Abstract

In his vigorous analysis of Dido's soliloquy J. Henry confronts the problem of line 543: ‘How comes it that, having just decided that she will not go with the Trojans, that they would not even receive her if she went, she so immediately inquires shall she go with them, alone or accompanied?’ He suggests that the words introduce ‘a new category of objections’; hitherto the issue has been between herself and the Trojans, but now she reflects that the Trojans are not the only people she has to deal with. To go alone is but to run away from her own people, and she cannot in the circumstances of their recent arrival at Carthage ask them to sail with her. ‘Even more impossible to leave Carthage than to go with Aeneas.’