Augustine weeps for Dido, Virgil's Dido
Augustine confesses weeping over Dido's death for love of Aeneas while shedding no tears for his own state; Virgil's Book 4 passage beside it is Dido ordering the funeral pyre on which she will die. Augustine names the figures, not a line of Virgil.
Passages side by side
“21. For what can be more wretched than the wretch who pities not himself shedding tears over the death of Dido for love of Æneas, but shedding no tears over his own death in not loving You, O God, light of my heart, and bread of the inner mouth of my soul, and the power that weddest my mind with my innermost thoughts? I did not love You, and committed fornication against You; and those around me thus sinning cried, Well done! Well done! For the friendship of this world is fornication against You; James 4:4 and Well done! Well done! is cried until one feels ashamed not to be such a man. And for this I shed no tears, though I wept for Dido, who sought death at the sword's point, myself the while seeking the lowest of Your creatures — having forsaken You — earth tending to the earth; and if forbidden to read these things, how grieved would I feel that I was not permitted to read what grieved me. This sort of madness is considered a more honourable and more fruitful learning than that by which I learned to read and write.”
“of sorcery. Depart in secret, thou, and bid them build a lofty funeral pyre inside our palalce-wall, and heap thereon the hero's arms, which that blasphemer hung within my chamber; every relic bring,”