The little we know of Sappho is, like the little remaining of her poetry, scant and fragmentary. She was arguably the greatest classical Greek lyrical poet, a lesbian of renown, and was alleged to have thrown herself from a cliff when a male lover left her.

Dearth of information about her, and its apparent inconsistency, hasn’t stopped a wealth of speculative writing, and her appearance in a great many paintings, few of which are consistent with her sexuality. Here I’ll consider one text, the fictional letter written for her by Ovid in his Heroines, and a selection of those paintings.

Born around 630 BCE into a wealthy family on the Greek island of Lesbos, legend has associated her romantically with two men: a contemporary poet, Alcaeus, and Phaon a local ferryman. Her own name and that of her island have been associated with her sexuality since the late nineteenth century, and Ovid makes it clear that her love of women was well-known among Romans in his time.

Since around 300 BCE, there has been a legend that tells of her love for Phaon the ferryman, who plied the waters between Lesbos and the Anatolian mainland. Almost certainly illiterate and hardly a good audience for Sappho’s verse, Phaon’s redeeming feature was apparently the gift of great physical beauty. He was given this one day when he carried Venus/Aphrodite in his boat; the goddess was travelling in disguise as an old woman, Phaon didn’t charge her for the crossing, so she returned the favour by transforming his physical appearance.

Ovid’s description of Sappho’s affair with Phaon leaves little to the imagination, even down to their lovemaking.

Among those who seem to have accepted the truth of this legend was Jacques-Louis David, in this painting of Sappho and Phaon from 1809. David was necessarily not as explicit as Ovid, showing the couple fawning over one another with their recently occupied bed behind them, and a post-orgasmic gaze on Sappho’s face. In case you haven’t got the message, Cupid holds her lyre, and two doves peck affectionately on the window sill.

A little deeper into Victorian prudery, Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Sappho (1881) shows Sappho resting on a lectern and staring intently at Alcaeus, who is playing a lyre. She’s supported by her ‘school of girls’, one of whom rests her arm on Sappho’s back. The artist’s hints at a lesbian interpretation are necessarily subtle: the marble benches bear the names of some of her female lovers.

Yet nearly twenty years earlier, Simeon Solomon was far more open in his watercolour of Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (1864). Sappho is shown on the right, her dark hair and complexion in accordance with Ovid’s description. Although Erinna, another woman poet of the time, might have joined Sappho in her community of young women on Lesbos, she is now thought to have lived on the island of Telos, and slightly later.

Solomon’s career was all but destroyed by his own sexuality: a brave pioneer of homosexual themes in his painting, he was arrested for homosexual offences in 1873, and was shunned thereafter.

Ovid’s fictional letter from Sappho to Phaon was written after the legendary ferryman moved to Sicily. It’s unusual among his Heroines for depicting a real, historical figure, albeit in this legendary story.

The letter can be read in at least two ways. It could, in spite of its multiple clear references to Sappho’s lesbian lifestyle, be just another male denial of female homosexuality. This seems unlikely for many reasons, not least of which is the gross implausibility of everything about the letter. This has led some to doubt that Ovid even wrote it, an issue that remains hotly debated. Ovid shows profound and progressive insights into human sexuality; if this letter was written by him, it comes over as an excellent debunking of the legend of Phaon, and a witty and irreverent commentary on the life and loves of another great poet.

The story of Sappho and Phaon has, however, stuck. Its climax, when the broken-hearted Sappho throws herself from the top of the Leucadian Cliff, became an extremely popular motif in nineteenth century painting.

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin paints a portrait of Sappho looking in sad reflection, her head resting on a symbolic lyre. There is little to indicate that she is on the top of cliffs, apart from the title, and no narrative references.

Théodore Chassériau’s watercolour of Sappho Leaping into the Sea from the Leucadian Promontory (c 1840) shows her clutching her lyre, her arms braced across her chest, as she steps off the edge of the cliff.

Sappho’s suicide became something of an obsession for Gustave Moreau, who painted her repeatedly between about 1870 and 1893.

Moreau’s Death of Sappho was probably in progress when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and wasn’t completed until after order was restored to Paris the following year. It shows the poet moments after she had thrown herself from the cliff, her body lying in peaceful repose, her lyre beside her, and a seagull in mourning. The contrast between the elaborate decoration of her body, clothing, and lyre and the stark rocks and gloomy sea and sky couldn’t be greater.

