STONES IN THE FOREST 25
uixi et quem dederat cursum Fortuna peregi,
et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago.
urbem praeclaram statui, mea moenia uidi,
ulta uirum poenas inimico a fratre recepi,
felix, heu nimium felix, si litora tantum
numquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae.
(Verg. A. 4.653–8)
I have lived my life and completed the course that Fortune assigned to
me, and now my imposing shade will descend beneath the earth. I have
established a famous city, I have looked upon my own walls, I have
avenged my husband and exacted punishment from the brother who
was my enemy—happy, alas too happy, if only the Trojan keels had
never touched our shores.Ovid’s version, by contrast, eschews the grand epic theme of the
founding of Carthage; his elegiac Dido is to be remembered as the
victim of a tragic love. The epitaph that he invented for her was par-
ticularly useful to him, in that he employed it also in the Fasti,^17 al-
though it is only the version in the Heroides that has the pointed con-
trast of two alternatives corresponding to Dido’s relationships with the
two men in her life:
nec consumpta rogis inscribar ELISSA SYCHAEI,
hoc tamen in tumuli marmore carmen erit:
PRAEBVIT AENEAS ET CAVSAM MORTIS ET ENSEM:
IPSA SVA DIDO CONCIDIT VSA MANV.
(Her. 7.193–6)
Consumed on the pyre I won’t be inscribed as “Elissa, wife of Sy-
chaeus”. Instead, this will be the epitaph on my marble tomb: “Aeneas
provided both the reason for her death and the sword; Dido fell by her
own hand.”dedicates at Actium recalls Octavian’s dedication of the trophies captured from the
enemy (now, remarkably, recovered by archaeological excavation: Zachos 2001):
aere cauo clipeum, magni gestamen Abantis, / postibus aduersis figo et rem carmine
signo: / AENEAS HAEC DE DANAIS VICTORIBVS ARMA. The omission of
dat/dedicat, typical of inscriptions, is noted by Horsfall 2006, 229 (with a cross-
reference to Horsfall 1999, 46, commenting upon the “manner of the Latin literary
epitaph” at A. 7.1). On the metapoetic qualities of this epic dedication—alluding to
arma, the name of the hero, victory, and defeat—see Barchiesi 1995, 5–6, and 1997,
17; on dedicatory epigram as an inspiration in the Aeneid, see Dinter 2005, 162–4.
17 Ov. Fast. 3.545–50 arserat Aeneae Dido miserabilis igne, / arserat exstructis in
sua fata rogis, / compositusque cinis, tumulique in marmore carmen / hoc breue, quod
moriens ipsa reliquit, erat: / PRAEBVIT AENEAS ET CAVSAM MORTIS ET ENSEM:
/ IPSA SVA DIDO CONCIDIT VSA MANV.