You have probably heard of Odysseus or as some call him Ulysseus, the famed Greek hero. Well the Trojans had a hero with many wanderings also. Aeneas and his men sailed to Italy and settled to start a supreme race. The gods prophecized this. The race would develop into the Romans with an Empire that would be almost endless. However, Aeneas had to get to Italy or none of this would happen.

Virgil�s Aeneid, written between 26 and 19 B.C., is Rome�s national epic. It tells how a band of Trojans, commanded by Aeneas, escapes by sea after the bloody Trojan War; the descendants of these men are the founders of Rome. The Aeneid also tells of the nearly simultaneous founding of Carthage and of Aeneas�s brief sojourn there, in the arms of Queen Dido.

Aeneas and his men set off with suspense. First they reached a island with a mountain. They found plenty of animals to feast upon. But as they called upon the gods to enjoy the feast with them, large winged creatures with terrible claws called Harpies stole the food they wanted and fouled up the meat they left. Aeneas and his men could not stand this any longer and they left. They then reached the city of a prophet named Helenus. Helenus told them that their route to Italy on the west -middle side, not to go through the current where the dreadful Scylla, monster in the cave, could eat men with any desire and Charybdis, the whirl pool who could suck anyone in with nothing left, lived.

Helenus did not know what Juno (Athena) had in mind. As Aeneas set sail remembering Helenus' instructions, Juno devised a plan. Juno went to the island of Aeolia. She talked with king Aeolus and told him that she wanted the Trojans to face a storm that would kill them. King Aeolus obeyed the instructions for he was a lesser god than Juno or Jupiter (Zeus). He released his winds from the cave by striking the cave mighty with his spear. When Aeneas got to channel of Scylla and Charbydis he went around and then the mighty winds hit the ships. The waves crashed all might as the ships got battered. Noticing this Neptune (Poiseidon) calmed the winds and silenced the ocean with the most pure silence the ocean had ever seen, for the ocean was his territory. Aeneas and the men left were blown near the shore of Lybia. Some stories say the other men were taken in by a whirl pool and others say they were just blown off to Sicily.

Aeneas now only had seven ships. Once they arrived they set out to explore the land. On one of their findings they came upon Venus (Aphrodite) disguised as a huntress. This disguise did not fool Aeneas. He knew right away this had to be a goddess because of her perfect beauty. She told them they were in Carthage and guided them into the main city. In some versions, as they walked they were protected by a fog and in other no one could see them until they arrived.

�You see a Punic country, men of Tyre ...
Our ruler here is Dido, she who left
her city when she had to flee her brother ...
Her husband was Sychaeus: the wealthiest
landowner in Phoenicia. For her father
had given her, a virgin, to Sychaeus
and joined them with the omens of first marriage.
Unhappy Dido loved him with much passion.
Pygmalion, her brother, held the kingdom
of Tyre; beyond all men he was a monster
in crime. Between Sychaeus and her brother
dividing fury came. Pygmalion�
unholy, blind with lust for gold�in secret
now catches Dido�s husband off his guard
and cuts him down by sword before the altars,
heedless of his own sister�s love ...
And Dido, moved by this, prepared her flight
and her companions. Now there come together
both those who felt fierce hatred for the tyrant
and those who felt harsh fear. They seize the ships
that happen to be ready, loading them
with gold. The wealth of covetous Pygmalion
is carried overseas. A woman leads.
They landed at the place where now you see
the citadel and high walls of new Carthage
rising; and then they bought the land called Byrsa,
�The Hide,� after the name of that transaction
(they got what they were able to enclose
inside a bull�s skin).�

(Book 1, 477-522)

When Aeneas saw the city, he gazed upon how the workers were so thrifty and how the city moved so quickly. Aeneas arrived at the palace and met Dido the Queen who fled from her brother when he killed her father, to this land where she developed a great city. Aeneas immediatly said they were not there to fight and asked if they have help to get where they were going, and stay there in the meantime. Dido, the Tyrrian, said she would not judge anyone no matter where they came from. Queen Dido welcomes the exhausted refugees to Carthage, for she has heard of the �acts and heroes� of the Trojan War.

Venus knew that soon Juno would find out and would kill Aeneas some way, so she sent cupid to set the fire and desire of passion in Dido's body for Aeneas. Quickly Dido gave many luxuries to Aeneas and asked him to talk about his adventures.

