summary: This article argues that the late antique Epistula Didonis ad Aeneam engages with anti-imperial treatments of Dido in Virgil and Ovid. Through its criticism of Aeneas, the Epistula reflects on the role of fate in Roman imperial projects and on the unequal political relationships between Rome and Carthage. The poem’s reworking of these themes sheds new light on the connections between the political and the elegiac elements of Dido’s character and offers a fresh perspective on the importance of anti-imperial critique for the anthology in which the Epistula is preserved and for the Vandal audiences who likely read the poem.
Katherine Krauss (Sun,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: