Hello, and welcome to History Mysteries,
where I talk about interesting and little-known facts covering historical happenings,
from ancient times through to modern history.
Today, I'm talking about The Aeneid
and why, looking at the history behind it,
it may not really be all about Aeneas and Dido after all.
As you may know, Virgil's epic poem, The
Aeneid,
covers the journey of Aeneas leaving Troy and his journey that leads him to found Rome,
well, to found the ancestral line that will found Rome.
Dido, no not that one, was a queen and pivotal figure in Roman mythology
and she appears in Virgil's Aeneid seemingly as Aeneas' love interest.
However, as I will cover today, it is more
likely that Aeneas and Dido are really just
a cover story for a far more interesting narrative that Virgil needs to record,
but has to mask in light of the potential political backlash,
so he cleverly drew up a narrative using Aeneas and Dido to mask his true characters:
Mark Antony and Cleopatra.
The Aeneid isn't really about Dido or Carthage.
Carthage had been destroyed by the Romans around a century before
and Dido, well, did she ever exist?
Needing a foil for Aeneas and a character to replace the intended Cleopatra,
Virgil had invented his female lead from scratch
so that he can portray Aeneas and Dido as prequel and example to Mark Antony and Cleopatra.
Virgil, and his Roman readers, cared about Dido because they cared about Cleopatra.
Like Virgil's created character Dido, this North-African queen whose father had wished her to rule,
had a love affair with a Roman despite his virtuous marriages,
was the queen of the most dominant power in the Mediterranean apart from Rome,
killed herself rather than admit defeat to Rome
and is remembered for her beauty when
her story relies on her brains.
The parallel between Aeneas and Dido and Antony and Cleopatra
is that they shared a common theme of a patriot having to choose
between duty to Rome and the passionate love of a beautiful African queen.
Both Aeneas and Antony had to choose between their country and their love.
Aeneas chose duty but Antony chose Cleopatra.
As Virgil tells it, Dido, also known as Elissa, was a princess of Tyre, in Sidon, now modern Lebanon.
When their father died, her brother, Pygmalion became king.
He then killed Dido's husband, Sychaeus, who was a rival for the throne.
After his death, Sychaeus appeared to Dido in a dream and urged her to flee
and so Dido and her followers fled to North Africa to establish her city.
This new city, Carthage, quickly become prosperous.
Despite offers from surrounding kings, Dido refused to marry again.
However, when Aeneas, prince of Troy, arrives on her shores, the gods, Juno and Venus,
conspire to make Dido and Aeneas fall in love and, perhaps, to marry.
Jupiter, however, then sends Mercury to encourage Aeneas onwards to Italy.
As a result, Dido and Aeneas then exchange speeches on how unreasonable and unfaithful the other is being.
When Dido sees Aeneas sailing away for good,
she gathers the gifts which Aeneas gave her in the palace courtyard to burn them.
She curses Aeneas and his people, prophesying endless hate between his people and hers,
foreshadowing the Punic Wars.
Dido then ascends the pyre of gifts,
lies on the bed she had shared with Aeneas, and falls on Aeneas' sword.
A brief interlude on The Punic Wars.
The Punic Wars were three wars fought between Rome and Carthage in the 200s and 100s BC.
The conflict of the Punic Wars was between the then-dominant Carthaginian Empire and the expanding Roman Republic.
The Romans wanted to expand into Sicily, which was then controlled by Carthage.
The Second Punic War was famous for Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with elephants.
During the Third Punic War, declared on a
shaky pretext, Rome destroyed Carthage
and with Rome's conquest of Greece in the same year,
the expanding Roman empire became the dominant Mediterranean power.
Virgil uses Dido's prophecy of endless hate
to both explicitly reference the Punic Wars
but also to implicitly reference the then very recent conflict with Cleopatra, another North African queen.
So, what had happened at the time Virgil wrote The Aeneid
and why would so many of Virgil's readers be interested in Cleopatra?
The answers lies in her influence over Caesar and later Mark Anthony.
When Ptolemy XII of Egypt died, he declared
that his daughter Cleopatra should reign with her elder brother Ptolemy.
Although Cleopatra rejected her brother as joint ruler,
the new king still had allies both in Egypt and abroad.
To keep control of Egypt, and knowing Caesar had form for romancing royalty,
Cleopatra came to him in Alexandria.
However, Ptolemy realized his sister was with Caesar,
and besieged Caesar and Cleopatra inside the palace for months.
The next year, in June 47 BC, Cleopatra's child with Caesar, Caesarion was born.
After Caesar defeated her brother in battle,
Cleopatra and her son would travel with him to Rome in 46 and stay in Caesar's villa
although Caesar would never publicly acknowledge the child as his own.
Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March (15th March 44)
but Cleopatra stayed in Rome until mid-April, hoping Caesarion would be recognized as Caesar's heir.
However, Caesar had named his sister's grandson, Octavian, as his heir.
As a result, Cleopatra returned to Alexandria and elevated Caesarion to co-ruler of Egypt
in place of the brother she had earlier deposed.
In the chaos following Caesar's death,
Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus were asked to form the Second Triumvirate in 43 BC
and Cleopatra brought her own fleet to aid them in avenging Caesar.
In 42 BC, the triumvirate defeated Caesar's assassins at the Battle of Philippi.
By the end of 42 BC, Octavian controlled the western half of the Roman Republic and Antony the eastern half.
Lepidus now becomes irrelevant.
In 41 BC, Antony set up headquarters in Anatolia, in modern day Turkey and summoned Cleopatra.
Cleopatra then invited Antony for banquets and convinced him to return with her to Egypt.
There, Antony would enjoy the royal lifestyle and help Cleopatra to solidify her power.
To Antony, Cleopatra was Rome's strongest ally and client king;
To Cleopatra, Antony was heir to all Caesar had held and was twenty years younger besides.
However, news then came to the lovers that Antony's wife, Fulvia, was leading a rebellion against Octavian.
but, surprisingly, the defeat and death of Fulvia
actually led to a reconciliation between Antony and Octavian in 40 BC.
This agreement confirmed Antony's control
of all territories east of Italy and, as a
key part of this agreement,
Antony would marry Octavian's sister, Octavia, to confirm the alliance.
By the end of 40 BC, Cleopatra had given birth to twins,
Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, who Antony acknowledged as his.
However, Antony would remain in Rome and father two daughters, born in 39 and 36, with Octavia.
In 37 BC, Antony travelled east again and summoned Cleopatra and her now three-year-old twins
Nine months after this summit, Cleopatra gave birth to Ptolemy Philadelphus, her second son with Antony.
Yes, that's right, Antony had children with both Cleopatra and Octavia in 36BC!
While still legally married to Octavia, Antony generally remained in the east,
and following a disastrous campaign against the Parthians, returned to Alexandria.
Shortly afterwards, Antony enlarged Cleopatra's lands,
returning former territories along
the Mediterranean coast
in a ceremony called the Donations of Alexandria.
Octavian exploited this by accusing Antony
of empowering a foreign queen and his half-barbarian children
and neglecting his virtuous Roman wife and Roman children.
In revenge, Antony declared Caesarion to be the true heir of Caesar instead of Octavian.
In 32 BC, loyalists to Antony gave a speech condemning Octavian.
On the next day, Octavian entered the Senate house with armed guards.
Intimidated by this, over two hundred senators fled Rome
and joined Antony and Cleopatra in Greece where they were forming a navy.
Matters continued to deteriorate.
Antony divorced Octavia
and, in retribution, Octavian managed to obtain possession of Antony's will
and he publicly emphasised various parts of the will,
including Caesarion being named heir to Caesar, the land grants to Cleopatra being confirmed
and that Antony should be buried alongside Cleopatra in Egypt,
all of which would be seen as treasonous by those still in Rome.
Rome then declared war on Cleopatra and while Antony and Cleopatra had a larger fleet than Octavian,
Octavian's men were more of a professional military force.
On 2 September 31 BC, Octavian's navy met that of Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium.
During the battle, Antony boarded Cleopatra's flagship and they both fled back to Egypt.
The Battle of Actium continued without them
and Anthony and Cleopatra's remaining forces either defected or were defeated.
Once they returned to Alexandria, the lovers went their separate ways.
However, they soon realised that they had
no chance of victory against Octavian
so Cleopatra sent a message to Antony that she was dead.
Antony responded to this by stabbing himself.
According to the histories, Antony was still dying when he arrived at Cleopatra's tomb.
As a sign of their love, Cleopatra stayed
with him until he died
and then embalmed and entombed Antony herself.
Shortly afterwards, one of Octavian's men climbed into the tomb and captured her.
Unwilling to be paraded through the streets of Rome in chains
and executed before the temple of Jupiter, probably in front of her children,
she took her own life.
She probably did not die by snakebite, as legend would have it,
but rather by scratching her skin and injecting a poison.
The year was 30 BC.
.
Virgil wrote The Aeneid soon afterwards
In a time when Rome was still coming to terms
with Antony's preference for an African queen over his duty to Rome,
it would be outrageous and simply impossible for Virgil
to make him the main character of his story, no matter what the moral,
and so by referencing Aeneas, and creating Dido,
his narrative could be told in a parallel universe,
one in which the beautiful African Queen still dies, .
but the Roman hero puts duty before beauty
The Aeneid was published shortly after Virgil's death in 19 BC.
That's our first History Mystery.
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