0:11

Hello, This is Let's

0:13

talk about Myths Baby, and

0:15

I am your host live and

0:18

I am here today with a very special

0:20

episode. I am

0:22

working on wrapping up my full

0:25

time job after all this time,

0:27

so time is a little bit tighter, and I'm

0:29

going to kind of do maybe a couple of different

0:32

sorts of episodes to help get me

0:34

through to the end of the month. But this

0:36

episode was actually in the

0:38

planning for six months.

0:41

We recorded an episode a really long time

0:43

ago, which we mentioned and it was

0:46

not fit for human consumption. But

0:48

this episode, this one was very

0:50

fun. I sat down with Jen

0:53

and Jenny of Ancient History Fangirl,

0:55

who are two of my very good friends

0:57

now, and we talked about Ido

1:00

and Rome and Augustine propaganda

1:03

and everything in between. It

1:05

was really fun and really fascinating

1:08

and a good insight into the Aeneid

1:10

and the kind of background that was going

1:12

on there that they know a little bit more

1:14

about than I do, which is very convenient

1:16

for me. So sit back and enjoy

1:19

our conversation about

1:21

Dido, that badass queen of Carthage

1:24

who Aeneus really fucked over. This

1:29

is episode ninety two, Augustus's

1:32

Rome, Carthage and the history

1:34

of Virgil's Dido. I

1:38

am here today with the wonderful

1:41

women of Ancient History fan

1:43

Girl. Hi. Hi,

1:46

so the who the heck are we? Jen? So?

1:49

I'm Jen McMenemy, And who are you? I'm

1:51

Jenny Williamson. I've heard

1:53

of you guys. Yeah. Yeah, we

1:55

have a little podcast called Ancient History

1:57

Fangirl right as a bit of back

2:00

ground for the listeners here. We

2:02

actually tried to do this well, we did succeed

2:04

in doing this recording what

2:07

was it six months ago or

2:09

something or may ye, yeah,

2:11

it must have been April. It

2:14

was the beginning of Quarantine and we'd only

2:16

spoken once before and then decided to

2:18

record this episode, and instead

2:21

we talked and drank for

2:23

five hours before starting to record the episode,

2:26

which then went off the rails completely.

2:29

And I'm sure we said some vaguely smart things,

2:31

but for the most part we were five hours

2:33

into drinking. Yeah, and it was like four

2:35

am for Jen probably, Yeah, it

2:38

definitely was. And if you listen

2:40

to there's there's one episode

2:42

of our of our podcast, it's our Yule episode

2:44

we did last year where essentially

2:47

the same thing happened. We record an episode over three

2:49

hours and by the end of it, we were completely incoherent.

2:52

I feel like en we Jen

2:55

was incoherent on that one. Like Jen was the war

2:57

elephant and I was the sober ish one, not

2:59

dats ober, but like comparatively and usually

3:02

more usually it's the other way around.

3:05

And if you don't know anything about war elephants,

3:07

wir elephants famously went into

3:10

battle drunk on human gall

3:12

cocktails. So you know, I have to respect

3:14

that that is a way to go into battle. Yeah, Jen was

3:16

not drinking that

3:19

time. That's so explain

3:22

that human gall cocktail to me.

3:25

So it was a lot of booze. We

3:28

don't know exactly what kind of booze, maybe

3:30

some kind of green alcohol or I

3:32

don't actually know, let's be clear,

3:34

like we don't know what kind of alcohol it

3:37

was. And that thing about the human gall was

3:39

like it was like a throwaway line. And one

3:41

of those sources I was using, they just said sometimes

3:43

there was human gall in the alcohol that

3:45

they fed these elephants. God,

3:48

and we just decided that these were human

3:51

gall cocktails with little you know, like little

3:53

pieces of fruit and um, little

3:55

umbrellas in the pink umbrellas, little

3:57

umbrellas. Yeah, Okay, so that that became

3:59

a thing, so human goal cocktails. I

4:02

am still working on my recipe for that. I'll

4:04

let you know when I really when it really clicks,

4:06

we could put it out there for the listeners. So

4:09

all of that is to say that we're back

4:11

to record an episode of Dido. I mean it

4:13

helped that, thankfully. During

4:16

quarantine, I had so

4:18

much trouble focusing on anything creative,

4:20

let alonely a need that I had to drop

4:23

that story for a while. But I'm back,

4:25

and as the listener

4:28

knows, I will have just released

4:30

last week the regular

4:33

Dido episode where everyone finds out

4:35

that poor, poor woman's fate.

4:39

But thankfully I've got friends

4:41

who know about ancient Rome, so we could talk

4:43

about her in a little bit more depth.

4:46

Yeah, it's our second crack,

4:48

Yeah exactly, And this time we've

4:50

only had a few SIPs before recording,

4:53

so we're off to a great start. No

4:55

human gals were involved in these cocktails, thank

4:58

the good Lord. So the story

5:00

of Dido's fascinating and heartbreaking

5:03

and just so full of

5:06

Augustine propaganda. So I think, I

5:09

mean, I want to talk about Dido as a person,

5:11

because she was like a badass queen who

5:13

founded Carthage, and I think that is incredible.

5:17

But I think a really interesting

5:19

thing about her is simply what

5:21

the Romans did to her in the story

5:24

of the Indian Yeah.

5:26

So, I mean what we know is

5:29

that, you know, Dido, the

5:31

real mythological Dido.

5:35

She was a queen of Carthage.

5:37

She traveled from tier Phoenicia

5:40

and founded the city of Carthage in northern

5:42

Africa in Tunisia. Now

5:45

she did all these things. She was a queen

5:47

of Carthage and such

5:50

an important founder and everything that is

5:52

all that all exists in real

5:55

mythology. You mean, in pre Roman

5:57

like mythology that Virgil, you know

5:59

did exactly,

6:01

Yes, thank you, jenn So like mythology, not

6:05

Virgil. So outside

6:07

of long before

6:08

Virgil and Augustus,

6:11

and yeah, long before

6:13

Rome, the myth of

6:15

Dido, as far as I know, existed

6:18

in that way. And then

6:20

you know, we enter the Roman

6:22

propaganda and Augustus's

6:25

desire to make Rome into the Rome

6:28

that he wanted it to be. So I guess

6:30

the thing to know about Augustus and this propaganda

6:33

you kind of have to know about what came just

6:36

before at the end of and I'm

6:38

gonna I'm going to talk about my man's Particus for a minute

6:40

here there, please, at the

6:42

very end of the Republic, you have

6:44

a couple of really big wars that changed

6:47

the landscape of Rome, and they are the

6:49

reason that Augustus was so hell bent on

6:51

getting this propagandus solidified.

6:53

So the first one we're going to talk about is the social

6:56

wars. Now, the social

6:58

wars um and Jenny, correct me if I'm wrong. They

7:01

happened about maybe like two generations before

7:03

Spartac has revolted in the seventies

7:06

BC. I'm not going to get all the

7:08

numbers, all the numbers of my dates, right, so forgive

7:10

me, please, it's fine, I'm not a dates

7:12

podcast. No, get your

7:14

general timelines and we're good.

7:17

So here's the thing about the social wars. The

7:19

social wars were these wars

7:22

between the different tribes on mainland

7:24

Italy, and they had

7:26

for a long time been the allies

7:28

of Rome, but they got none of the benefits of being

7:31

Roman citizens. And they said, look, we're

7:33

all in the same place. We should all be

7:36

one group of people and we get the same

7:38

rights everyone in Rome has, and then we can be one

7:40

place who stands together. And

7:42

they went to war over this because essentially,

7:44

like you know, they wanted rights and votes and things

7:47

like that. And in

7:49

a sense, the tribes won, but

7:51

they also lost because by

7:54

becoming a one sort of one Rome

7:56

for all kind of thing, they had to give up

7:59

some of their tribal identity, ease, and some of their tribal

8:01

beliefs in

8:03

order to get this sort of representation and things

8:06

that they wanted from Rome. And as a result,

8:08

you're seeing the depreciation of sort of their cultures

8:11

because remember like Italy, like everywhere, like Gaul

8:13

and everywhere else, they had different tribes and different

8:15

cultures and different dialects

8:18

and stuff like that. So this is a huge

8:20

thing that happened just before

8:24

Virgil was essentially born. After

8:26

that, you've got the Civil

8:28

War. Do you want to jump on that one, Jenny, Right, So

8:30

the Civil Wars were these wars that happened

8:33

between these two prominent Roman

8:35

generals, Marius and Sola. Marius

8:37

was a populist, Sola was a conservative.

8:40

They had a lot of personal beef. At

8:42

the time. Rome had been a republic

8:44

for a while. It had been like you know, ostensibly

8:47

like a democracy, although it was like a wildly

8:49

unfair democracy, but still a democracy.

8:51

They were really really

8:53

adamant about not having one person have

8:55

too much power. But the Slah

8:58

and Marius wars, Like in those wars

9:01

and prior to them, this general Marius who had

9:03

power first, um really did a lot

9:05

of things to consolidate power under

9:07

himself, and then Um, these wars

9:09

between him and this other general Selah happened,

9:12

and then Selah became kind of he

9:15

defeated Marius and became a dictator

9:17

basically. And there were all these really bloody prescriptions

9:20

where anyone who had sided with

9:22

Marius in these wars were was um.

