{"id":1642,"date":"2012-03-21T11:14:18","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T15:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=1642"},"modified":"2012-03-21T13:12:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T17:12:20","slug":"aeneid-exit-strategy-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2012\/03\/21\/aeneid-exit-strategy-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"How should Aeneas have dumped Dido?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Meister_des_Vergilius_Vaticanus_001\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Prof. Pat Johnson<\/a> (in yesterday’s CC102 lecture), “any BU undergraduate could have found a better way to dump Dido<\/a> than Aeneas did in Book IV of the Aeneid<\/em>“:<\/p>\n

She was the first to speak and charge Aeneas: “You even hope to keep me in the dark as to this outrage, did you, two-faced man, and slip away in silence? Can our love not hold you, can the pledge we gave not hold you, can Dido not, now sure to die in pain?” [etc. . . .] At length he answered: “As for myself… I never entered upon the pact of marriage… so please, no more of these appeals that set us both afire. I sail for Italy not of my own free will.” […] During all this she had been watching him with face averted, looking him up and down in silence, and she burst out raging now: “No goddess was your mother!… Liar and cheat!… You will pay for this… !” […] Duty bound, Aeneas, … though he sighed his heart out… went back to the fleet [to set sail for Italy and get the heck out of Dodge<\/span> Carthage.]<\/p>\n

— excerpted from pages 106-10 of the Fitzgerald translation<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Why was<\/em><\/strong> Aeneas so clumsy? How could he have done it better?<\/p>\n

Here’s the challenge. If you were Aeneas, how would you have dumped Dido? If you were Dido, would you have dumped him first? Submit your own suggestion to core@bu.edu<\/a> (Subject: “Aeneid Exit Strategy”) by noon on Friday, March 23. The best suggestion will win a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble and prominent display on the Core webpages.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

This\u00a0 illustration from the Vergilius Vaticanus <\/a>(Vatican Library, Cod. Vat. lat. 3225) shows the death of Dido in Book IV. Below, in a clip from the film The Man Who Cried<\/em><\/a>, Christina Ricci warbles her way through “When I Am Laid in Earth (Dido’s Lament)<\/a>“, a song from adapted from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas<\/em><\/a>. This Baroque opera is only one of many works<\/a> which draw upon the Aeneid <\/em>for characters, scenarios, and themes.<\/p>\n

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According to Prof. Pat Johnson (in yesterday’s CC102 lecture), “any BU undergraduate could have found a better way to dump Dido than Aeneas did in Book IV of the Aeneid”: She was the first to speak and charge Aeneas: “You even hope to keep me in the dark as to this outrage, did you, two-faced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1284,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3856,4261,522],"tags":[5126,4572,607,5480,5125],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1646,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions\/1646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}