Īeneas comes to her court a suppliant, impoverished and momentarily timid. When Aeneas arrives on her shores, Carthage is a vast construction site threaded with paths, its half-finished walls fringed with cranes and scaffolds, and hemmed with great white stones waiting to be lifted into place. The neighboring kings understandably resent how this is working out. If she continues to play her cards well, the city she founds here will come to rule the seas, the world. They cannot reclaim it except through marriage, so she plays the Faithful Widow card, and now they cannot force her into marriage, either. Rather than fight for a foothold on the Libyan shore, she uses trickery to win land from the neighboring kings. She also was forced from her land, but she avenged her father first, then stole her brother’s ships and left with much wealth and a loyal, hard-eyed army. No gods have driven her, or if they have, she has beaten them at their own game. His mother-Venus another fucking god-guides him to shelter.ĭido is Reynard she is Coyote. Aeneas huddles his few followers onto ships and flees, but Juno harries him and sends at last a storm to rip apart his fleet. His city Troy falls to their squabbling, the golden stones dark with blood dried to sticky dust and clustered with flies: collateral damage, like a dog accidentally kicked to death in a brawl. I can write about it if I am careful, if I keep it far enough away.ĭido’s a smart woman and she should have predicted his betrayal, as Aeneas has always been driven before the gusting winds that are the gods. You fall against a railing: The rusted iron slices through your femoral artery. You awaken in a fire: The door and window are outlined in flames. An airlock blows: Vacuum pulls you apart by the eyes, the pores, the lungs. The ice breaks beneath your feet: Your coat and boots fill with water and pull you down. The pain of losing something so precious that you did not think you could live without it. The Aeneid. Letter 7 of Ovid’s Heroides. Lines 143–382 of The House of Fame. Lines 924–1367 of The Legend of Good Women. A play by Marlowe. It has to start somewhere, and it might as well be here. Something hidden is revealed to the protagonist, or to the reader. The protagonist has a problem and solves it, or doesn’t.
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