9:24

You know, a lot of these people were murdered. Salah

9:27

hung up a list of his enemies, and

9:29

people could go out and just kill someone on Salah's

9:31

list, bring back the head, and get

9:33

to keep their um, their land

9:35

and their you know, villas and everything like that. So

9:37

all this land had been redistributed, a

9:40

lot of people had were you know, murdered.

9:43

Um, A lot of people were in poverty who had

9:45

not been. The countryside had been you

9:47

know, kind of racked with violence for a really long time,

9:50

and there was so much instability. By

9:52

the end of this and of course

9:54

Salah had completely Slah had

9:56

basically wiped out the democratic system

9:58

and made himself a dictator, which I believe lasted

10:01

until his death in I

10:03

think, where are we at at that point? I forget, like

10:05

the eighties BC. Yeah,

10:08

So after that period of instability,

10:10

you had all of you had people who were in

10:12

different tribal areas. Their

10:15

land was now redistributed and they

10:18

and a lot of times that land had been

10:20

given to wealthy Roman wealthy

10:23

Roman citizens who may or may not have been affiliated

10:25

with that sort of tribal area, probably

10:28

allies of Sola though right, definitely

10:30

allies of Cela. And what they did was they

10:32

started large scale agricultural farming

10:35

or plantations on mainland Italy. And

10:37

this is super important because

10:40

what happens next is you have

10:42

the epic Slavery Volta Spartacus, and we don't

10:44

need to go into that, but that happened

10:47

because all of Italy radically shifted,

10:50

and just as Spartacus was rebelling, Virgil

10:53

was born. Virgil was born at the

10:55

twilight of the Roman Republic, and he

10:57

came from really kind of humble, mean, he

11:01

was a working artist and he would fight

11:04

have most of his time, he would be looking for a patron

11:06

to support him. And this is different

11:08

from other artists at the time, who well we can talk

11:10

about in a little bit, like Ovid who had

11:13

more means and more money. By the time

11:16

Spartacus's war is finished, of course, Virgil's

11:18

like a baby, so he doesn't really know any of that. But by the

11:20

time all that's finished, you have another dude who

11:22

comes along who's like, I'm gonna be

11:24

at king. I'm gonna be at

11:26

king. And his name is Julius Caesar.

11:29

Oh yeah, that guy. And

11:31

we're not gonna go into everything Julius Caesar

11:33

did because we have a podcast about that. So

11:36

Julius Caesar was Augustus's uncle,

11:39

a great uncle actually, kind of his

11:41

uncle dad. It's very complicated well

11:43

by those romans. So after Julius

11:46

Caesar is assassinated, you have another power

11:48

struggle between Augustus, his

11:51

brother and loss Slash, Caesar's

11:54

ex right hand man, Mark Antony,

11:56

and they fight and they fight a civil war for

11:59

quite a while. By the time the civil war is

12:01

done, Augustus is like, I am the man

12:03

who will rule these ruins, although

12:05

they weren't ruins, but he left

12:08

you know that that's effectively the retransition

12:10

from having a republic into an empire.

12:12

And over the course of probably less

12:15

than a hundred years, the landscape

12:17

of Italy and the culture of the Italian people

12:20

had changed so dramatically.

12:22

So what Augustus needed, when he really

12:25

really needed, was to give

12:27

the Roman people one unified

12:30

identity, no more tribal

12:32

identities, no more. You know, once she became

12:34

part of Rome, when she were a Roman, this

12:37

was your rich history, and they didn't have, you know, a

12:39

big thing about being Roman was that no kings,

12:41

you know, and they didn't have that anymore. They didn't

12:43

have that one unifying factor of word democracy.

12:45

We don't have, you know, one ruling king.

12:48

We have you know, ruled by the people. Although

12:50

you know, obviously that left a lot of people out,

12:53

but um, but they had lost that

12:55

part of their identity which had been really big. And

12:57

Augustus had seen what happens when

12:59

a man sets

13:01

himself up as dictator for life and seems

13:03

to have too much power. I mean, Julius Caesar's

13:06

assassination still rung in his ears. So

13:08

what he wanted to do with

13:10

this propaganda and it's all propaganda all of the

13:13

and the aid is propaganda. What he wanted to

13:15

do with this propaganda was create

13:17

this epic story so that Roman

13:19

people could feel like their heritage

13:22

didn't just stretch back

13:24

through your tribal heritage or a regional

13:26

heritage. It stretched back through the ages.

13:29

It stretched back to the fall of Troy. There

13:32

people were long and storied and ancient.

13:34

Because I suspect,

13:36

and I can't be proven right or wrong

13:38

on this, I'm sure, but a lot of the original

13:40

stuff past the kings in the founding of Rome,

13:43

we don't know about. So they

13:45

may have had very disparate beliefs. And

13:47

we know that a lot of Rome or a lot of Italy

13:50

in different places was settled by people

13:52

from different areas like Greece and everything

13:54

else. So they really didn't have

13:57

one unifying story

14:00

of them. And so the Indian was literally

14:02

Augustus saying, I will give you that story

14:05

and it will be epic. I mean, they definitely did

14:07

have Romulus and Remus, and they had like the Alba

14:09

Longa, and they had you know, the

14:11

hip the king period before the Republic, which

14:13

I think is mostly mythical as well. But

14:16

I'm not sure if all people who

14:18

were now Roman citizens shared that

14:21

common mythology. I mean, that would have been really specific

14:23

to Roman citizens,

14:25

who I guess had been Roman before

14:28

the social wars. Right, maybe

14:31

I'm guessing, Yeah, I'm

14:33

guessing. But I think the point of Ennius

14:35

being who he was, being a refugee,

14:38

where he settled, where his sons eventually went

14:40

off and settled, and all the people he eventually

14:42

meets on his journeys was to say that

14:44

all of Italy is Rome, and

14:47

all of it is one culture, and it's not just

14:49

the kings from this area or whatever

14:51

else. There's also the factor of it

14:53

builds Augustus himself and Augustus's

14:56

family into that mythology, so justifying

14:59

his right to rule absolutely. So

15:01

you know the reason Virgil takes this job

15:03

as he's a working he's a working writer,

15:05

and Augustus, you know, sort of is like, hey, you

15:08

need a patron, I need a story. He's

15:10

got a Patreon setup, he just needs

15:12

he needs to pay the bills. God

15:15

he does, and this is the story

15:17

that Augustus wanted him to tell. And

15:21

within it there are so

15:23

many illusions to Roman

15:25

history, Like there's so much

15:27

that he's built in there, and as Jenny

15:29

said, you can see that he's literally laying

15:31

the groundwork for essentially

15:34

saying that I am Augustus, I am the first citizen.

15:37

I'm also descended of God, you know, because

15:39

he's Augustus, and also all of these other

15:41

storied people in our common mythology,

15:43

and also I go back to Troy, so look at

15:45

me. Yeah, there's there's

15:48

this whole section. Um, it's before Dido

15:50

Live. I'm sure you covered this part where

15:52

it's Venus talking to Zeus about how she

15:54

wants to protect her her trojans

15:57

and Zeus has just allowed Juno to screw

15:59

with and he's calming Venus down

16:01

and saying like, calm down, calm down, Venus,

16:04

It's okay. What's really gonna happen is

16:06

these guys are going to settle Italy and they're

16:08

gonna, you know, give rise to these Alba

16:10

Longa kings, and then eventually Romulus

16:13

and Remus are going to come along and then Julius Caesar,

16:15

because that's how that line worked. There's nothing

16:18

happened in all of Italy

16:20

until Julius Caesar popped up. Julius

16:23

Caesar pops into this story,

16:25

and I'm just like there it is there. It is

16:28

like there's the Augustine propaganda rearing

16:30

its head. Specifically,

16:32

remember that part where suddenly it's

16:34

like Venus, Venus and Zeus

16:36

together just basically lay out every

16:38

wonderful thing about Rome and they just essentially

16:41

it's like, it's like the propaganda

16:43

goes from subtle too obvious in that section.

16:46

It's kind of delightful, exactly.

16:48

It's so much so when I covered it, I absolutely

16:51

laid all that out. It was like just so over

16:53

the top and quite entertaining in the way that

16:55

it was just like suddenly, it's like, oh, let me just

16:57

explain to you exactly how important Eneus

17:01

is and how eventually he'll lead to everyone else

17:03

you know who's important, including oh, look

17:05

at that hell lucky Augustus and the defied

17:07

Julius Caesar and the

17:09

deified Julius Caesar. Absolutely, do

17:11

you know, there's a scene that Live hasn't covered yet

17:13

where Enius goes into the underworld to see his

17:15

father, and his father parades

17:18

before his father's kiss, parades

17:20

before him a litany of people

17:22

who are going to be famous Romans, including

17:25

Augustus's beloved grandson

17:29

Marcellus, who died very young. He

17:31

was supposed to be the next

17:33

essentially, you know, emperor of Rome, but

17:36

he never got there. So like he's

17:38

presented as this tragic woeful.