He told the tragic story of Troy. Even with all the sadness in the story Dido wanted to hear they story over and over again because she was under a spell of passion when Juno saw this, she coud not do anything to hurt poor Dido.

After a while, the god Jupiter, however, becomes angry that Aeneas is dallying with Dido; he sends Mercury down to remind the Trojan leader that his destiny is to found Rome. Mercury finds Aeneas dressed in a Tyrian purple cloak woven for him by Dido and tells the Trojan leader that he must fulfill the fate ordained by the gods. Aeneas, dazed, now �burns to flee from Carthage.� In some versions, the evil monster, Rumor got to Dido and told her Aeneas's plans. In other versions, she sensed it herself.

She sent out for Aeneas and to avoid a commotion Aeneas came. She was outraged. She had give him a place to stay gifts, honor, part of the kingdom, anything. All for him as she lost respect from the people, power, and a good city. She longed for him and basically gave up her life for him. Now he was to leave without something to show, not even a baby. He said he would never forget her but he had to go. She allowed him to not stay in her presence, but she was plotting a way to stop his departure. That same night Mercury came again but ina dream which seemed so much more powerful and intense. Aeneas immediatly took his men and they got the ships ready.

When Dido finds out that he plans to leave, she becomes mad with rage: ��Seek out your kingdom overseas; indeed, / if there be pious powers still, I hope / that you will drink your torments to the lees / among sea rocks and, drowning, often cry / the name of Dido�� (Book IV, 521-525). Dido knew it was too late, so she prayed for Aeneas to be doomed to the goddess that hated him, Juno. Then with things Aeneas left behind, Dido burned funeral pyre. she took her own life by the sword to end her misery and in other versions to relieved her from the evils of life. Dido then turns her rage upon herself:

But Dido, desperate, beside herself,
with awful undertakings, eyes bloodshot ...
mounts in madness that high pyre, unsheathes
the Dardan sword, a gift not sought for such
an end. And when she saw the Trojan�s clothes
and her familiar bed, she checked her thought
and tears a little, lay upon the couch
and spoke her final words: �O relics, dear
while fate and god allowed, receive my spirit
and free me from these cares; for I have lived
and journeyed through the course assigned by fortune ...
I shall die unavenged, but I shall die,�
she says. �Thus, thus, I gladly go below
to shadows. May the savage Dardan drink
with his own eyes this fire from the deep
and take with him the omen of my death.�
Then Dido�s words were done, and her companions
can see her fallen on the sword; the blade
is foaming with her blood, her hands are bloodstained.
(Book IV, 888-913)

Aeneas and his men were out ot sea when they noticed this great funeral fire which his the lust with which both Dido and Aeneas had for each other. Passion which Dido was cursed by and the love which was an unbroken contract of memory which would last like the eternal flame above the world. Aeneas feared with sadness that the fire was that of Dido. Aeneas, having sailed for Italy, is unaware that Dido has killed herself, though he later hears rumors.

But the two meet up again, when Aeneas journeys to the Underworld to speak to his father, Anchises, one last time. There he encounters a �forest of shadows�:

Among them, wandering in that great forest,
and with her wound still fresh: Phoenician Dido.
And when the Trojan hero recognized her
dim shape among the shadows (just as one
who either sees or thinks he sees among
the cloud banks, when the month is young, the moon
rising), he wept and said with tender love:
�Unhappy Dido, then the word I had
was true? That you were dead? That you pursued
your final moment with the sword? Did I
bring only death to you? Queen, I swear by
the stars, the gods above, and any trust
that may be in this underearth, I was
unwilling when I had to leave your shores.
But those same orders of the gods that now
urge on my journey through the shadows, through
abandoned, thorny lands and deepest night,
drove me by their decrees. And I could not
believe that with my going I should bring
so great a grief as this. But stay your steps.
Do not retreat from me. Whom do you flee?
This is the last time fate will let us speak.�
These were the words Aeneas, weeping, used,
trying to soothe the burning, fierce-eyed Shade.
She turned away, eyes to the ground, her face
no more moved by his speech than if she stood
as stubborn flint or some Marpessan crag.
At last she tore herself away; she fled�
and still his enemy�into the forest.
(Book VI, 593-622)

From The Aeneid of Virgil, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam Books, 1971).