Sappho (1871-72) was his second painting of her, this time a richly-detailed watercolour. Here she is swooning over her lover shortly before flinging herself to her doom. Her lyre is slung over her shoulder, and to emphasise her status as a great poet, Apollo’s gryphon is shown on a column behind her. Her elaborately decorated clothing and pose were taken from a Japanese woodcut, Genji taking the air in summer on the Sumida by Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III), that Moreau had bought in Paris.

Moreau returned to his consideration of Sappho’s suicide in this watercolour of Sappho at the Leucadian Cliff (c 1885), showing her clinging to her lyre as she falls to her death on the rocks below. This is lit by one of Moreau’s saturnine suns.

In Moreau’s late oil painting of Sappho from about 1893, she is seen stepping off the cliff, with the sun setting behind her.

During this period, those influenced by Moreau also painted the poet. Jules-Élie Delaunay’s undated Sappho Embracing her Lyre shows her at the top of the cliff holding her lyre close, as if it were her lover.

Ary Renan painted Sappho at least twice. The first from 1893 appears influenced by Moreau’s paintings. Sappho reclines underwater amid a fantastic and deep layer of vegetation, her lyre some distance from her head, at the right edge.

Renan’s later painting shows her just as she has stepped off the top of the cliff, and is about to plunge to her death. She holds her lyre aloft in her left hand, as a surprised seagull flies past.

Ovid’s letter, written two millennia ago, shows wittily how absurd the legend of Sappho and Phaon is. Yet so many artists since have continued to depict it in paint, perpetuating its naïve denial.

Ovid ends Book 7 of his Metamorphoses with one of his best stories. It’s told by Cephalus, the envoy from Athens, to the sons of King Aeacus on the island of Aegina, following the king’s account of the Myrmidons.

Having told Cephalus of the plague and the Myrmidons that followed it, King Aeacus falls asleep, so his son Phocus takes Cephalus and his companions to their accommodation. There Phocus notices the unusual javelin carried by Cephalus, with its gold tip on a shaft of wood that he cannot identify. This leads Cephalus to tell him that the javelin killed his wife, and so to explain the circumstances.

Within two months of his marriage to the beautiful Procris, when he was laying nets to catch a deer at dawn, Aurora saw Cephalus and tried to abduct him (she has a track record of affairs with humans). Cephalus protested and told Aurora of his love for his wife, so she let him go, warning him that if she saw him again, he would regret ever marrying Procris.

Nicolas Poussin’s Cephalus and Aurora (1630) shows the dawn scene of Cephalus trying to avoid the obviously amorous intentions of the goddess Aurora, who is seated and nearly naked. Behind Cephalus is the winged horse drawing the chariot of the dawn. A winged putto is holding up an image for him to view, presumably showing Procris, to help his resolve. At the left is a river god. Beyond the horse is another deity bearing a coronet: although difficult to see, that might be Diana, given her association with hunting and her role in this myth.

Peter Paul Rubens’ oil sketch of Aurora Abducting Cephalus was probably made in 1636-37, late in Rubens’ life, for his workshop to complete as a painting for King Philip IV of Spain’s hunting lodge at Torre de la Parada, near Madrid. In addition to showing the willing Aurora trying to persuade the reluctant Cephalus to join her in her chariot, it includes some details at odds with Ovid’s story: Diana’s hunting dog and javelin, which Procris gave to her husband after their reconciliation, later in the story. Here they may be intended as attributes to confirm his identity.

Over the following couple of centuries, there was a steady stream of paintings showing the abduction of Cephalus, but to my eye the next major work using this theme was Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s romantic Aurora and Cephalus (1810). Instead of a substantial chariot, the seductive figure of Aurora is bearing a sleeping Cephalus aloft on a bed of cloud, as dawn breaks over the mountains below.

Forty years later, Pierre Claude François Delorme uses a similar motif recomposed into his Cephalus Carried off by Aurora (c 1851). This features ingeniously interlocking arms and embraces: Aurora cradles Cephalus’ shoulder and chest, Cephalus reaches out to Cupid, and Cupid back to Cephalus.

As he went back to his wife, Cephalus started to worry whether his wife had been unfaithful to him. He became aware that Aurora had changed his appearance, and entered the city of Athens unrecognised. When he got home, his household and wife didn’t recognise him either, so Cephalus put Procris to the test: with his wife still thinking him a stranger, he offered her great riches to spend a night with him, and managed to get her to waver with uncertainty.

He then revealed himself to be her husband, and accused her of being unfaithful. She said not a word, but fled to the mountains, where she joined the followers of Diana.

