3-035-849 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The Death of Dido, about 1640. After piling a wooden effigy of her deceased husband in their matrimonial bed atop her own funeral pyre, Dido, the queen of Carthage, stabs herself with her lover Aeneas's sword. Virgil tells the story of her grief-stricken reaction to her abandonment by Aeneas, the hero of the Trojan war and future founder of Rome.