17:40

I think he died at like twenty four or twenty five years

17:42

young, a figure of what could

17:44

have been, you know, and you know,

17:46

Virgil has put that in there to just like stroke

17:49

Augustus's ego or to just you know,

17:51

struggle get him in the fields maybe.

17:54

And also I mean, I guess it is one of

17:56

those things where like Marcellus probably

17:58

was a really you know, he was a celebrity.

18:01

He was a guy who died

18:03

too young. Who was I

18:05

think he was very competent in battle, if I'm remembering

18:07

correctly, and he probably had lots of

18:09

soldiers who were loyal to him and people who really

18:12

mourned his passing, just like we would mourn

18:14

the passing of any other sort of hero, war

18:17

hero or sports hero or celebrity. Yeah,

18:19

and I think the really important thing to remember,

18:22

And somebody brought this up to us in our podcast

18:24

in our comments and when we were talking about Julius

18:26

Caesar's commentaries. Oh we're still talking about

18:29

him. But the way Virgil and Homer

18:31

were writing, was they were writing for these

18:33

to be told aloud as stories, and a lot of

18:35

the repetition of certain things that you hear in

18:38

Homer, like the ship names and stuff like that,

18:40

is because in the original language it would

18:42

have been easy to rhyme and get into the feel

18:45

of telling the story. And I think in the une

18:47

of what's different is the reason that

18:49

all of these things are being repeated, all of these

18:51

great people is because in different areas

18:54

of both mainland Italy

18:56

and also the Republic, that this was

18:58

supposed to just bring this huge, like

19:01

glorious scale and scope as you were

19:03

listening, because at this point in time, Rome

19:05

was definitely you know, beginning,

19:07

it's real the height of its expansions and powers.

19:10

Yeah. Well, And what I think is always

19:12

interesting reading Virgil as

19:14

well, is as much as they do some repetition,

19:17

it really feels nothing like

19:19

Homer when you're reading them kind

19:21

of back to back, which I have been, just in the way

19:23

that I'm reading the Iliad aloud on the podcast and

19:25

then covering me in Eid, because

19:29

the Iliad is so

19:31

repetive. It just has so much

19:34

repetition, Like even in the way that if

19:36

if somebody's like, okay, go

19:39

tell this person this, this, this, this, and this

19:41

this, then it'll be like and then

19:43

this person went and told them this, this, this,

19:45

this, and this. Like it's not like in the way

19:47

that we would write today, where it's like, oh

19:49

and they told them all of that, you

19:52

know, where you summarize in that way.

19:54

And Virgil, definitely he is a

19:56

much more modern He writes a lot more like

19:59

what we have now versus

20:01

Homer. But I also do think as we're talking about

20:03

all of this, it's important

20:05

to note that it is

20:08

all propaganda. Absolutely, it's all because Augustus

20:10

wanted to stroke his ego and get this united

20:12

Rome and have everyone just obsessed with Rome

20:14

and with him. But also it's very

20:17

purposeful that not only they

20:19

took the story from Troy, but

20:22

also that Virgil is emulating

20:24

Homer, because he's not just emulating

20:26

Homer in the way that he's like writing an

20:28

epic poem. He's emulating Homer

20:31

in the way that Eneas goes to the underworld

20:33

and has all these people paraded before him.

20:35

Right, it's like, well, that happens to Odysseus, like the

20:38

things that happened to Enius are

20:40

so connected to the Odyssey, like all so

20:43

very similar in terms of what happens to

20:45

Odysseus and the greatness

20:48

that came with that in Homer, that it's so

20:50

clear that they were essentially

20:52

trying to write a combination of the Iliad and the Odyssey,

20:55

but to make it Roman, but to make it as impressive

20:57

as Homer, as memorable as Homer, because of

21:00

course the Romans would have read Homer

21:02

like it's it's not like these were,

21:04

you know, each written in a vacuum. Like the Romans

21:07

would have read Homer. They would have recognized

21:09

the greatness in Homer, and it's important

21:11

to the importance to the Greeks. And they were

21:13

obviously influenced by the Greeks, as we know from

21:15

their whole mythology. And then of course

21:17

the Greeks lived in Sicily for a really long time.

21:19

I don't know the history of connecting that to Rome,

21:22

but um, Sicily was Greek

21:24

well before it was Rome. Well

21:26

sure, Sicily was Greek before it was Rome,

21:29

and it was also but the

21:31

Carthaginians. Sicily was

21:33

a hotbed of who owned it

21:35

at which time there

21:38

was a Greek and Roman war, I believe, and I think

21:40

it was part of the Punic wars too, like it was a hotly

21:42

context area. It was also the site of so

21:44

itteresting servile wars. Yeah,

21:47

it was. It was a hotbed. And I

21:49

think the inclusion of talking about

21:51

Sicily is important because there is

21:53

a lot that they that the Indian is

21:55

trying to do to sort of effectively

21:57

say that

22:00

everything Augustus has been doing this propaganda is kind

22:02

of a bit of manifest destiny to get Rome to be

22:04

the empire that it is. And that's

22:07

one of the reasons why I find it really fascinating

22:10

to dig into the idiot and also terrifying,

22:12

and it's so valuable in

22:16

our modern day to look at the way the story was told

22:18

and how the history was spun from a different

22:20

lens than looking at Homer. Homer is

22:23

to me more about poetry. It's more about

22:25

watching in the Iliad, you have this

22:27

epic story of like essentially you

22:30

know essentially what it

22:32

means to be a great fighter, what it means to be at war, what

22:34

it means to be honored for your bravery,

22:37

what you know. It's looking at a culture that's

22:39

on the verge of changing, and then you'd get

22:41

to the Odyssey, which is actually all about

22:43

a guy who he's a decent soldier, but he's no

22:45

Achilles. You know what it is about

22:47

him is he's clever. And we're looking at the way

22:50

in which we change from honoring the best

22:53

of the best of the soldiers to the cleverest

22:55

and the smartest and the thinking person. And

22:58

I love that contrast. But what you see in the Ediate

23:00

is like, and this is actually none of those. Yeah, He's

23:02

neither one of them, is he? And you know

23:04

what's you know what's also interesting about what you just said

23:07

is that the story of Dido in particular,

23:09

I was just reading it over before

23:11

we did this, before we did this episode and

23:14

thinking about how Dido's

23:17

relationship with the Nias and then and

23:19

then their breakup was kind of it

23:21

was kind of like a setup for explaining

23:24

the Punic Wars, and like all this conflict

23:26

between Carthage and Rome that had already

23:28

happened because she really curses him a lot. Yeah,

23:31

she absolutely does. So I think what I was trying

23:34

to say too with the home or stuff

23:36

is you're absolutely right, both of you, and

23:38

I think that is what makes it so interesting

23:41

that Virgil is trying to emulate

23:43

Homer. Yes, But the very

23:45

big difference, and the thing that's most obvious

23:47

between them is that Homer

23:49

isn't making a point about Greek

23:52

importance. Homer is writing stories

23:54

of people, people that were beloved

23:57

and important, yes, but also that

23:59

we're flawed and like, there isn't

24:01

really anyone in the Iliad that comes

24:03

out as perfect. Everyone

24:06

has their shit, and that's the whole point. And same

24:08

with the Odyssey, Like if they aren't about

24:11

deifying one person, they aren't about

24:13

like Homer wasn't trying to make the Greeks

24:16

seem holier

24:18

than now, whereas the Eniad

24:20

is exactly that. He

24:22

tried to emulate Homer in that exact

24:25

way. But at the same time, the

24:27

entire purpose is to say, but look

24:29

how great a Eneas is. Hey, isn't a Eneas

24:31

perfect? Oh look at what a Enius is

24:34

going to go on to do. It's going to be the greatest empire

24:36

in the whole world. Oh my gosh, we better help him

24:38

because he's just perfect. It's such a merry sue,

24:40

you know. And the thing that I find

24:42

fastening about Annias is Enius doesn't

24:45

have like a ridiculous amount of hubers,

24:47

like we see in a lot of other Greek mythology and Greek stories,

24:49

he is this guy who honors

24:52

the gods. Like when he's running out of Troy,

24:54

he has his father on one shoulder, his son

24:57

by the arm, and his household shrines

24:59

to the gods in his backpack, and somehow

25:01

he has no room to grab his wife. But you

25:04

know, whatever, castle gods.

25:06

Okay, that's the important thing, YEA.

25:09

Super important about the household

25:11

gods to me, and about what Augustus is trying

25:13

to have here is there were specific

25:15

gods that the Romans worshiped in their

25:17

household that were super important. They were like

25:20

a massive part of their day to day life and culture.

25:22

And this is really solidifying that the reason that

25:24

they're still important and that we still worship them now and

25:26

that we have all of this is because of Eneas.

25:29

And because Eneas worshiped the gods,

25:31

wasn't subject to lots of hubris,

25:34

you know, because he stayed on the path

25:36

and did with the gods wanted him to do.

25:39

We now have this great nation, and when

25:41

you drill a little deeper into it, it's kind

25:43

of Augustus saying, honor your gods,

25:47

hustle goods, honor the gods. Women are absolutely

25:49

disposable, and do what

25:52

is set up before you in the path. Yeah,

26:22

this is the path you walk in order to achieve

26:24

greatness, whether that's as a soldier, as a baker,

26:26

or whatever. You go stay on that path.

