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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Book iv is Virgil's masterpiece. It can stand comparison with the other great books in the qualities where they excel. It has the narrative power of Book ii, the imaginative power of vi, the tragic intensity and truth of the finest scenes in x and xii. But it overshadows these by its perfectly contrived synthesis of tragedy and epic. The book is the shortest of the twelve and the most dramatic in form: a tripartite structure is more clearly marked than in the other books and for once seems consciously present in the poet's mind, for each of the three sections has its own clearly marked internal unity and each begins with the entry of the queen and the same key phrase at regina: lines 1–295, the beginning of the affair; lines 296–503, the alienation; lines 504–705, the end of the affair—Aeneas' departure and Dido's suicide. But Virgil's narrative technique also reaches in this book its highest level of perfection and variety—the passage 74–89, for example, in which a close-packed succession of images suggests the compulsive, irresistible impetus of Dido's wild infatuation; or the serene, colourful, carefully organized narrative of the hunting episode (129–72), with its happy, relaxed realism and the terrifying, penetrating, ironic symbolism with which that episode concludes; or the awful simplicity and sublimity of the death scene (630–92).
page 18 note 1 Strictly speaking remarks like this should always be preceded with the words ‘Virgil intends us to believe’, lest we forget that his character has no existence outside the structure of his fiction. But when Virgil deliberately leaves something open to conjecture, it is often convenient to speak as though we were attempting to divine the thoughts in a character's mind rather than the thoughts we suppose the poet wishes to put into ours.
page 19 note 1 Dido's love is not to be spoken of: (1) because it is not for her, a queen, to speak first; (2) because her love still lacks the gods' approval. There is no need to suppose, as some do, that Virgil means more than that; he is rather fond of using words in their literal, or etymological, meaning.
page 20 note 1 The sword is the sword Aeneas leaves behind in the thalamus after the quarrel and which Dido places on the pyre (507) and then uses to kill herself (647). The cloak is one of the two that Aeneas produces at xi. 72, selecting one to wrap round the body of Pallas.
page 21 note 1 Dido means the shame she quenched in going back on her promise not to remarry—see her words in line 27. But there is already a note of irony in Virgil's echo of that line in his comment at line 55; and the Dido we see now is indeed a woman whose sense of shame is utterly quenched.
page 25 note 1 I feel certain that the gradus of lines 646 and 685 refer to some sort of steps on the pyre, and that Professor R. G. Austin is wrong in supposing the pyre was placed on top of a turret which had to be gained by a stairway.
page 25 note 2 The sword can only be Aeneas' sword, even though Ovid (Her. 7. 187) and Silius (8.148) seem to have remembered Virgil carelessly. Conington in a detailed discussion of the passage admits it should be the sword which Dido gave Aeneas and of which we learn in lines 261–2, but his courage fails him when it comes to accepting the logic of his own argument: ‘In that case however we should have expected Verg. to make more of the thought of Dido perishing by her own gift.’ By the same token we might expect Virgil to make more of the fact that the effigy which is placed on the pyre at line 508 was still there when Dido climbed upon the pyre at line 646. Virgil's technique of relying on the active collaboration of his reader just does not allow for this constant jogging of his reader's memory.
page 25 note 3 Cf. the story of Laodameia and Euripides' Admetus.
