The fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid is the shortest of his epic, and yet it has had an inestimable influence. The tragedy of Dido is replete with allusions to the Medeas of Euripides, Apollonius, and Ennius, as well as to Catullus’ Ariadne and the historical Cleopatra of Virgil’s Augustan Age. The book has intratextual connections to the poet’s own fourth Georgic (as he revisits the topic of apian regeneration and the loss of Eurydice), even as it confronts the reality of Rome’s bloody history with Carthage. The present volume offers the first full-scale commentary on the book in over eighty years, together with a new critical text that reflects recent scholarship on significant difficulties.