26:28

You do not stray from that path. And the

26:30

odyssey is all about going off that path because

26:33

you've obviously angered some gods. But you know, I

26:35

mean, I think that's really important too

26:38

in the story of Dido. Is the message that I was getting

26:40

is that when you, as as the man and

26:42

obviously the star of the show and the protagonist

26:45

of the story here, when you are

26:47

presented with a

26:49

sort of fork in your road between a woman

26:51

and you know, having this relationship or

26:54

whatever or even you know, honoring

26:56

a commitment to a woman and something that gods

26:58

want you to do, you obviously have to fall hello what

27:00

the gods want you to do? Like, the women are disposable

27:02

here in this story and in this world. Oh

27:05

absolutely, And I love that. Like

27:07

this is a part I definitely harped on in

27:09

the episode, But

27:12

as much as like it is,

27:14

I mean, he absolutely is just about like, yeah, see

27:16

you later doesn't really matter. The gods told me to do this.

27:18

But he also makes such a point to

27:20

Dido when Dido's like, hey, but we're married,

27:23

and he's like, no, that was not a marriage.

27:25

We did not I'd never married. I don't know

27:27

what you say. We are not married for

27:29

we've been together for a year and somehow

27:31

you were under the impression we were married, but we were

27:34

not married. It's like, okay, and he

27:36

is just because Juno blessed

27:38

our marriage. I mean just because

27:40

like Venus was like putting you

27:42

like all the love spells on you so that you would just

27:44

be like, oh, my tongue is falling out. Hello,

27:47

and you, I know, as opposed to Hello,

27:49

some other really handsome Carthaginian guy who I

27:51

could definitely get with, but I decided not to get with anyone

27:53

because I've already had a husband that I loved and lost

27:55

and the reality is I could just rules the badass queen

27:58

on my own. I don't need anyone I could as of a consort. Damn

28:01

fucking right, Danny, It's just bullshit.

28:04

So, Jenny, here's the thing about Dido.

28:07

When we launched our podcast, Ancient

28:09

History Fangirl, one of our first episodes

28:12

was about that. I think it was about the Poenic

28:14

War. It was about the Third p Yeah, the

28:16

Third Poenick War, and there is a scene

28:19

in the Third Peenic War that

28:21

completely reminds me of Dido's death.

28:23

And I went off for ages on this and Jenny, He's like, please

28:25

stop talking about the you did. I was like, why are we still

28:27

spreading Augustus's propaganda? You need to stop.

28:30

I was like, because I have to call it out. People need to know.

28:33

So I feel like, Jenny,

28:35

you should give us that story. So basically what jenn

28:37

was talking about was the story

28:39

of Hasdrubal's wife during the Third Poenic

28:42

War, and I kind of fell down this rabbit

28:44

hole of like, okay, which story came first, the story

28:46

of Dido or the story of Hasdrubal's wife

28:48

and live when you said that there

28:50

was pre existing mythology prior

28:53

to Virgil that talked

28:55

about Dido, I really wanted to know where you were

28:57

getting that from, because I did some research into this

29:00

and the earliest thing I could find about specifically

29:02

Dido was Virgil except for Trogis.

29:05

So the Enid I'm just going to give you

29:07

all this background on the Third Punic War. The

29:09

Enid was written between I don't know exactly

29:12

what the date was, twenty nine and nineteen BC somewhere

29:14

around then, and this story,

29:16

I think it took about ten years. And

29:18

the story of Dido, who was the

29:21

Carthaginian queen who commits suicide on a

29:23

funeral pyre. This specific part

29:25

of her story is echoed elsewhere in the ancient

29:27

record, and it's something that I really found fascinating

29:30

and generally latched onto in our very first

29:32

episode, so we

29:34

saw another, you know, prominent

29:36

Carthaginian woman dying by funeral

29:38

pyre in the Third Punic War, which

29:41

was the Great Siege of Carthage by the Romans

29:43

from one forty nine to one forty

29:45

six BC. And at the end of that

29:47

siege, that was when the wife of Hasdrubal,

29:50

the Carthaginian general who had

29:52

just lost, committed suicide on a funeral

29:55

pyre. And just give you the background. After

29:57

the Second Punic War, the Carthaginian

30:00

had to agree to this owner's peace treaty

30:02

that required them to pay a lot of money to

30:04

the Romans every year for fifty years. It was like two

30:06

hundred talents of silver a year, which is

30:08

an insane amount of money, and the

30:10

Carthaginians abided by the treaty.

30:13

This is at the end of the Second Punic War. There were three

30:15

Punic Wars and the Romans won them all,

30:18

but still in the years after the Second

30:20

Punic War, the Romans were they were kind

30:22

of like leary of the Carthaginians because they

30:24

looked like they were still living too good of a life,

30:27

you know, like they were still too rich. And

30:29

one prominent senator, Cato, Cato the

30:31

Elder, who was the great grandfather of Cato

30:33

the Younger, would end every single

30:35

speech, even the ones that had absolutely nothing to do

30:38

with Carthage, with the phrase, I

30:40

think it was Cartago delenda est, which

30:42

is and furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed.

30:45

He said this all the time, even when he was

30:47

ordering coffee at the bodega. He had to

30:49

say that at the end of every sentence. So

30:52

yeah, it was like it was his like he

30:54

just could not he could not shut

30:56

up about it. He was like, listen, I don't

30:59

understand why we're having conversation when Carthage

31:01

is still standing there. It is our only real

31:03

enemy. It is actually getting lots and lots

31:05

of power. I'm sure they have weapons of mass

31:07

destruction. It must be discarbage must be destroyed.

31:10

So in one forty nine BC,

31:13

the Romans found some stupid, flimsy

31:15

pretext to declare a third war against the

31:17

Carthaginians, and they basically this

31:19

was a three year siege. It was long, it was brutal,

31:22

it was bloody. The general

31:24

that was leading the resistance against Rome was a

31:26

guy named Hasdruble. He has a whole backstory.

31:28

I'm not going to go into it. The Carthaginians

31:31

lost, and Hasdrubal

31:34

the losing general. He had a wife and two

31:36

sons. And when Hasdrubal lost his

31:38

wife was so incense that, as

31:40

Appian of Alexandria describes it, I'm going to

31:42

give you the quote from Appian quote.

31:45

It is said that as the fire was lighted,

31:47

the wife of Hasdrubal, in full view of Scipio,

31:50

the victorious Roman general, arrayed in

31:52

the best attire possible under such circumstances,

31:54

and with her children by her side, said in Scipio's

31:57

hearing for you Roman, the gods have

31:59

no cause of indignation, since you exercise

32:02

the rights of war upon this Hasdrubal,

32:04

her husband, betrayer of his country

32:06

and her temples, of me and his children

32:09

because he lost. May the gods of Carthage

32:11

take vengeance, and you be their instrument.

32:14

So this only makes sense if you know that Hasdrubal

32:16

lost and also like sued

32:18

for peace and didn't like fight to

32:20

the bitter end. He didn't just lose. He walked

32:23

away from the battle. And that's why

32:25

Hasdrubal's wife is so mad.

32:28

So she turns to Hasdruble and there's

32:30

a little bit of you know, ridiculousness

32:32

here. Wretch, she explained, exclaimed,

32:35

traitor, most effeminate of men, because

32:37

that was like the worst thing that they could think of

32:39

to call men at this time, because

32:42

everyone is awful in the ancient world.

32:45

This fire will into me and my children.

32:47

Will you, the leader of great Carthage, decorate

32:50

a Roman triumph? What punishment

32:52

will you not receive from him? At him at whose

32:54

feet you are now sitting, and having

32:56

reproached him, Thus she slew her children,

32:59

flung them into the funeral pyre, and plunged

33:01

in after them. Such, they say, was

33:03

the death of the wife of Hasdrubal, which

33:05

would have been more becoming to himself.

33:08

So that is the death of the wife of Hasdruble,

33:10

and it sounds pretty familiar to me.

33:13

Yeah, the husband gets to walk away. Yeah, he

33:15

would probably then get to go live his life

33:17

out somewhere else as long as he didn't take up arms

33:19

against Rome. He got to settle in Italy

33:21

and just live a life as a private, private

33:24

person. He did not die after this war.

33:26

He got to walk away, just like a Nius,

33:30

just like a Nias did. Yeah, what happens

33:32

the woman who's saying, by

33:35

taking this piece with Rome, by ending

33:37

this war, you are literally you

33:40

are condemning everyone in

33:42

Carthage to enslavement. You're

33:44

taking away our culture or people. You're letting

33:47

us be annexed. It is better that you

33:49

fucking throw yourself on that fire

33:51

than you take this treaty and you become a

33:53

private citizen. But Hasdruble does. The price

33:55

would have been high for a woman

33:58

in this time, as you know, a

34:00

high ranking woman, as a member of a conquered

34:03

community, you know, because she would face

34:05

enslavement and that would

34:07

be horrible, especially horrible, you know, because

34:09

there's a lot of rape involved in that. And like

34:12

if she didn't die, you know. So I feel

34:14

like she would have feared slavery a lot.