Cephalus yearned for his wife, so begged her forgiveness, and admitted that he too would have given way when made such an irresistible offer. Procris returned to him, and the couple lived happily again together. She brought back with her gifts from Diana: a hunting dog who outran all other dogs, and that unusual javelin.

Then the city of Thebes was once again put into difficulty, after Oedipus had broken the siege imposed by the Sphinx. This time the problem took the form of a wild beast that ate all its livestock. All the younger men, including Cephalus, went to hunt the beast, but it eluded them and their dogs. Cephalus then unleashed Diana’s hound to chase the beast. The dog caught it, but it broke free again. Cephalus prepared to throw his javelin, then noticed that his dog and the beast had suddenly been transformed into marble statues.

Cephalus returned to his now blissfully happy marriage with Procris. He went hunting alone at dawn, always feeling safe with his javelin. As the heat of the day came on, he would call on an imaginary zephyr of the cool breeze, talking to it as if it was a real nymph. One day he must have been overheard, and word was taken back to Procris that he was meeting a woman when he was supposed to be hunting. His wife was shocked, but refused to accept the story without herself witnessing her husband’s deceit.

The following morning, Cephalus was out hunting at dawn again, and when he grew hot, he rested and spoke to his imaginary zephyr as usual. He thought that he heard a sound nearby, which he suspected was an animal. He turned and threw his javelin at that noise.

He next heard his wife’s voice, rushed towards it, and found her mortally wounded, with his javelin buried deep in her chest. He took her up into his arms and tried in vain to stop blood from pouring from the wound. Knowing that she was dying, Procris implored him not to take the zephyr as his wife. He then realised the fatal misunderstanding, that Procris believed that he had been unfaithful. As Procris died in his arms, Cephalus tried to explain to her that the zephyr was only imaginary, and that seemed to bring her some comfort in her last moments.

In the foreground of Paolo Veronese’s account from about 1580, Procris has fallen, the javelin embedded in her upper abdomen, and her life is fading fast. Cephalus isn’t embracing her, though, merely holding her hand as he tries to plead his innocence. Veronese leaves us with two small puzzles too. The first is the large hunting hound behind Cephalus’ right shoulder, remembering that Diana’s dog was turned into stone while hunting the beast of Thebes. More puzzling is another figure, and a second dog, in the distance, at the left edge of the painting. These might represent the first part of the scene, before Cephalus throws his javelin, in multiplex narrative.

Peter Paul Rubens offers another oil sketch, of Cephalus and Procris (1636-37), showing the couple just before Cephalus throws the fateful javelin, which rests at his side.

There is another painting that has been claimed to show The Death of Procris, but which is more accurately titled A Satyr Mourning over a Nymph, made by Piero di Cosimo in about 1495.

A brilliant painting, it uses the full width of a panoramic panel to show a satyr with his goat legs and distinctive ears, ministering to a dying or dead nymph, who has a severe wound in her throat. At her feet is a hunting dog, with another three in the distance. But there’s no reason to show Cephalus as a satyr; Procris was impaled in the chest by the javelin; Procris was behind cover, where she was spying on Cephalus, not out in the open; and Cephalus had only one hound, a gift from Diana, which had in any case already been turned to marble. It’s a superb painting of a different story.

Ovid ends the book with Cephalus and his audience in tears, as Aeacus arrives with his other two sons and the army which they have been raising to counter the forces of Minos, setting the scene for the start of the next book.

Hermione has appeared as a character in a long succession of plays and operas, among them William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, where she is the virtuous and beautiful Queen of Sicily. The latter was the inspiration for the name of the character Hermione Granger in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. Played by Emma Watson in the movies made from those books, Hermione has returned to fame, although few of us can recall who the original Hermione was.

She was the daughter of Menelaus, King of Sparta, and Helen (later of Troy) who was left in the care of his predecessor Tyndareus. She was first agreed to be married to Orestes, but was then given to Pyrrhus, who had already taken Andromache as concubine. She then eloped with Orestes, who later married Erigone, his mother Clytemnestra’s daughter. Perhaps I had better explain a little more slowly.

Helen, ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’, was conceived by Leda, who was the wife of the King of Sparta, Tyndareus, when Jupiter seduced her in the form of a swan. When she grew up, Helen married Menelaus, who succeeded her father as the King of Sparta, and the couple had a daughter named Hermione. Following the Judgment of Paris, Paris made off with Helen from Sparta, and took her back to Troy: an action that precipitated the war between Greece and its allies, and Troy.

