Teaching Dido: Critical Perspectives on Aeneid 4

Abstract

A companion to Virgil, Aeneid 4, with Study Questions, Vocabulary, and Commentary (https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0527) (OBP 2026), Teaching Dido includes five essays that explore aspects of Virgil’s poetry in a student-friendly way. They range from issues in poetics (verse design, allusion) to key themes (‘historiographical Dido’, religion, pietās). Six reprinted scholarly articles follow, allowing students and their teachers to engage directly with some of the research that informs the essays and the commentary and to broaden their appreciation of Dido, the Aeneid, Virgil, and the wider historical context. Topics covered include the ethics of hospitality, the interface of intertextuality and psychology in the construction of character, Carthage and Rome as imperial powers, racecraft in Aeneid 4, Virgil’s authorial self-fashioning and negotiation of the Augustan new normal, the myth of Troy in Rome’s cultural imaginary, and Dido’s place within Virgil’s philosophy of history.