34:16

Obviously everybody would, but she had

34:18

like these fears. I think Hasdruble

34:20

probably thought he could he could walk

34:23

away from this, and probably his wife didn't,

34:25

you know, because the price would have been higher for her. We

34:27

don't know exactly what happened, but there might have

34:29

been like Hasdrubal has to settle in Rome and take

34:31

a Roman wife and be a proper

34:34

Roman private citizen, to show that

34:36

we are able to, you know, annex these

34:38

countries and integrate the people of the countries

34:40

into our world. Now, where that would

34:43

leave his wife in this situation, we don't know

34:45

who, don't know. Yeah, So anyway,

34:47

the wife of the wife of the Carthaginian

34:49

general Hasdrubal also committed suicide

34:52

by funeral pyre. And there seems

34:54

to be this association between

34:56

strong Carthaginian women and deaths

34:58

by funeral pyre that I want to to talk about. And

35:02

way back when I first read this, I kind of assumed

35:04

that Virgil had lifted this story from Appian

35:07

when he wrote the enid Or he lifted the story

35:09

of Dido from the story of Hasubal's

35:12

wife, That's what I assumed, but

35:14

I don't think that's true. And I kind

35:16

of traced out a chronology of where I found

35:19

Dido's story from, and I wanted to see if liv could

35:21

add to this. So the

35:23

actual Third Punic War happened from

35:26

one forty nine to one forty six BC, and

35:29

Virgil's Aeneid was published in nineteen

35:31

BC, which was about one hundred

35:33

and thirty years or so later something like

35:36

that. So that's where we get the first

35:38

story of Dido committing suicide

35:40

by funeral pyre that I found. No,

35:43

that's where we get the first published story that exists

35:45

into the present day, right, That's what I'm saying,

35:47

like the first published one that we know of. Yeah,

35:50

everything in all mythology is this

35:53

is what we have, not necessarily

35:55

what was written, yeah, or what

35:57

was existed as an oral tradition or legend.

36:00

Then so then you have Appian, who published

36:02

his account of the Third Punic War with Hasdrubal's

36:04

wife committing suicide by funeral

36:06

pyre, which was in the hundreds a d. About

36:08

a century or so after Virgils. So his account

36:11

that I just reggie is actually younger than

36:14

Virgil's account by about one hundred years. He could have

36:16

been getting it from Virgil. There's

36:19

one other mention of Carthaginian queens

36:21

and funeral pyres that I know about, which

36:24

is Justin's Forum Romanum, where he describes

36:26

Dido, who her name in that account

36:28

is Alyssa committing a suicide by

36:30

funeral pyre to avoid marrying a king that

36:32

she doesn't want to marry. And Justin's story,

36:35

we're not really sure when that happened, because we're not sure

36:37

when he lived, and I've seen historians

36:39

say maybe he lived as late as three hundreds

36:41

a d. Around then, or he could

36:43

have lived around the same time as Virgil, but

36:46

he's believed to have been summarizing

36:49

a different writer, Trogus, who probably

36:51

did live around the same time as virgils

36:53

So, and Trogus's work is lost, so

36:56

we don't know. We don't have his stuff except

36:58

for when it's summarized by other writers,

37:00

so the dates are fuzzy here. And

37:03

it seems like there's a common story, or there must

37:05

be some kind of common original

37:07

thread that everyone's drawing from that we

37:09

don't have. And I just found that to be really interesting

37:12

and lived. Do you know of any other sources

37:14

I know. I know that essentially

37:17

we do understand that Dido

37:21

existed mythologically, because

37:23

as far as I know, she is accepted

37:26

in Greek mythology as having

37:28

been a mythological queen of Phoenicia

37:30

and Carthage, because the

37:33

Greeks felt like they thought very

37:35

highly of the Phoenicians and had a lot of

37:37

dealings with them.

37:39

They credited the Phoenicians with giving them

37:42

their alphabet through the hero

37:44

Cadmus, whom I love. But

37:48

yeah, so as far as I know, they

37:50

did believe Dido to be this

37:52

mythological, if not real, founding

37:55

queen of Carthage. Apparently there's

37:57

also some record of and I should say a

37:59

list not necessarily Dido. Alyssa

38:02

seems to be her original Carthaginian

38:05

name, which does make sense in terms

38:07

of the language.

38:10

Is because obviously Phoenicia is going to

38:12

be in the Middle East. It's sort of generally

38:14

modern Lebanon, and so

38:17

a name like Alyssa is much more accurate

38:19

to that like civilization

38:24

than Dido. But anyway,

38:26

so they know that Alyssa, what

38:28

I think, was pretty mythologically accurate. Like

38:30

you were saying, there is that lost writer

38:34

Timys, who is then I

38:36

believe, referenced elsewhere, so they

38:38

believe that he did talk about this founding

38:41

queen Alyssa. And then there seems to

38:44

also have been some record of her on

38:46

something found at Ephesus, which

38:49

suggested that she did exist

38:51

as well. So as far as I understand

38:53

Dido, I understand her and like

38:56

or Alyssa to be a mythological

38:58

founding queen of Carthage. Whether or not she was real

39:00

or not, I don't know, but mythological

39:03

founding queen. As far as I know, the

39:05

funeral Pyre, the killing

39:07

herself because of a Eneas is

39:10

straight out of Virgil, don't

39:13

I don't know that for certain. I've

39:15

asked in last week's episode. Actually, if anyone

39:18

has any information about Dido outside of the

39:20

Iliad or outside of the Enia, rather, please

39:22

let me know, because I desperately want to know about

39:25

her outside of Virgil, because to

39:27

me, everything about her in that

39:29

moment is based in what the Romans,

39:32

or rather Augustus wanted people

39:34

to believe. They wanted to demonize

39:36

the Carthaginians, they wanted to make them

39:38

the villains. They wanted to excuse

39:41

the fact that, however, many years before

39:43

Rome had completely completely

39:46

decimated Carthage had just burned

39:48

it to the ground. And and

39:50

I it seems to me that

39:52

they just wanted to explain that,

39:54

explain why Rome was justified

39:57

in that because Dido curses Rome,

39:59

and oh, Carthage fought Rome

40:01

for so long that Rome finally had to just do

40:04

away with them and burn the whole place down. And

40:06

so to me, Dido's fate is

40:08

one hundred percent Roman propaganda. And again I

40:10

don't know that to be certain, but based on

40:12

the reading of it, based on the

40:15

way it's told and the way she

40:18

is, it seems to me that that is

40:21

the only way to take it.

40:23

Yeah, that was my kind of one of the questions

40:25

I had. And I do like she

40:28

is. I believe she commits suicide by funeral.

40:30

Pyre Aeneus is not involved in

40:32

the Justin's Forum Romanum story, which

40:34

is also a Roman source. Yeah, that's

40:36

the only one I know about outside of Justin.

40:39

And then of course you have Appian, which is which

40:41

is sort of tangentle to it but similar,

40:43

So I have some thoughts on that. Yeah,

40:46

so we're going back to Augustus. Augustus

40:48

famously had zero

40:51

sense of humor, and if Augustus didn't

40:54

like something, Augustus squashed

40:56

that something. So I

40:58

don't know anything about these ancient

41:00

sources or anyone who might have had this

41:02

incredible story about Hasdrubal's wife

41:05

being so noble and brave about her

41:07

people. But if that source did

41:09

exist, I suspect our man

41:11

Augustus might have squashed it. Interesting

41:14

possibly possibly because I'm going to

41:16

tell you another story about Augustus, who,

41:18

literally, as you said on the podcast many times, has

41:20

a face you just want to smack. Yeah.

41:23

You just like see his bust somewhere and you're

41:25

just like, oh, smack it. So

41:27

there's another poet who paralleled

41:29

in some ways Virgil,

41:32

and that poet is lives beloved.

41:35

I haven't read his section on the

41:37

Inned yet, and I just the minute you said

41:40

that there's another poet, I was like, oh my god, why

41:42

haven't I read Ovid's take

41:44

on Enius yet? Anyway, I'm feeling

41:48

betrayed by myself. So the thing

41:50

about Ovid was he had more

41:52

money than Virgil did. He didn't

41:55

necessarily need the patronage, you know, he

41:57

didn't need that day job of working for

41:59

Ausus. The way that Virgil

42:02

did. So. The thing about Ovid was

42:04

he just could not so,

42:07

he could not help himself. He just could not be

42:09

the best. He's a crazy person. He's

42:11

the best. He's crazy. He

42:13

I mean, if you haven't read herodes

42:16

like just go treat yourself, give yourself

42:18

a couple hours and just delve in. But

42:21

here's where I was going. Alvid was

42:23

one of the most famous poets of his time, and

42:26

he was exiled by Augustus because

42:28

he wrote a poem about an indiscretion.

42:32

Now, Augustus is good at

42:34

his job. We don't know what that indiscretion

42:36

is. It has not come down through history

42:39

except in rumors. And the rumors

42:41

were that Avid was having an affair worth Augustus's

42:43

granddaughter, Julia. Oh,

42:46

I knew it was Julia. She's my

42:48

favorite. Julia got

42:51

banished. So both Avid and

42:53

Julia were banished to different

42:56

places at about the same time. And

42:59

this was when Augustus was getting all

43:02

high im moral because he was rewriting the

43:04

code of Contact for the code of conduct for

43:06

Roman citizens, and that's

43:08

why he employed Virgil to give

43:11

us this mary sue of a hero Eneus.