With Helen already in Troy, Hermione’s father Menelaus left Sparta for the war against Troy, leaving their daughter in the care of Helen’s father, Tyndareus. He agreed for Hermione to marry Orestes, who was her cousin, being the son of Agamemnon, Menelaus’ brother. It seems likely that by the end of the Trojan War, Hermione and Orestes were living together as a couple.

While Menelaus was away fighting against Troy, he agreed that his daughter Hermione should marry Pyrrhus, who was also known as Neoptolemos, and was the son of the great Greek warrior Achilles (killed by Paris towards the end of the war). When Menelaus and Pyrrhus returned from the war, Menelaus implemented that marriage by taking Hermione away from Orestes, and giving her to Pyrrhus.

However, Pyrrhus hadn’t returned alone from Troy; he had brought with him a concubine, Andromache, who had been the wife of Hector and mother of Astyanax. Achilles had killed Hector in the war, and Pyrrhus had probably thrown young Astyanax to his death from the walls of Troy during its sacking.

The arrival of Andromache and the enforced marriage to Pyrrhus were understandably very distressing to Hermione, who quickly developed a dislike of Andromache, which was mutual. Hermione accused Andromache of using sorcery to prevent her from conceiving a child by Pyrrhus, which might have strengthened her position, in return for which Andromache taunted Hermione for remaining childless. As a result, Hermione started to plot the murder of her bitter rival Andromache.

Orestes visited Hermione, and the couple seized the opportunity to elope. Orestes then started to plot the murder of Pyrrhus, which would release Hermione from her enforced marriage. Although some accounts claim that it was Orestes who killed Pyrrhus, others claim that he was killed when he visited the oracle at Delphi, because he desecrated the temple there; either way, Pyrrhus was dead and Hermione was then free to marry Orestes.

Orestes’ father, Agamemnon, the brother of Menelaus, had commanded the Greek forces during the Trojan War. When he returned to his kingdom of Mycenae, he found that his wife, Clytemnestra, who was Helen’s (half-)sister, had made Aegisthus (who was Agamemnon’s cousin) her lover. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus then plotted the murder of Agamemnon, and although there’s disagreement about which of them actually did the deed, the hero Agamemnon was then killed, and Aegisthus and Clytemnestra ruled Mycenae.

Back in Sparta, Orestes and Hermione had a son, Tisamenos. Eventually, after Aegisthus and Clytemnestra had had children of their own, Orestes returned to Mycenae, where he murdered Clytemnestra (his mother), Aegisthus, and their daughter (confusingly named Helen), in vengeance for the death of his father. Orestes returned to Sparta, and Hermione disappeared, presumably dead. When Aletes, the surviving son of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, came of age, Orestes returned to Mycenae, killed Aletes (his half-brother), married Erigone, his half-sister, and assumed the throne.

For his matricide, an unusual crime even for the murderous mythical Greeks, Orestes was pursued by the Furies, and driven mad.

Hermione’s part in all this may seem minor, but she suffered a raw deal when she was forcibly taken from Orestes and given to Pyrrhus, who already had a concubine. Real history has also done her a disservice: Sophocles’ play Hermione has been lost, but Euripides’ play Andromache survived, and has spawned operas and plays, including Racine’s tragedy Andromaque (1667), which has remained fairly popular.

The one account sympathetic to Hermione’s plight is letter 8 of Ovid’s Heroines. This fictional letter in Latin verse is a plea by Hermione to Orestes, written when Hermione is in her enforced marriage to Pyrrhus, while Andromache is his concubine. Of Ovid’s fictional letters, it is one of the few whose pleading is satisfied, and Hermione is thus one of the few such heroines who achieves the happiness she craves.

This fresco from Pompeii shows a scene from Euripides’ play Andromache, in which Pyrrhus is about to be murdered by Orestes, with Hermione in attendance. Pyrrhus part-kneels on the altar of Apollo at Delphi, in the centre, as Orestes, on the right, is about to kill him with the sword held in his right hand.

There don’t appear to have been any further paintings of Hermione until about 1800, when two great French history painters tackled this labyrinthine story.

In Girodet’s ink and chalk drawing of The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione (c 1800), Hermione is seen at the right, her arms folded, looking coy as Orestes approaches her. The second woman, with Orestes, is presumably Hermione’s maid.

