VIRGIL: Dux et femina

[Rosemary Grayston]

I've just been in a discussion of the ever prickly question of how far we 
should inculpate or find fault with Dido.  The point was made that Dido is 
introduced as dux femina facti, someone who combines femininity with decisive 
leadership, and the claim was made that this combination is presented as 
unsustainable and that Dido's underlying culpa lies in her attempt to sustain 
it. The speech in which she inculpates herself to some degree  - infelix Dido, 
nunc te facta impia tangunt?  Tum decuit, cum sceptra dabas - was cited.  Just 
to say that though the problem of femina/dux is undeniably an issue in Book IV, 
and an issue related to the painful question of Cleopatra, I don't think that 
this passage gives any support to the overall interpretation that I've 
mentioned.  Even if the facta impia are her own - and some say that they are 
Aeneas' misdeeds, not hers - I don't think that the words can be made to say 
that she should have kept out of politics or been readier to submit to a 
dominant male.  It's not 'it would have become you to be sensitive to the evil 
of those deeds before you thought of taking power' but 'while you were wielding 
power', which is rather different.  The actual implication is not that a Femina 
can never be a Dux as that a Femina could indeed lead effectively if she could 
being knocked off moral balance by passion: and this sort of proposition surely 
applies to a Vir as much as to a Femina.  One could say that in V's view every 
woman has a passionate bullet with her name on it, but this idea is rather 
subverted in V's text by the fact that Venus the huntress gets a clear shot at 
Dido only by taking very special measures.