43:13

And I think it is totally worth just taking

43:15

like a tea second detour to tell you just a little

43:17

bit about Augustus's grandaughter Julian,

43:19

because she was so incredible. I mean,

43:22

I don't know exactly because I

43:24

have not done a deep dive into Julia.

43:26

Are you surprised that she might have been having an affair

43:28

with her? No, she had a lot of affairs. I

43:30

mean, the thing lying about

43:33

Augustus's code of conduct for Roman

43:35

citizens was that it was real heavy on specifically

43:38

what women should do. Oh weird,

43:41

and one thing women should

43:43

do was definitely not have a lot of affairs.

43:47

And his daughter and his granddaughter, Julia

43:49

just insisted on flouting these rules

43:51

that Augustus was extremely hardcore

43:53

about. At every opportunity, she would not

43:56

she would not follow these rules that her

43:58

grandfather was lying laying down. She was going to sleep

44:00

with who she wanted. She was gonna do what she wanted.

44:03

Though eventually she got exiled and it

44:05

was a giant bummer, but she was really

44:07

bad as and I just love her. The other

44:09

thing, the other thing to remember about this

44:11

is Augustus was like he was utterly

44:14

humorless about and he jokes about him,

44:16

his family, anything going around where

44:18

you know Julius Caesar. Let people write

44:21

make up body songs about how he was

44:23

a bold adulterer who would just sleep with all

44:25

your wives, lock them up because he's in town. Oh

44:27

yeah, you could. You could choke around about

44:30

Julius Caesar. You could make fun of him, either

44:32

to his face or behind his back, and it was funny.

44:34

Even when he was a dictator. You could do that and he

44:36

would not have you killed like he was he

44:38

was. He was kind of a good sport about it all. Yeah.

44:40

Whereas with Augustus, the guy who created

44:43

who essentially solidified the Empire,

44:45

you could not have a have a body

44:48

you know poem and about an

44:50

indiscretion. If you did, you and

44:52

the woman it might have been about will be

44:54

exiled. Yeah, Augustus was not

44:56

a good time, But that not

44:58

a good time shows you how Virgil

45:00

crafted in Us and he is could

45:03

not be a guy who had fun and he is

45:05

could not be a guy who was a guy's guy. And

45:07

he has had to have a moral code. He had to follow

45:09

what the gods wanted him to do. He had to walk

45:11

away from maybe the second love of

45:13

his life, because I mean he definitely walked away from his

45:15

first wife. Yeah, he definitely good.

45:18

He had practice it walking away from his wives.

45:20

What Augustus wanted from Virgil was

45:22

this hero who essentially

45:25

was you know, so good and so

45:27

pure and so dignified in their quest

45:29

for you know, creating this country

45:32

or finding their new homeland, you

45:34

know, and then eventually founding this great

45:36

republic and empire. You

45:38

know. What he wanted was to

45:41

create this myth kind

45:43

of a lot like the myth of the American Founding

45:45

Fathers. No interesting,

45:49

Yeah, America has a lot of resemblance

45:52

to Augustus and the Indian

45:54

like so much the Founding

45:57

Fathers. The Constitution devoted

45:59

to would beyond all belief and the myth

46:02

making. Yeah, well, and

46:04

a lot of a lot of that, as I said, a lot of that

46:06

manifest destiny, destiny that

46:08

you see, oh yes, in the indid and in

46:10

Indias needing to get to his homeland. Then sort

46:13

of explains why the Roman Empire

46:16

took so many people into slavery from the different

46:18

areas that they conquered and conquered

46:20

all these places and spread and they didn't just conquer

46:22

different places, but they really worked hard

46:25

to spread their culture around and get the buy

46:27

in. You know, from different

46:29

communities like one you could, um,

46:31

I mean depending on the time period. You know, they

46:33

were really they weren't just going to conquer your community.

46:36

They were going to come in and they were going to put

46:38

the baths in and the roads in, and everyone's

46:40

going to wear togas now, everyone's going to speak the language

46:42

now. Like they were really all about bringing, like pushing

46:45

out their culture as well. So they definitely had

46:47

that sort of we're we're the civilizing

46:50

factor and we're and we're doing this for your

46:52

own good. You know that doesn't sound familiar

46:54

either. Yeah, absolutely, So

47:25

what do we think about Dido's character and

47:27

personality and what happens to her in this

47:30

story. I think it's just really interesting to watch

47:32

what changes when Venus puts that spell

47:34

on her. Like I really emphasize the spell in

47:36

my telling because I think it's just the only way

47:38

to understand her, because yeah,

47:41

she really is like a very different person.

47:43

I mean, I guess we don't have that much of her beforehand.

47:46

That's also really interesting in Roman history because

47:49

Roman people, and Jenny you know more

47:51

about this than I do. Roman people didn't

47:53

really value love like you were supposed

47:56

to have. You know an affection for your spouse

47:59

and feel a filial duty

48:01

towards your spouse. But romantic love was

48:03

considered something like a madness, And you definitely

48:06

see it shown that way in Dido's

48:08

story, like it's something that is, you

48:11

know, put on her from an outside force Cupid,

48:14

and kind of takes her over and all

48:16

of a sudden, Like what Lives said, it's really true.

48:18

You know, before she was independent, she didn't want to be

48:20

married. She had this husband who had died. She was

48:22

good by herself, she had turned down several

48:25

marriage proposals by different people. She

48:27

wanted to be independent and rule her city. And she

48:29

had all these goals and projects that she

48:31

was busy with and working on. And then a Nias comes

48:33

in and this love spell is kind of

48:35

cast on her by Cupid, and suddenly

48:38

all she cares about as Nias. She can't stop thinking

48:40

about a Nias. She's like sick with longing

48:42

for a Nias. She's just utterly single minded

48:45

in her desire to be with a Nias. And

48:47

then when he leaves, there's she

48:50

doesn't have him anymore, so she can't find

48:52

her way back to that person that she used to

48:54

be. You know, the way that it was

48:56

told really does tell me something about

48:58

how the ancient Romans saw love as

49:01

as the sort of madness that comes over you

49:03

and that kind of derails your life absolutely,

49:05

and why it was very important

49:08

that if you wanted to succeed in your life,

49:10

you didn't marry necessarily someone you loved.

49:12

You married someone who you were, you cared about,

49:15

and you could you could see being a partner

49:17

in what you needed to do. It's

49:19

all about duty, duty to the gods,

49:21

duty to the country. And you see

49:24

that absolutely and Eneas's decision making

49:26

here like he's not you don't marry someone

49:28

you're super passionate about, because that draws you

49:30

away from what the gods want from me, what your

49:33

country wants from you. And you see

49:35

Aeneas making what looks like a very

49:37

cold and callous choice to the modern reader,

49:39

but that Roman, ancient Roman

49:41

reader might have interpreted very differently. But

49:43

think about what you're trying to impress upon women

49:45

as well, like, oh, you don't

49:47

want to be with the guy who you're absolutely

49:49

wildly passionate about, because then he'll

49:52

ruin your life. He'll ruin your

49:54

life, You'll have this kind of crazy man, Yeah,

49:56

it's all going to end on a funeral pyre and a blaze

49:58

of fire. It's not going to end well, you know.

50:02

So we were asking you, um, you know, what do you

50:04

see in this in this story arc of Didos

50:06

and why um? And just the

50:08

fact that she changes so much between when

50:10

she meets Aeneas before right. Well,

50:13

and then so I also looked

50:15

up the source I had because I did a whole episode

50:17

on Dido, but it was pre quarantine.

50:20

And now I'm like, what did I say? Where did

50:22

I read? Where is time? Where

50:24

did it go? And

50:26

so anyway, but it looks like I did find a source

50:28

and this was this is a secondary source.

50:31

So where what primary sources he's

50:33

drawing from? I'm not sure. But

50:35

I had read this book called Roman

50:38

Mythology, A Traveler's Guide, which

50:41

was really interesting, and then had the story

50:43

of Dido beyond the

50:45

Aeneid and her story of her

50:48

time in Phoenicia and then traveling to Carthage.

50:51

There wasn't too much, don't get me wrong. It's

50:53

not like a ton more information, but

50:55

just kind of exemplified her from before that.

50:57

And I think it's if you go beyond

51:00

the Inied then you do get this sort of

51:02

whole look at Dido, because you know, she was

51:05

this princess of Carthage and her brother was

51:07

a real asshole and killed her husband, and she was just

51:09

basically like, absolutely, fuck

51:11

you, I'm going to go found a city. And

51:14

then, you know, we do have historically,

51:17

the Phoenicians did found

51:20

little colonies like all around that region.

51:22

They were really prolific in the whole

51:24

area, and so you

51:27

know, the idea that she would have founded one

51:29

of those isn't unheard

51:31

of. And then yeah, she built

51:33

the whole city from scratch. And Jenny

51:35

used language earlier that I think was

51:38

really telling is the building of the towers

51:40

and things that she sort of oversaw as

51:43

the queen. And there is a line in

51:45

the inid right at the beginning

51:47

when the love spell is taking over her that

51:49

specifically says that the builders

51:52

didn't know what to do. Essentially,

51:54

it was like these people were still there trying

51:56

to build and expand Carthage and make it this

51:58

great and gleaming city that she had

52:01

founded, but without her guidance.

