Things I Hate About Aeneas

By Dido

TW: Mentions of Suicide, Physical Violence

• He’s not Sychaeus.
• He left me.
• He decided he would leave me, then pretended like he didn’t marry me in the woods with all of nature as our witness. The leaf-wreathed dryads and stream-clothed naiads sang out our wedding hymns. For heaven’s sake, the very lightning bolts were our wedding torches! Once, he had set my heart on fire with love, but after he left, I burned like I myself was that torch, dipped in pitch.
• He decided he would leave me, and then claimed, “Oh, the gods are forcing me to. It’s my destiny. Mercury himself appeared to me, telling me I have to go to Italy to found my own city.” Yeah, right. He’s just insecure that at Carthage, he would be king, but I would always be the founder…
• He decided he would leave me, pretended we never even happened, made up excuses by calling on the gods (what blasphemy, and to think he says he is the son of Love!), sailed away, and then married another woman.
• Not only did he marry another woman, but he started a war to do it. What virtuous man kills hundreds? What killer is called pious? What murderer is called hero?
• The fact that I threw lavish banquets for him, draped him in purple cloaks, gave him a gleaming sword
• The sparkle of his eyes, like the sun glittering on the wine-dark sea
• That he ever landed on my shores in the first place. What pain could have been avoided!
• He’s alive and Sychaeus is not.
• He hit on Anna, my beloved sister! With his smooth words, empathetic guise, and strong arms. Heaven bless her that she did not plummet like I did. Curse his cheating heart and lying tongue!
• He made me twice-widowed and a laughing-stock to our neighboring kings. He left me with foul Iarbas breathing down my neck and the Gaeutlians, the Numidians, and the Barcans pressing in on all sides.
• After I welcomed him, after he helped build my city’s walls!
• That I had put so much trust, so much hope, so much love in him after I heard of all his sufferings, after I saw his son’s sweet face and witnessed his crew’s loyalty. I thought that maybe he would be the one I would let in after all these years, because he could empathize, could understand fleeing calamity and making a new home from the rubble of pain and loss. How I sailed over rough waters from Tyre, running from my greedy, wrathful brother after he killed my dear Sychaeus. That I hoped that he would heal my heart, or that we could heal together, but instead he stabbed me through.
• His jawline, sharp as sculpted Parian marble
• That he dared show up in my life after I did so much on my own: gaining land for my city when others wanted me only to have as much as single hide would cover, building a community from the ground up and defending it with the sword, welcoming those in distress because I had once been there myself. 
• After I arrived here in the Underworld, after my tears, redder than the Acheron, flowing viscous and vicious, had stopped, I talked to Creusa. I know how he left her in burning Troy. I was not the first wife he abandoned! Orpheus couldn’t wait to look back, but it seems that Aeneas couldn’t be bothered to.
• That people think I climbed on my funeral pyre just because of him! No, it was because I had been abandoned too many times, and I didn’t want to wait to see my city fall. First my brother killing my own husband, then trying to kill me. Then Aeneas coming, making me believe in love again, and then leaving me, looking like a disgraced fool! I tried so hard over these years, I had nothing left. No, I could not watch those greedy kings devour what I loved, and yes, I know it was wrong to leave my people. But in the moment, it felt like there was no other choice. I heard Sychaeus call my name, I longed for peace, which always seemed just beyond my grasp. Still, there are many things I would change if I could go back. If I could go back, I would spite Aeneas with my life rather than my death! Take heed, my girlies, if a man breaks your heart, do not let him take your life too!
• But there is a silver of my heart that will always be his. Does that make me a bad person? I didn’t talk to him when he came to the Underworld–to visit his father, not me! He no longer deserves to hear the words that fall from my lips. I hardened my heart, stared at the ground like a marble statue! Ladies, keep your boundaries firm as stony flint. 
• That my story is written by men, that I am judged by men, always described in relation to a man! Virgil, Ovid, great poets they may be, but I am nothing more than a tragic lover in their eyes, a predecessor of Cleopatra, another strong woman. What do they have against powerful queens? Empathetic they may be, myth may I be, but they still profit from my pain! At my trial in Hades, I lashed out at Minos, sitting high on his judge’s throne, I put Rhadamanthus to shame. Where am I described as a strong queen, a loving sister, a fearless refugee, a resilient woman? I am more than a tragic lover. 
• That it’s so very gray here in the Fields of Mourning. But I have my besties, Phaedra and Pasiphae and Creusa… we love walking together through our grasses and groves. Persephone even joins us sometimes, bringing us hauntingly beautiful flowers for our hair and sharing fresh gossip from Hades’ Palace. And at last, I am with my love once more, my Sychaeus. He holds me tight and twirls me under the branches. Ah, to dance again…

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For ancient sources, I rely primarily on Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Heroides. For more on Aeneas' relationship with Anna, see Francesca Bellei's brilliant chapter on the reception of Dido in Elena Ferrante's work, "Elena Ferrante and the Poetics of Absence" (2021).

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