The Aeneid Analysis

TO WHAT EXTENT WERE THE CHARACTERS OF AENEAS AND DIDO IN VERGIL’S AENEID INFLUENCED BY MARK ANTONY QUEEN CLEOPATRA VII PHILOPATOR OF EGYPT?

Dido and Aeneas were created as fictional characters in Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid. It can be suggested that these characters were based upon true accounts of Cleopatra VII Philopator of Egypt, Augustus Caesar, and Mark Antony. In the final years of his life, Roman poet Virgil wrote the epic of Aeneas, the founder of Rome, waylaid in his destiny by a beautiful, politically forward African Queen. Sources differ in opinion as to whether The Aeneid was written as political commentary or Augustan propaganda. Regardless, parallels can be drawn between both Queen Cleopatra and the fictional Dido, and between
The timeline of the dissolution of the second Roman triumvirate and the writing of The Aeneid is important to note in discussion of the historical influence of Cleopatra and Mark Antony on Virgil’s characterisation. Formed in 43BCE, the second triumvirate consisted of the political alliance between Octavian and Mark Antony and was key in the last of the civil wars for dominance of Rome. It officially disbanded with Antony’s defeat at the battle of Actium in 30BCE, which also doubled as the beginning of an era of peace and Roman expansion until Augustus Caesar’s death in 14AD. Classical Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro, colloquially known as Virgil, lived from 70BCE to 10BCE, witnessing the Roman civil wars and significant threats to the posterity of Rome. Cleopatra, ruling from 79BCE to 30BCE, shared an overlapping timeline with Virgil
Augustan perception of Queen Cleopatra is closely connected to Dido’s characterisation in Virgil’s work. In superficial terms, the fictional North African queen was leader of the Carthaginians, a significant and worrying rival to Roman control of Mediterranean power. Here, an allegory can be drawn between the two; like Virgil's character, Cleopatra was the widowed queen of an African kingdom that, like Carthage, had challenged Rome's right to dominate the Mediterranean (Taylor, 2003). Cleopatra, having ancestry from the Ptolemy Greeks, was not a native to the kingdom she ruled, just as Dido immigrated from the Phoecia before the events of The Aeneid (Weeda, 2015). As surmised by classical historian A.S Pease, through the figure of the foreign queen who tries to seduce the Roman from his destiny and his home, we feel a certain vibration of the unforgettable Cleopatra (Griffin, 1986). Further, it was Dido’s obsessive love for Aeneas that lead to the crumbling of her new empire, as, trying hard to escape from the love she dared not tell… work hung suspended. Dido loses her reputation as a competent queen and alienates the local African chieftains who had approached her as suitors (Webber, 1999). Dido, defined by Virgil with ignorance and goodness of heart, reflected the Roman perspective of women at the time, simultaneously providing a