52:03

When she was overtaken by this love spell,

52:07

that all fell by the wayside. And I think

52:09

that that's just exemplary of what the

52:12

spell did, regardless of how much of Dido

52:15

is told in the Indian before the spell hits,

52:17

because I realized too, it's like almost nothing. It's

52:20

you know, she's in her throne room and she meets

52:22

the Trojans, and then Eneas is watching like a creeper,

52:25

hid invisibility, and then

52:27

reveals himself and you know, his very

52:30

enius, I'm so beautiful, look at me in a kind of

52:32

way. And then very quickly

52:34

from there they send in

52:36

cupid as Ascanius to put the

52:38

spell on onto Dido.

52:41

And so I think, you know, you

52:43

don't have that much of her beforehand, but if

52:45

you kind of look into her a little bit more,

52:47

or just think rationally, like this woman traveled

52:50

from Phoenicia to found a city. Like she

52:52

was powerful, she was strong and independent. She didn't

52:55

need men. That is obvious from what she did, regardless

52:57

of what we have in the story itself. And

53:00

so yeah, I mean, essentially, like what

53:02

Venus and Cupa do is just absolutely ruined

53:05

her just for the sake of Aeneas. I mean,

53:07

I guess there's also you can

53:09

sort of see like Augustus is the one who

53:11

finally effectively

53:14

colonized Egypt, and he was the last queen

53:16

of Egypt, Cleopatra. And what was

53:18

Cleopatra driven mad by her love for mark

53:20

Antony? She wasn't, That's not the case. But you

53:23

can see a parallel there in the history

53:25

and what Augustus is trying to show in

53:28

that anytime a woman, you know, allows

53:30

herself to fall in love with a man, everything will be

53:33

ruined, including her country. I mean, now

53:35

I think about it, that really is a dig also to Cleopatra

53:37

in Egypt, which damn it, Augustus.

53:40

Why you know, there's definitely a

53:42

through line here, not just in the Eniad,

53:44

but throughout so many you

53:46

know, ancient stories and myths and things from

53:49

all kinds of cultures that I've read, where it's like, women

53:51

choosing who they want to have sex with is

53:54

a real destabilizing force, Like you

53:56

don't want to let the woman choose. Destabilizing

53:58

is such a good word for that. Yeah, Like

54:01

it's just there's all these cautionary tales about

54:03

women choosing to marry someone

54:05

that they shouldn't marry, or choosing to sleep with someone

54:08

other than their husband, and not just causing the entire

54:10

society to collapse around everyone's ears.

54:13

You know, yeah, we'll look at it like when

54:16

Eneas is with Dido, much like when mark

54:18

Antony was with me and Patrick, he completely forgets

54:20

his duty to his people. He

54:23

forguess that he's supposed to found a country

54:25

and do all these great things because he's so enamored

54:28

and in love and enjoying the company this

54:30

beautiful queen. I mean, I don't

54:32

know how I didn't put this together sooner. But

54:34

also, yeah, fuck your customs,

54:37

huge, fuck you. But what I think is interesting

54:39

in the India too, is that you don't

54:42

actually get any descriptions of them

54:44

being in love, Like they

54:46

have sex in a cave and it's all, you

54:48

know, set up by Juno to

54:51

get them so called married, and then

54:53

it's like just zipping it past

54:55

and suddenly we're to believe that

54:57

they have this love story. But there

55:00

is no indication on how

55:02

much time they spent together, how much they

55:04

slept together after the cave, if

55:07

it was much at all, Like there really isn't

55:09

a lot. And I think that that and

55:11

whether or not this was intended, because this could just be

55:14

more of like an ancient thing versus a modern

55:16

thing, but it could very well have intended

55:18

to suggest even further that Dido

55:21

most of their relationship was in Dido's head,

55:24

you know, Like it's such a modern

55:26

way of doing it too, where it's like, no, the girl's just

55:28

crazy and love and the guy's like, what do you mean, Like we haven't

55:31

even been together that long or whatever. It's

55:33

just it feels like a modern trope like whoa, we

55:35

slept together one time, I didn't commit,

55:38

we didn't decide to be exclusive, Like

55:40

what, yeah, exactly.

55:43

It just feels so reminiscent of today. Augustus

55:45

is very aware that he's built this

55:48

empire, Like he's looking around at

55:50

his legacy and he's

55:52

realizing that he doesn't know

55:55

who's going to carry on that legacy for him.

55:58

So that legacy needs to be a document,

56:01

you know, an epic poem like the Enid,

56:04

to show everything that he's done, all

56:06

of this work of his life. And I feel

56:08

like that's also something to think about when

56:10

we when we talk about the Inenid. He

56:12

was at this place where he was so unsure

56:15

if there would even be another emperor, if there would

56:17

even be another first citizen. He didn't know m

56:21

This was kind of his his marble, edifice

56:23

and words. I suppose you could say, yeah.

56:26

And I guess what I always

56:28

find fascinating about the Innid is

56:30

that it's technically considered unfinished.

56:33

So Virgil was taking the patronage

56:35

of Augustus, and probably

56:38

he was like, you know, maybe publishing

56:40

bits and pieces of it to keep Augustus happy.

56:43

But there's a part of me that feels

56:45

very strongly that Virgil

56:48

knew his odyssey and he was pulling his

56:50

own Penelope. You know, this was

56:52

the tapestry that he was weaving that

56:54

he was unweaving again at night, so

56:57

that he never actually had to publish the entire

56:59

year. Because when Virgil died,

57:02

he said, oh, it's not published. Burn

57:04

it. I don't want anyone to see it. It's not done. And

57:06

of course Augustus is like, I paid for it, it's

57:09

done enough. Put it out there. You know,

57:11

Augustus was not a it was not necessarily

57:14

someone who was a lover of great literature who was like, maybe

57:16

we should get someone to finish it, note just get it out there.

57:19

And you know, there's a part

57:21

of me that's like, maybe Virgil never wanted

57:23

anyone to see this, but he also knew where his bread was

57:25

buttered and he had to write this story. Yeah,

57:28

that little aspect of it

57:30

is so interesting. Yeah, I

57:33

mean the whole thing is just fascinating. Like I

57:37

had to read the Ane at once in university

57:39

and got away with not reading it at all, and

57:41

then somehow I have the most ridiculous

57:43

prof the only one I ever like fully

57:45

didn't pay attention to, and I just remember nothing

57:48

about anything. But then, you

57:50

know, reading it this way and just knowing

57:52

what it is and what it was written for, it

57:54

has been so fascinating, just because

57:57

I see it so differently, and because of course I've read

57:59

the Iliot and the to See so recently, and all I read

58:01

is Greek mythology, and then all I read

58:03

is Avid too, and so to see the difference there

58:05

and the way AllVid likes to write, because the Metamorphoses

58:08

also wrote for Augustus, right,

58:11

But he was just like, nah, dude, like I'm just going

58:13

to rewrite Greek mythology and have everybody be all transformative,

58:16

and then like we'll tuck in the end. We'll

58:18

tuck it in. That. You know, Eneas was important

58:20

because the end of Metamorphoses, which I haven't

58:23

read, is all about Eneus and the Eneid,

58:25

and it was essentially his way of getting

58:27

around what Augustus wanted by but also

58:30

doing what he wanted was to, which was to rewrite

58:32

Greek mythology in like the

58:35

most beautiful way imaginable. And people on

58:37

the internet love to get other provid, but my god,

58:39

he was a king amongst men. I fucking love

58:41

all his works, and be honestly, I'm not so

58:44

sure that that isn't what Augustus wanted anyway.

58:46

Like what Augustus wanted and what a

58:48

lot of what the Romans did was they were assimilating

58:51

all these cultures and they knew

58:53

that there the Greek myths were

58:55

so canon, everyone knew the stories.

58:57

So by giving them Roman names and romanizing

59:00

them and having that beautiful language and storytelling,

59:03

you know, it was it was colonizing.

59:05

It was claiming that for their own and making a part of their

59:07

own, appropriating it. Yeah, appropriating,

59:09

that's what it does, what I want to say, And you know, I

59:12

think one of the things to remember is at

59:14

this time Augustus said, also, you

59:17

know, essentially taken over Egypt.

59:19

So all of that rich Egyptian mythology

59:21

and culture had already existed, and you have Egyptian

59:24

mythology and culture. You've got you know, Venetian,

59:27

You've got um Greek,

59:29

you've got Thracian. You've got all of these areas

59:32

that had their own rich stories and heroes,

59:35

and here's Augustus trying to put them all

59:37

into one empire. So what does he do. He

59:39

creates this refugee hero who's gone

59:42

to all these different places and had its adventures in all

59:44

these different places, and he winds up

59:46

in Rome. And why he's a good hero for

59:48

the Roman people is because he does his duty.

