Dido et Aeneas is a Latin (bilingual Latin/English as a digital version) comic book based on mainly 4th book of Virgil’s Aeneis. The author presented the story of the characters using a comic she herself illustrated, with the text in the bubbles and the commentary written in Latin using phrases known to the reader from school class. The form of a comic makes the reading a lighter and better adapted to the young reader compared to the same original text as presented in a textbook in the form of classwork.

The story of Aeneas and Dido as told by Virgil and re-composed by Magda van Tilburg covers 55 pages. It begins with the famous mosaic from the Bardo National Museum depicting Virgil with one of the Muses, next to a map of places connected to the story; the poet is delivering the famous incipit Arma virumque cano, in which arma was changed to amor, since it is what the story of the comic revolves around. Having arrived at the Libyan shore, Aeneas and Achates meet Venus, who shows them the way to Carthage, just under construction. This is where Aeneas, by the gods’ will, experiences the delight of love and the bitterness of separation as they urge him to sail to Italy. Dido’s death as a consequence of her lover’s departure is depicted by the symbol of an extinguished candle with a trail of smoke. In the last scene Aeneas’ fleet reaches Cumae, the hero enters Sibyl’s cave and goes underground. The epilogue describes Aeneas’ meeting with Dido’s ghost in the Underworld, Dido ignores him and reunites with her deceased husband Sychaeus.

The text itself is only slightly modified so that it conveys a specific love story rather than Aeneas’ journey from Troy to Italy in 12 volumes. Because of those modifications, the storyline is cohesive as a story of two protagonists, but there is a certain trade-off - they cause the melody of the hexameter to be lost, which for some readers might also be an asset, as it might make translating the text easier. The text is composed in an approachable way and the translation provided on the side (the comic book’s author’s own English translation in the online version) allows the readers to verify the correctness of their own translation. Some more difficult terms are also explained in additional boxes.

The polished illustrations make the reading more interesting and help with understanding of the storyline and explaining the content. The drawings enliven the story with their suggestive colours, but at the same time they introduce the cultural background through the richness of details they depict (buildings, interiors, mosaics, friezes, furniture, vases or toiletries) or intertextual connotations they evoke (Virgil on page 3 refers to a mosaic from the Bardo National Museum, Jupiter on page 30 looks similar to Zeus of Otricoli (see below), Mercury on pages 30, 40 has the face of the statue of Hermes with Infant Dionysus by Praxiteles, Cumean Sibyl’s cave is depicted realistically, and Aeneas on page 13 is a synthesis of the Getty Kouros and the smiling Apollo of Veii). This intertextuality also concerns the reception of Antiquity - e.g. the scene from page 8 is only a slightly altered background of the painting Aeneas and Dido in Carthage by Claude Lorrain (see below), and the terrible Fama (Rumour) on page 28 also is present in the European culture - she appears in woodcut illustrations made for Renaissance editions of Aeneid, although on page 45 she refers rather to The Scream by Edvard Munch. Because of such use of recognised pieces of art in the comic, the reader is immersed in a wide range of the ancient culture’s influence, not only through the language. The comic can definitely enrich Latin classes, and bring Virgil’s legacy back to life.

Courtesy of the Author

The comic was featured at the exhibition Virgil across 2000 years at the British Museum, 09/1982 - 02/1983; analyzed and displayed by Prof. Suerbaum at the exhibition Vergil Visuell at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, 1998.