Dido the Author: Epigram and the Aeneid

Professor Tueller employs epigram as a lens through which to view Aeneas’s underworld encounter with Dido in Aeneid 6. In comparison to the epic or tragic paradigms often favored by commentators, epigram allows us to hear Dido’s voice more clearly—it lends meaning to her silent response to Aeneas, and supplies a medium by which she can challenge the authority of Vergil in later antiquity.