just like Pentheus in his madness sees columns of Furies, a double sun, and a double Thebes appearing; or like Agamemnon’s son Orestes, driven across the stage when he flees his mother armed with torches and black snakes and avenging Furies sit on the threshold.”

“agit ipse furentem / in somnis ferus Aeneas, semperque relinqui sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur / ire viam et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra, / Eumenidum veluti demens videt agmina Pentheus / et solem geminum et duplices se ostendere Thebas, /aut Agamemnonius scaenis agitatus Orestes, / armatam facibus matrem et serpentibus atris / cum fugit ultricesque sedent in limine Dirae.” (Aeneid 4.465-73, of Dido hounded by Aeneas in dreams).

Orestes is described as scaenis agitatus at 4.471, hounded across the stage, which makes the theatre context clear. Horsfall suggests that Virgil does not refer specifically to the Oresteia, or the Bacchae but probably to a version that was known, and indeed loved, on the Roman stage, very probably with terrific special effects.

The tragic nature of the whole Carthaginian episode is flagged up when Venus meets Aeneas in book 1. She is disguised as a Spartan huntress and says that Tyrians girls all carry the quiver and wear purple boot with this high ankle binding. At 1.337, the text uses the word cothurnus for the boot, which, if we look at the entry 1b in the Oxford Latin Dictionary, is also a kind of boot worn by tragic actors. Moreover, Venus goes on to give Aeneas information about where he is in a way and who is ruling that recalls a Latin tragic prologue – the start of a tragedy where introductory information, often delivered by a god, is given to the audience. This choice of footwear worn by actors in tragedy in tandem with the goddess’ delivery of an expository tragic prologue, flags the tragic nature of the forthcoming Dido episode.

Conclusion

To conclude, we can see that there is substantial use of tragedy, both general features and specific plays. The key question is think about is to what effect: does this create pathos? Does it build up tension? Does it add emotional charge? Can sympathy for victims be created through the evocation of a generic voice often associated with the underdog and marginalized? Does our opinion of Dido change if we see her as a menacing Medea figure? Or lustful Phaedra type? And what about feelings of sympathy as the queen is swept up in an inevitable headlong descent from prosperity to death?