Marriage: You Either Do, or You Don't

Whether it is a big, white wedding in a beautiful field next to a rustic barn, filled with lots of family and friends or a minuscule, intimate wedding with just the two betrothed, a witness, and a judge in the courthouse, weddings are a happy occasion for most everyone involved. No matter what kind of wedding, at the end it's pretty clear that the lovely couple is, in fact, married... most of the time. However, in Virgil's The Aeneid, King Aeneas of Troy and Dido, the Tragic Queen of Carthage, are stricken with love for one another. While they claim to be married, the reality of their relationship and the validity of their marriage is unclear.

To be realistic, it’s arguable whether the nature of Aeneas and Dido’s relationship was fated to be romantic, or whether they were actually in love, based on the interferences of Juno and Venus both. Juno reveals to Venus her schemes, and about how she’s going to “bind [Dido and Aeneas] in lasting marriage, make them one,” (4.155). Before any of that happens, however, Venus employs Cupid to “breathe/ [his] secret fire into her, poison the queen” with one of his love arrows (as we commonly imagine it) so that she will fall in love with Aeneas, because “he means the world to” Venus (1.819-820, 811). Both Juno and Venus play a role in persuading this relationship forward, so even its origins are debatable before they ever had a chance to be married!

Juno and Venus aren’t the only higher powers playing around with Aeneas’ heart, though. Dido and Aeneas never really had a chance to live out their marriage (or whatever it was), because pretty soon thereafter Jove sent Mercury down to Aeneas to urge him onward to Italy. Mercury challenges Aeneas, saying he was “wasting time in Libya,” and that he needs to “at least remember Ascanius rising into his prime,” because as the “only heir--/ [Aeneas owes] him Italy’s realm, the land of Rome,” (4.338-343). Aeneas is extremely family oriented throughout the book thus far, so obviously reminding him that his choices affect his son’s future is going to persuade him to leave Carthage and sail for Italy. However, that means leaving behind Queen Dido, his lover.

Dido seems to be the most consistent in saying that she and Aeneas are married, but even Dido isn’t entirely reliable, because “she calls it a marriage,/ using the word to cloak her sense of guilt,” (4.217-218). Her sense of guilt over what? What really happened in the cave? Rumor, our double-edged sword of a friend, provides what may be some answers regarding their behavior; she says Dido joined “the man in wedlock,” that “they warm/ the winter [...] with obscene desire,” and describes them as “abject thralls of lust,” (4.242-244). Now I’m no expert on marriage, but that sure doesn’t sound like a wedding. But that’s none of my business.

While their degree of love is arguable, Aeneas clearly cares for Dido, as is evident in his efforts “to break the news gently,” and as he searches for “a way to soften the blow that he must leave,” because she “means the world to him,” and he doesn’t want to upset her (4.363-364,360).  Yet when Dido berates him for planning to leave behind her back, deserting their “wedding vows, the marriage [they] began,” Aeneas denies it, retorting that he did not “once extend a bridegroom’s torch/ or enter into a marriage pact” with her (4.393,422-423). Up until then, he didn’t really have a comment on the nature of their relationship, which leads me to believe that he didn’t really care all that much about their title because there wasn’t one.

He likes her, they’ve got some sort of emotional attachment to each other, that much is clear. Of course there would be something between them, because something definitely happened in the cave, it just wasn’t a wedding. She definitely had some unimaginably intense feelings for him, because his departure led her to her suicide; Aeneas’ last glimpse of Carthage was it “set aglow by tragic Dido’s pyre,” (5.5) which he didn’t fully understand until he saw Dido again in the Kingdom of the Dead.

Dido and Aeneas had a love that was short-lived but intense, and caused both of them great pain in the end. But whatever they had, it wasn’t a marriage. Just another thing for Juno to be mad about. (She really puts the rage in marriage.)