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How does Dido's reaction to abandonment in Virgil's Aeneid compare to Medea's in Euripides's Medea?
Quick answer:
Dido and Medea, both abandoned by heroes, react with intense emotions in their respective stories. Dido, who risked her kingdom for Aeneas, becomes distraught, curses him, and ultimately commits suicide. Medea, having betrayed her family for Jason, channels her anger into revenge, killing Jason's new fiancée and her own children. While Dido's grief overwhelms her anger, Medea's anger dominates her actions, highlighting different emotional responses to betrayal.
Both Medea in Euripides’s play Medea and Dido in Virgil’s
Aeneid are women abandoned by heroes. In both cases, the women helped
the heroes and were repaid by being abandoned. Medea killed her brothers and
permanently alienated her family to help and follow Jason. Dido risked her
position in her kingdom to help Aeneas.
Both women, it could be argued, went insane. In Dido’s case, she became
distraught, cursed Aeneas, and killed herself. In Medea’s case, the anger
turned exclusively on Jason and she killed Jason’s new fiancée and her own
children to harm Jason. In Dido’s cade, grief accompanied and overwhelmed
anger; in Medea’s case, anger overwhelmed all other emotions.
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