59:50

He listens to the gods, he worships them properly,

59:54

and you know, he's very much committed

59:56

to what's right over what might make him happy

59:59

or what's good for him personally or however

1:00:01

you want to explain that whatever he did with Dido,

1:00:03

Yeah, well that's what I mean. You

1:00:06

know, rather than staying with Dido

1:00:08

and you know, founding Carthage and having

1:00:10

a completely different story, He's

1:00:13

like, no, must journey on, must have hardships

1:00:15

and everything else until he

1:00:17

gets to Rome and eventually marries a woman much too

1:00:20

young for him. And another thing that we

1:00:22

could talk about, but I will let you guys discover

1:00:24

that story without me spoiling it. Oh.

1:00:27

Yes, I'm still getting through it. I have not read

1:00:30

the rest of the Enid. Oh. I had one

1:00:32

question that we moved on from this topic, but

1:00:34

I was really interested in what you thought about this live.

1:00:37

You were saying that there were a lot of parallels between what

1:00:39

Virgil was doing in the Inenid and what Homer

1:00:42

was doing in the Iliad and the Odyssey,

1:00:44

and I was wondering if he saw any parallels

1:00:47

between Dido's story and anything

1:00:49

that happened in either of those epics. I

1:00:51

don't think so, But I think

1:00:54

that that, again is exemplifies

1:00:57

what made what Virgil

1:01:00

was doing so different from what Homer

1:01:02

was doing, because Virgil's telling

1:01:05

of the story of Dido had a point,

1:01:07

It had a purpose that it was trying to convey,

1:01:10

whereas Homer's characters

1:01:13

and his women specifically didn't have a purpose.

1:01:15

They were just women of ancient Greece, which sadly

1:01:17

meant they didn't mean a whole lot, but

1:01:21

they none of their stories were out to

1:01:23

prove that Carthage deserved

1:01:26

to be destroyed, or or that,

1:01:28

you know, like all the different things that I think

1:01:30

that Augustus was trying to say

1:01:33

about Carthage and about the punic

1:01:35

wars in the IDID

1:01:37

wasn't necessary and Homer, because Homer

1:01:40

was simply telling an epic story about

1:01:42

epic people who they also,

1:01:44

you know, I think they kind

1:01:47

of believed that the characters

1:01:49

of the Iliad and the Odyssey existed, but they

1:01:52

also very much kept

1:01:54

them separate from the

1:01:56

more standard mythologies in terms

1:01:59

of what people believed was more accessible

1:02:01

to them in that time, like

1:02:04

the characters of the Ila and the Odyssey,

1:02:06

even to the ancient Greeks, as far as I understand,

1:02:08

it was more epic

1:02:11

than the people they they were now,

1:02:13

it was of an earlier time when heroes

1:02:15

were really heroes and and all

1:02:17

this, like they weren't. They wouldn't

1:02:20

have linked Odysseus

1:02:22

and theseus, you know, like they wouldn't

1:02:24

have as much as the Athenians like moved for Theseus,

1:02:26

like had such a hard on for him all the time.

1:02:30

Massive Toga, Bulge, Jesus Christ.

1:02:33

That's the Kinton bulge. Jenny,

1:02:35

You're right, You're right, wrong,

1:02:39

bulge. But yeah,

1:02:41

I think it's just that's the difference.

1:02:44

Even my referencing Athens and Theseus

1:02:46

is such a good example of that, like Athens

1:02:49

is not in the Iliad or

1:02:52

the Odyssey because they were written

1:02:54

before Athens was the major player in

1:02:57

the Hellenic world, you know, like

1:02:59

that's how old they are and how much

1:03:02

the Greeks overall consider

1:03:05

them to be sort of like above it all, like beyond

1:03:08

there the stories they had then because Theseus

1:03:10

was the hero of Athens, he was the Athenian

1:03:12

hero. Meanwhile, the elder in the Odyssey

1:03:14

were beyond Athens. They were pre Athens. They

1:03:16

were when Mycene and create

1:03:20

ruled the world, the people

1:03:22

that ruled everything, you know, Agammemone was the king

1:03:24

of Mycena. Meanwhile, when Athens was

1:03:26

ruling everything, Mycene wasn't really a thing.

1:03:29

You know. Even the playwrights would

1:03:31

rename it Argos and say

1:03:33

that all of that stuff happened in Argos instead

1:03:35

of my scene because of they were picking a

1:03:37

major player. And so I think that's

1:03:40

always so interesting and also shows

1:03:42

how important it is to note how long

1:03:45

ago Homer's writings come

1:03:47

from Versus something like the Anid

1:03:50

where Homer was before Athens

1:03:52

ruled the Mediterranean, and Anid was like

1:03:54

hundreds of years after Athens had ended,

1:03:57

well not hundreds, I shouldn't say that,

1:03:59

but you know, it was like Athens wasn't

1:04:01

the major player by the time that Virgil

1:04:04

was writing, and then so much

1:04:06

happened in between that it's

1:04:08

like they're just completely different things. But at the

1:04:10

same time, the Romans respected

1:04:13

Homer in a similar way to the way

1:04:15

the Greeks respected Homer, and so Virgil

1:04:18

wanted to call upon that respect and use

1:04:20

that respect in order to make

1:04:23

his story more important and more respectable

1:04:25

and more believable. Yeah,

1:04:28

he needed that. He essentially needed to

1:04:30

sort of borrow some of you know, Homers.

1:04:34

He needed that social courtesy. He needed

1:04:36

that that social proof of being

1:04:38

associated with not quite the Iliad,

1:04:40

but the Iliad slash Odyssey the

1:04:43

Odyssey, even more so in the way that the Aeniad

1:04:45

is called the Aeniad and the Odyssey is called the Odyssey,

1:04:47

like he even named it

1:04:50

in the same way, where

1:04:52

like, sure, the Iliot is named for Troy, so that's

1:04:54

a similar thing, but the Odyssey is named

1:04:56

for a man. It's it is

1:04:59

named for Odyssey. I mean, you

1:05:01

can tell how much home Or succeeded

1:05:04

where Virgil didn't in the way that we have a

1:05:06

word odyssey now, which literally means like

1:05:08

a treacherous journey, you know,

1:05:11

and whereas the enid thankfully is not a

1:05:13

word. But it's just it's

1:05:15

so obvious what he was trying to do, even even

1:05:17

in the naming structure of it, being like, this is

1:05:19

the story of a Nius. Yeah.

1:05:22

Well, and I think that's really important

1:05:24

because the odyssey

1:05:27

is a story about the epic

1:05:29

struggles that our Disseas goes through to get

1:05:31

home, and the Enia the

1:05:33

story is about the epic struggles that

1:05:36

a Eneas goes through in order to find

1:05:38

a new home after his home has been destroyed

1:05:40

by oh disease. Well,

1:05:43

I mean, you guys, if you don't have any other

1:05:46

fascinating anecdotes about Nias

1:05:49

or Dido, rather the more important one to bestow

1:05:52

upon us all Sido, Well,

1:05:56

thank you both, we do. I mean, she's

1:05:58

amazing, got honestly, and that's

1:06:00

why I wanted to even so long

1:06:02

ago that we decided to do this, But I wanted to discuss

1:06:05

Dido with you guys, because I just think

1:06:07

Ida is so interesting and it's one

1:06:09

of those things where there's only so much I can go

1:06:12

through when it's just me talking. So I love

1:06:14

that I have some people who are equally crazy

1:06:18

freaks and want to like have a

1:06:20

full discussion about Yes, yeah,

1:06:23

don't deny it. I mean I know us.

1:06:25

I would never too,

1:06:27

That's why I say it. God, we are

1:06:30

nerds about this shit like you.

1:06:32

So yes, oh my lord,

1:06:35

enormous, enormous nerds. Absolutely,

1:06:38

that intersection of mythology and history

1:06:40

is just my sweet spot. Oh well,

1:06:43

thank you too for coming

1:06:45

on this show today. You're all just I

1:06:48

mean, it's just so much fun, oh for sure. Yeah,

1:06:50

very exciting. Thank you so much for having us.

1:06:53

Yeah, thanks for having us. Oh

1:06:55

gosh, happy too. Where can

1:06:58

the entire world find you and listen to endless

1:07:00

amounts of your podcast you guys, So, we are

1:07:03

Ancient History Fangirl and you can find

1:07:05

us at Ancient history fangirl dot

1:07:07

com or Ancient his Fan on

1:07:09

Twitter, Ancient History Fangirl on Social

1:07:12

Instagram, Facebook, and Ancient

1:07:14

History Fangirl wherever you get your podcasts.

1:07:17

Yeah, and I'm at Jen McManamy and

1:07:20

you are I'm Jenny Williamson. Yeah,

1:07:23

we'd love to hear from you. We're all we're big

1:07:25

nerds. We love talking about this stuff. And thank

1:07:28

you so much love for having us. This has been wonderful

1:07:30

and anytime you need to round about the

1:07:33

yet, I'm here. Oh

1:07:37

yeah, you know you'll be back. Laura knows. I'm

1:07:39

going to keep at this for a while. I will bring you

1:07:41

guys back to discuss more propaganda

1:07:43

madness as we go through. Uh

1:07:47

oh my god, so down. Thank

1:07:50

you both so much. This has been so much

1:07:52

fun and everyone please go listen to their podcast.

1:08:07

Well, thank you all for listening to that special

1:08:09

episode. I am living. I love

1:08:12

this shit.