The eloquence of Dido: exploring speech and gender in Virgil’s Aeneid1

Abstract

This paper explores the idea of female speech in Roman epic by comparing the public speeches of Dido welcoming first Ilioneus and then Aeneas at 1.561-78 and 1.613-30 with the analogous speeches of Latinus at 7.192-211 and 7.249-73. It applies concepts, ideas and observations about feminine discourse developed by scholars of Greek tragedy and Roman comedy to Virgil’s Aeneid with the aim of nuancing approaches to Dido as speaker and public persona. The article treats speech presentation, stylistic features, tone, metre and rhetoric and argues that it is very hard to extract gender from other aspects of the text, but that on balance Dido is presented as feminine in a number of ways. Her power is qualified and limited, she is more responsive and passive than Latinus and shows an emotional intensity and directness in contrast with the subtlety of her handling of the situation.