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No Control Of Dido's Fate In The Aeneid

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No Control Of Dido's Fate In The Aeneid
In the book The Aeneid, we find many characters that have limited or no control over their destiny. There is Dido who is a woman of great stature but her fate is always determined by that which she cannot control. We learn that her first husband Sychaeus was murdered in which of course she had had no control over and that event in effect changes her destiny. Because of this tragedy, she is forced into having to leave her home Tyre and fleeing to North Africa. She has to pick up and move to a hostile area which she has limited control over. “Pygmalion, catching Sychaeus off guard at the altar, slaughtered him in blood. That unholy man, so blind for his lust for the gold he ran him through with a sword, then hid the crime for months, deaf to his sister’s love, her heartbreak” (Virgil, 1. 424-428). In this quote one can see that Dido had no control over the fate of her husband, his death was delivered by the hands of the murderer Pygmalion, and now her destiny had been set by the event.
Later, when she has established her residency in North Africa it became her responsibility to build the new city of Carthage. Once again something she had limited to no control of, she just inherited the burden. It shows when Dido has said …show more content…
What she had control over before, her commitment to always cherish and never tarnish her love for her husband that was murder, Sychaeus, has now been replaced by an out of her control love for Aereas. This uncontrollable desire comes of course as a result of the gods, specifically Venus and her son Cupid. Dido falls helplessly, in love with Aeneas as a result of the gods “lighting the fire” again in her, this results in her losing control and becoming victim to her destiny. It’s when this love goes only one way, and Aeneas leave her because of his commitment to his Trojan loyalty that she understands her destiny once again tarnished by bad love is no fault of her own, but the uncontrolled fate of the
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