This drawing is one of a series of illustrations made by Girodet to accompany Racine’s play, and has subtleties that you might expect from a great narrative artist. Visible in the gap between the figures is a table-leg in the form not of a Fury (which might have foretold Orestes’ fate), but of a siren, implying that Hermione is luring Orestes to her.

Hermione, for all her apparent coyness, has let the right shoulder-strap of her robe slip, in her enticement of Orestes. She has assumed the role of femme fatale, as portrayed by Euripides and Racine.

Just a decade later, Pierre-Narcisse Guérin made two paintings exploring this story. In Andromache and Pyrrhus (1810), the central figures of Pyrrhus, seated on the throne, and Andromache, kneeling at his side and clutching her young son, are in conflict with two other women. It’s most likely that the figure at the right is Hermione, who is being displaced from her enforced role as Pyrrhus’ wife by Andromache.

The child is almost certainly Astyanax. Although some accounts report that Pyrrhus threw the boy to his death from the walls of Troy, others, including Euripides, claim that Astyanax survived the sack of Troy, and accompanied his mother when she was taken as Pyrrhus’ concubine. When Hermione plotted the murder of Andromache, she included the killing of Astyanax.

Guérin’s Orestes Announces the Death of Pyrrhus to Hermione (c 1810) shows a scene described later in Euripides’ and Racine’s plays, in which Orestes has just murdered Pyrrhus at Delphi, and here tells Hermione of that death, by flourishing the sword that he used. Hermione is shocked, as is her maid standing behind her.

Guérin painted at least three other stories that form the basis of letters in Heroines: Phaedra and Hippolytus (1802), Dido and Aeneas (c 1815), and Sappho (date not known). In this case he chose not to follow Ovid’s heroine, but Euripides.

It seems to have taken around three millennia and a modern novelist to have got the better deal that poor Hermione deserved.

For the last couple of millennia, the extra-marital affair of Dido Queen of Carthage and Aeneas, Trojan refugee and patriarch of the Roman Empire, must have been among the most famous. First told in explicit detail in Virgil’s epic Aeneid, it has inspired at least a dozen operas, is referred to in seven of Shakespeare’s plays, and even pops up in two of the Civilization games.

Its outline is simple, and a prototype for uncountable literary works: girl meets boy on a mission; boy cannot deviate from mission; boy leaves girl; girl dies heartbroken. Ovid’s summary in his Metamorphoses is a little longer than that, and far more eloquent and poetic. Ovid also wrote a second and fuller account in his collection of fictional letters by famous women, Heroines, and it’s that examined here.

Dido and her brother Pygmalion (not the better-known Pygmalion who fell in love with his statue) were of royal blood, probably being the children and heirs of the King of Tyre. Dido married Sychaeus, but Pygmalion wanted their riches too, so had her husband murdered when he was at the altar in their own home.

Dido took her riches and fled to North Africa, seeking sanctuary on a plot of land she acquired from the Berber king Iarbas, whom she rejected as a suitor. He gave her as much land as could be encompassed by an oxhide, so Dido ingeniously cut the oxhide up into thin strips, which she fastened end-to-end to enable her to circumscribe an entire hill.

There, Dido built the city of Carthage, into which she drew those who had fled with her, local Berbers and many others. The city grew to be wealthy and powerful, as she remained its queen.

JMW Turner depicts this in one of his works inspired by Claude Lorrain: Dido building Carthage, or The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire (1815). Dido is on the left bank, dressed in blue, and opposite her is the monumental tomb of her husband Sychaeus.

Although a simple reading of this painting follows its title, it could equally show Aeneas as the man to the left of Dido, in which case the masts behind them would be those of Aeneas’ ships, and the painting would show their first meeting.

Aeneas was a refugee from the city of Troy, who had fled the city with his father Anchises, wife Creusa, and son Ascanius, as the city was burning and being sacked by the Greeks. Together with other refugees, Aeneas, his father and son had sailed away, then undertook a protracted journey across the Mediterranean in search of his destiny.

Pompeo Batoni’s Aeneas Fleeing from Troy (1753) shows the family as they leave the burning city behind them. Creusa is starting to fall slightly behind, and becoming distressed.

Aeneas’ mother was Venus, making him Cupid’s brother. Also interested in Aeneas was Juno, the senior goddess, who wanted to thwart his reaching Italy, and her husband Jupiter, who wanted Aeneas to reach his destination, where his descendants Romulus and Remus would ultimately found Rome. When Aeneas and his men left the island of Sicily heading north towards the Italian mainland, Juno intervened by bringing a northerly gale driving them south to the coast of North Africa, and the city of Carthage.

