Fitful and Changing: Femininity in Virgil's Aeneid

women have made an exceedingly great impact on the world’s economical, social, and political spectrum. However, women are still deemed inferior to men in past and present cultures. The inferiority of women has been portrayed through various avenues such as literature and written works. The Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses’ women characters are three perfect depictions of how women in today’s society are dominated, disregarded, and discredited.

Aeneas is perfectly fine with this decision and tries to sneak away from Dido, despite her love for him. Soon Dido finds out and she feels betrayed, saying that he can’t leave on behalf of their marriage. Aeneas says that it was a fake wedding only to satisfy the gods and Dido loses her mind, cursing everything of Aeneas. She demands him to leave, and when he dies on his ship, she will be there to haunt his every move. Aeneas soon becomes very aware of Dido’s sudden behavior and, despite his love for her, he leaves with his fleet. Dido becomes infuriated and falls into another state of depression. She curses him one last time, saying, “I hope and pray that on some grinding reef midway at sea you’ll drink your punishment and call and call on Dido’s name!” (Virgil 4.506-508). Soon, with help from the gods, Aeneas falls overboard and drowns with Dido’s name on his last breath. Dido, content and slightly broken inside after hearing of Aeneas’ death, she assembles all of his things that he did not take with him on his voyage together. Queen Dido lights the things on fire, and proceeds to stab herself, her body falling into the flames. That is the end of Book IV of the Aeneid. But the most important moral of this section was that no matter how many times he betrayed her and destroyed her heart, Dido still loved Aeneas; and women across the world are experiencing the exact same thing.

In most Greek mythology there is a general hostility towards the female sex, which relays that most poets and writers themselves were sexist. Throughout Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, women are portrayed in a very subservient manner, placing them far below men and are almost despised. However, in more than one instance, manipulation, women’s true power, is shown. They are constantly described as beautiful temptresses, which could be thought of as the weakness of many men. When Theogony and Works and Days are looked at as a whole it is obvious that Hesiod’s opinion of women, most likely shared by the Greeks themselves, is

This love drunk mentality proceeds to gradually ravage her emotional stability and severely hinder her function as head of state. It is as Diotima states that “Footed and winged animals alike, all are plagued by the disease of Love” (Sym. 207b) that it is relevant in Dido’s case; this infatuation becomes so overpowering, it is like a disease that consumes her, forcing her to make decisions that go against her original values. Initially, Dido experiences an internal conflict when wanting to keep her vows to her late husband, while drawn to Aeneas, “If I were not unshakable in my vow” (Aen. 4.77). This vow that acts a barrier from being with Aeneas, creating a sense of shame that pulls her back. These feelings of passion overpower those of wrongdoings,

This curse to Aeneas and then her suicide prove just how overdramatic Dido is. Even before she goes into a great depression, Dido is exceedingly more emotional compared to Aeneas. Virgil compares Dido to an injured deer in The Aeneid “Book IV” by saying, “Unlucky Dido, burning in her madness

Women in Vergil’s The Aeneid are often seen as a hindrance in the forward progression of the narrative. The Carthaginian queen Dido serves as a major deterrent in Aeneas journey to reach his divine destiny. In her work “Future Perfect feminine: Women Past and Present in Vergil’s Aeneid” Sharon James comments on Dido as the columniation of Virgil’s themes about women, “the epic past in which women can be rulers; the passion, fury, and irrationality of love; female opposition to, and destruction by, Aeneas’s westward journey toward dynastic marriage, wounded deer, maenads; grief; mourning,” (James 140). Through the course of the narrative women are portrayed to be the antithesis of Aeneas with Dido as the central figure for his struggle. Dido becomes consumed with romantic love for Aeneas forgoing her love for her country, which leads to the destruction of her country. Virgil uses Dido as a cautionary tale for what happens to a civilization when a leader becomes more concerned with personal attachments and rather than

As a human, Dido’s enhanced feelings of love overtake her sense of duty. Book 4 l 95-97, “unluckily Dido, burning, roams the city like a doe” illustrates how she no longer is focused on the community, but rather herself as she is blinded by the love for Aeneas inflicted by Venus. Although Venus did intervene, it is ultimately the decision of Dido as to whether she continues the course of being a leader for her people, or fall prey to love of Aeneas. As a pawn of Venus, Dido’s love for Aeneas changes her from being an equal to Aeneas; their fates do not mirror each other. As pawns of the goddesses, Dido gets the short end of the stick as her fate ends in suicide whereas Aeneas goes on to be the founder of Rome. The significance of Juno and Venus intervening and making Dido and Aeneas pawns in their dispute leaves a once stoic, strong queen a hopeless romantic who can only realize honor by committing suicide. She abandoned her people through her selfish act of falling in love, making her more of a submissive female than the dominant one she once

Despite being written in a period of time in which women were considered “Third class” citizens, and being considered expendable, the portrayal of women in ancient Greek literature is consistently rebutting societal norms through the roles of intelligent mortal women such Penelope from the Odyssey, or Antigone from the aptly named “Antigone”. These women, whose intelligence and blatant bull-headed stubbornness is displayed rather early in these stories, both rebuke the societal norms explained by the stories, and consistently proves that women are not just ancillary characters literature, and are capable of besting their male cohorts in challenges of wit and loyalty.

The myth of how the war between the Greeks and the Trojans began, itself, shows women, in this case goddesses, in an unflattering light, fighting like vain beauty queens over which one is more beautiful. In fact, the very character of these three goddesses is at the least reprehensible and mirrors the conception of many ancient, male-driven societies of women being fickle, disloyal temptresses. Hera is the paranoid, jealous wife who viciously strikes out at her husband's lovers, Aphrodite is a kind of divine harlot, and Athena, although the most admirable of the group, nevertheless gives in to petty emotions and is an odd choice to be guardian of wisdom, since no women were allowed in the academies or thought of by men as being particularly wise. Thetis' intentions are the exception to the trivial designs of her immortal counterparts, for she is always the devoted mother of Achilles, trying to do what is best for her son. Athena may give aid to the Greek cause, but only because she was not picked by Paris as the most fair. The only mortal woman in the Iliad who seems to have any redeeming qualities, and to whom we are not introduced for any real amount of time, in contrast to Hecuba, is Andromache, who makes a brief, yet lasting appearance as Hector's wife. For the most part, however, women in the Iliad are placed decidedly in the background, at best shown as accessories to their male spouses.

Dido’s relationship with Aeneas causes her to experience a series of internal struggles. Virgil uses platonic philosophy in order to illustrate the negative affects that love can have on a person. At first, Dido is so jovial about being in love that the only thing she can focus on is Aeneas; this causes the citizens of Carthage to feel like their queen is shirking her responsibilities by indulging in love. This does not seem to phase Dido until Aeneas tell her that he must leave Carthage in order to fulfill his destiny of founding a city for his people. The text verifies this when Dido says, “Do you flee me? By tears, by your right hand- this sorry self is left with nothing else-… because of you the tribes of Libya, all the nomad princes hate me, even my own Tyrians are hostile; and for you my honor is gone and that good name

Virgil potrays his characters, both male and female, in a way that threatens the standard cultural norms of Rome at this time. While they do possess certain Roman characteristics, Penthesilia, an Amazon warrior queen, Dido, queen of Carthage, and Camilla, a female warrior, are all well-known representations of women destined to face their doom in a world that is completely dominated by males. These examples serve to reinforce the importance of gender roles and also to serve as warning signs for when limits are surpassed. The Aeneid serves not only to establish a Roman identity that acknow3ledges that women are indeed a necessary component to the continued existence, but also what happens when their role extends too far. Virgil portrays

Ancient works such as Sophocles’ Antigone and Virgil’s The Aeneid are valuable because they provide a glimpse into life in ancient Greece. These texts allow readers to better understand the values and ideals held in the ancient world and see firsthand the areas where the Greeks placed great importance. One of these areas of significance is their concept of gender and traditional gender roles in society. The writings of Sophocles and Virgil have similarities and differences in the way the portray gender roles, but both influenced society and were passed down as lessons and examples to the Greek citizens.

Many of these rulers wished to marry Dido, however she chose to remain loyal to her late husband’s memory and refused to remarry. This gave her a good reputation among the other leaders as well as her people. When she chose to pursue a relationship with Aeneas, she lost her stature. The other leaders were angry that she chose Aeneas over them. Her people were angry that she would engage in such an inappropriate act. She gave up everything for Aeneas, who in the end chose to leave her behind. Overcome with emotion, Dido committed suicide. She shows weakness in this decision. She fell into the typical stereotypical view of a Roman woman, weak and unable to make decisions.

Virgil’s Aeneid is the epic tale of the great warrior and hero Aeneas, the father of Rome. Aeneas is presented as the perfect war leader, one who is calm and collected in the face of grand strife and hardship. Aeneas is able to control is emotions and act in the interest of his fellow troops and of the gods. There are other characters in The Aeneid, however, who do not possess Aeneas’ composure and are characterized by untactful, undisciplined expressions of emotion. Interestingly enough, it would seem that the only characters who act in such a way are female. Indeed, Venus, Juno, and Dido are all compelled by their raging emotions to act in unproductive or destructive ways, antithetical to the ways of Aeneas. This particular gender dichotomy

Virgil’s epic of the classic hero, Aeneas, discusses several women but hardly any fit the cookie cutter literary stereotype of being feeble, passive and submissive. Rather, women in The Aeneid are opinionated, emotional and powerful. Dido, a protagonist in the story of Aeneas, possesses immense power. Dido’s reign as a powerful and governing woman falls once Juno and Venus devise a plan to keep Aeneas in Carthage. Focusing on the dynamic Dido, this paper will explore how her power as a woman is illustrated throughout the story and how her emotions precept her decisions.