Dido And Aeneas In The Cave: illustration from a manuscript of Virgil in the Vatican Library (c. A.D. 500). The immense
importance and popularity of the Aeneid in imperial times is attested by the flourishing manuscript tradition as well as by the
frequent echoes in the visual arts. The cave, which had to be omitted in the Low Ham mosaic, can be portrayed without difficulty
in the polychrome painting.
The fourth book of the Aeneid is the tragedy of Dido. Virgil is here strongly influenced by Euripides' Medea and by other unhappy
heroines, including the Medea of Apollonius of Rhodes (above, p. 359). Dido is overwhelmed by her love, and Aeneas (we infer)
drifts into a passionate affair with her. He is seen by disapproving neighbours and gods dressed up in Carthaginian crimson and
gold, Dido's gift, actually helping to found Carthage (4. 259). Dido, indeed, claims that they are married; though Aeneas is able to
say, when the gods push him into leaving, that he never went through a regular marriage ceremony with her. Virgil was in a tight
corner here. Aeneas cannot abandon a wife, but Dido cannot be allowed to carry on light-heartedly with a lover. The poet has dealt
with the difficulty by constructing a situation which both is and is not a marriage. Out on a boar-hunt, Dido and Aeneas are driven
by a storm to take shelter together in a cave. Juno, goddess of marriage, is present as pronuba (matron of honour); the nymphs
raise a cry; lightning flashes, and the sky was 'conscious witness to their union' ('conscius aether conubiis'). In a sense, that is a
marriage; in another important sense it is not. But we are meant to think, when Aeneas advances that plea to her, that he has sailed