Once ashore in Carthage, Aeneas met Dido, as shown in Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s Aeneas tells Dido the misfortunes of the City of Troy, painted in about 1815. He told her the story of his escape from the ruins of Troy, and of his guilty secret: his wife Creusa had become separated from the rest of the family. Aeneas claimed that he had gone back to look for her, and she then appeared to him in ghostly form, telling him to leave without her, which he did.

It’s Paul Cézanne, in his watercolour sketch of Aeneas Meeting Dido at Carthage, painted in about 1875, who expresses this situation most clearly. Queen Dido is at the left, surrounded by her court. The warrior figure of Aeneas stands to the right of centre, and to the right of him is the shrouded spectre of Creusa.

Dido had sworn to her late husband that she would love no other, but as she and Aeneas got to know one another, both Juno and Venus (through her other son, Cupid) conspired to develop that into love. Venus wanted Dido to provide her son with a safe haven, and Juno wanted to halt his progress. This came to a head when the couple went out with a hunting party, and took shelter in a cave from a torrential rainstorm, brought by Juno. Both Virgil and Ovid make it explicit that they made love in that cave.

As so often happens, Dido and Aeneas made love under different assumptions. For Dido, given her commitment to her husband, she consented on the basis that this was also the act of union in marriage. For Aeneas, who had made no such commitment to his wife, who had disappeared in dubious circumstances anyway, there was no such agreement, and he remained free to pursue his destiny.

The next external influence on the couple’s relationship then came into play: Jupiter, wanting to chivvy Aeneas on his journey to start the founding of Rome and to appease Dido’s rejected suitor, sent Mercury his messenger to tell Aeneas that he must not delay with Dido, but must prepare to sail, leaving her behind. In complete secrecy, Aeneas instructed his crew to get their ship ready to resume its journey. He then went to Dido to break the news to her, only to find that she already knew of his intention to desert her and abandon her just as he had previously abandoned Creusa.

Pompeo Batoni’s painting of Dido and Aeneas (1747) draws on ambiguity in an ingenious way. It could be read as showing the couple after their lovemaking in the cave, with Dido still partly undressed, and Aeneas adjusting his clothes.

However, the presence of Aeneas’ ship in the left background implies that this is the moment that Aeneas has returned to break the news to Dido that he must sail shortly. Behind the couple is Dido’s sister Anna. In Virgil’s account, she goes to Aeneas to plead Dido’s case before the queen’s suicide; in Ovid’s version in his Heroines, Anna takes Aeneas the letter written for her by Ovid.

Dido’s letter, as supposed by Ovid, is a tour de force, and truly elegiac. It expresses her side of the story and her view of their relationship brilliantly. She points out that she could well be pregnant with a brother for Aeneas’ son Ascanius. She appeals to the emotions in a calculating and crafted way. And most of all, she raises questions about Aeneas’ abandonment of Creusa, which should have had greatest impact on his heart. No matter what Mercury might say, how could Aeneas abandon a second wife too?

But Mercury intervened again, and Aeneas was driven to sail immediately. When Dido saw this, her only option was to fall on her sword, taking her own life.

Here I show two of the most vivid paintings of the climax of this story. In Joseph Stallaert’s The Death of Dido (1872), the queen has fallen on the sword given by Aeneas, and now lies dying on the couch on which the couple had previously made love, pointing at his ship leaving harbour by the light of the early dawn.

Resting her hand on Dido’s chest wound, her sister Anna comforts the queen in her dying moments, as the queen’s nurse and a maidservant are in attendance. There’s no sign of a funeral pyre, but suggestive smoke is made by the small altar at the extreme left.

Henry Fuseli’s Dido (1781) has mounted her funeral pyre, and is on the couch on which she and Aeneas made love. She then fell on the sword which Aeneas had given her, and that rests, covered with her blood, beside her, its tip pointing up towards her right breast.

Her sister Anna rushes in to embrace her during her dying moments, and Jupiter sends Iris (shown above, wielding a golden sickle) to release Dido’s spirit from her body. Already smoke seems to be rising up from the pyre, confirming to Aeneas that she has killed herself, as he heads towards the horizon, and history moves to the founding of Rome.

Was it Dido? Aeneas? Or the pair of them? Ovid implies, but dares not state, that it was all down to the play of the gods. Given the conflicting interests of Venus, Juno, and Jupiter, their relationship was surely doomed from the start.