Unable to retain him, Dido, in the
despair of her passion, destroys herself. After passing through many
dangers, under the guidance of the Sibyl of Cumae, he descends into the
kingdom of the dead to consult the shade of his father. There appear to
him the souls of the future heroes of Rome. On his return, he becomes a
friend of the king of Latium, who promises to him the hand of his
daughter, which is eagerly sought by King Turnus. A fearful war ensues
between the rival lovers, which ends in the victory of Aeneas.
Though the poem of Virgil is in many passages an imitation from the Iliad
and the Odyssey, the Roman element predominates in it, and the Aeneid is
the true national poem of Rome. There was no subject more adapted to
flatter the vanity of the Romans, than the splendor and antiquity of their
origin. Augustus is evidently typified under the character of Aeneas;
Cleopatra is boldly sketched as Dido; and Turnus as the popular Antony.
The love and death of Dido, the passionate victim of an unrequited love,
give occasion to the poet to sing the victories of his countrymen over
their Carthaginian rivals; the Pythagorean metempsychosis, which he adopts
in the description of Elysium, affords an opportunity to exalt the heroes
of Rome; and the wars of Aeneas allow him to describe the localities and
the manners of ancient Latium with such truthfulness as to give to his
verses the authority of historical quotations.
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