UM Honors Blog 2020-2021

Love is dangerous and often forbidden, as the classic tale of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet shows with drama and scandal. While the love between Aeneas and Dido is not particularly forbidden, there is an air of deception in their love as the gods and goddesses meddle once more with human affairs. Venus shows a disregard for fate by making Dido fall for Aeneas, despite the fact that Dido refuses to love another, saying she would never want to betray Sychaeus' memory (Dido's first husband). Virgil describes Dido's love for Aeneas with somewhat violent descriptors: "With longing that her heart's blood fed, a wound or inward fire eating her away." (95). His description of Dido's love for Aeneas foreshadows her dark fate that awaits her, when she takes her own life in despair over Aeneas leaving. Once again the gods continue to interfere in the affairs of humanity, because as Aeneas is leaving, Anna, Dido's sister, begs him to stay to avoid the treache...

  In the Oxford Dictionary, “fate” is defined as “the things, especially bad things, that will happen or have happened to somebody/something” and these things “cannot be stopped or changed”. In The Iliad and in The Aeneid fate is constantly altered by the gods. Aeneas is distracted, by love for Dido, from his destiny and rumors spread of how he has become a “prisoner of lust.” (Virgil 102).   King Iarbas receives the news and compares Aeneas to “Sir Paris” (103). Aeneas’ destiny is to find Italy and build up Rome, though if this is his destiny, it is strange that he can "waste days" and find a new "fate" entirely. Eventually though, Mercury persuades Aeneas to leave Dido and go searching for Italy. Mercury refers to Aeneas' love as “…wasting your days in Libya” (Virgil 105) and urges him to find Rome for “the future, his honor, and his heir, Ascanius”. Aeneas “burned” to leave Carthage and continue his journey, just like Dido did... too soon? Most people can re...

     I swear so often the statement when Christians break up is something along the lines of, "Oh, I just don't think it is God's will for us to be together." First of all, why would you even begin a relationship as a Christian if you didn't think it was God's will. Secondly, I see a very similar set of statements from Aeneus to Dido. "The gods' interpreter... has brought Commands down through the racing winds!... I sail for Italy not of my own free will." - (Aeneid, 108) It seems as though breakups don't change even from thousands of years ago. The party that is being broken up with often responds with, "Am I not good enough?" or "What about the promises we made to each other?" or even "you're breaking my heart!" Dido responds in the same way, "If I ever did well and you were grateful Or found some sweetness in a gift from me, ... Because of you, I lost my integrity" - (Aeneid, 107) "Can our ...

I completely forgot how tragic the relationship between Dido and Aeneas was. The thought that Venus originally caused Dido to fall in love with Aeneas through Cupid for no other reason than to just provide Aeneas and his troops' safety is so aggravating. Venus used Dido and her resources at the ultimate and unfortunate expense of her life. She did not naturally fall in love with him, and she wasn't supposed to in the first place. Everyone knows that Aeneas and the Trojans have to make it to Italy to make their new city/empire, and this most assuredly means that they would not be able to stay in Carthage.  I also think that Juno is to blame for a lot of it, however, because the caused her and Aeneas to end up alone in a cave during a storm. You would think that if Juno cared so much for Carthage that she would not have caused/helped cause the death of the city's queen. This was just overall very unfortunate in all aspects. What are your thoughts and opinions? P.S. I commente...

             Book IV of The Aeneid is giving me major middle school flashbacks. Dido's "inward fire" (Virgil, line 3)  of love for Aeneas reminds me of the days when my friends and I would obsess over boys and truly believe what we felt was love. Now, I'm not saying Dido was not in love, I just think Virgil did a great job showing us the fierce impact of Cupid's arrow by describing Dido's emotions in such an overly intense way. For example, in line 5, we are told that Aeneas' words "remained with her to haunt her mind." Again, I can't help but think back to the time when all my preteen friends and I could ever seem to talk about was some boy or who had a crush and the question of whether or not that crush liked them back.                Another scene in Book IV that causes me to reminisce on those awkward years begins on line 130, when Juno conjures up a plan to marry Dido and Aeneas. She hope...

 Ask anyone that knows me: I do not actively look for, listen to, or obsess over the romantic genre. I will admit (Caroline) that I do like these kinds of things once someone shows them to me, like Pride and Prejudice or The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society .   I think the appeal for me in these genres lies in the non-romantic areas of the story, like EVERY SINGLE TIME Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth exchange insults, or the tragic undertones of the fate of poor Elizabeth Maugery in Guernsey . Lucky for me, the "romance" of Dido and Aeneas have both of these lovely aspects! After hearing the apology of Aeneas for accidentally leading her on, Dido delivers simultaneously the most heartbreaking line and the sickest burn to the most bewildered man:                     "Go, / Go after Italy on the sailing winds,                      Look for your kingdo...

 Book 4 was one big coffee-fueled dumpster fire Wattpad rollercoaster of a read. So thanks to Juno, Aeneas and Dido get into an affair. It's so open and vulgar that everyone knows about it, as "Rumor flies through Libya's great cities// Rumor swiftest of all the evils in the world." (Book IV, lines 219-220) Rumor really does fly fast, especially when the tea is as hot as Aeneas and Dido's is. Dido feels guilty about it though and immediately begins calling it a marriage, even though they were never declared husband and wife. It kind of reminds me of those middle school relationships where precisely 12 hours after a boy asks a girl to be his girlfriend, their names will be drawn with a heart on every notebook and locker their hands can find, and they're convinced that they'll marry each other after high school is over. Obviously Aeneas and Dido's relationship is deeper than that, but Dido pretending like this is an official, forever thing when she reall...