... to build another city in Italy where another wife awaits him and Mercury reminds him of this when the messenger God comes to tell him to leave. Unfortunately Dido hears of his planned departure by cruel Rumour before he can tell her himself and she is desolate. When he refuses to stay she makes an elaborate plan to commit suicide and at the end of book we see the smoke coming off the funeral pyre Dido built for herself, where she lay dead from the sword wound she gave herself. The blame could quite easily be placed onto Aeneas' shoulders and then have been done with, as many modern readers would do. However it is clear this is not what the writer of this master epic, Virgil, wants us to do. Virgil spends too long building up Aeneas's character for example for his demonstration of loyalty in Book II where ...

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