DIDO BY ADELE GERAS

After Troy and Ithaka Adele Geras came with another great re-telling of Greek mythology. In
Dido we could see those great figures like Dido, Aeneas and also those new figures who got
unfurled in the imaginary fields of the author. As usual the story is a merging path of
mythology and contemporary language. It is an emotive retelling of the story of Aeneas and
Queen Dido of Carthage. Having wooed Dido, he leaves her in order to fulfil his destiny - to
find the city of Rome. Adele Geras turns this simple outline into a story of love and loss
involving an entire city. The gods and goddesses of Ancient Greece and Rome play their
part, intervening as necessary to ensure that events progress as they should. Hermes, Hera,
Hades and Aphrodite casually appear and, after talking superciliously to mortals, confuse
their memory. It’s a delightful conceit, because it allows the reader to enjoy knowledge
denied to the protagonists; yet these gods feel for the human beings whose lives they have
wrecked, and weep for them, even if what they call a “drama” is an individual’s life. 

Dido founded the city of Carthage on her wits alone. Having escaped her husband's
murderer and fled her homeland with a fortune in treasure, she won enough land to build a
beautiful new city and made herself Queen. Elissa arrived at Dido's court at the age of
twelve, having run away from home and the prospect of marriage to a man she did not love.
Permitted to stay at court as a maidservant, Elissa has the Queen to thank for her
happiness. Several years later, when the handsome and heroic Aeneas arrives on
Carthage's shores, both Elissa and the Queen are drawn to him. Before long, Dido
announces that she and Aeneas are now man and wife. But Elissa can't help what she feels.

The way Adele Geras tells the story is apparently by using a modern technique of narration.
The story is told by 4 different narrators, Dido’s nursemaid Elissa, Dido's sister Anna, Poet
Iopas and kitchen boy Cubby.  Except Anna not any of the other narrators are familiar to
readers. But each one of these characters is related to Dido in Geras’s version. Elissa being
the protagonist of the story was a nursemaid to Dido and Aeneas’ son Ascanius. She fell in
love with Aeneas, and is carrying his offspring at the time of his departure. Anna is loyal to
her sister and is in love with court poet Iopas, and in the end she also is left heart broken, as
she finds about Iopas’ love for Elissa. Iopas, on the other hand is more vengeful after
knowing about Elissa’s pregnancy. He reports this to the dejected Dido, in order to see
Elissa suffer. Though Dido is spiteful at first, the queen in her decides to forgive Elissa and
she becomes more inclined to commit suicide. Cubby is moreover a distanced or detached
narrator, except the fact that he is witness to some important events like Dido’s fake
marriage and her suicide.

The novel is framed by the discovery that Aeneas and his ships are leaving, and by Dido’s
suicide, but Elissa is not only a witness to Dido’s agonised suffering, she is an unexpected
player, too. Her sensitivity to every shift in her mistress’s mood is matched by heartbreak of
her own. The story of how Dido tricked the chiefs of her new country — by asking for enough
land that could be bounded by the skin of an ox then cutting its hide into the finest ribbon —
Aeneas’s arrival, and how the Queen of Carthage and future founder of Rome were led
astray by a thunderstorm and Aphrodite is all backdrop. Elissa’s take on all this seems to be
that of a child who adores two quarrelling parents, but it becomes clear that something else
is afoot, and Aeneas emerges as even worse than he does in Virgil’s poem.

Dido’s character evokes sympathy, and the way Geras moves her provokes us to anticipate
a new turn in the mythological story; but past is past and mythology is mythology, so Dido
should die. And she does, but not as a pathetic woeful woman, instead as the Queen of
Carthage enough attractive, head held high, who asks Hades to kiss and take her soul away
in the funeral pyre. Fire is not burning her, how can it? She can be accounted as the fire
itself. Her suicide is the vengeance as well as the repentance to her late husband. The
pathetic and idiotic persons in the work are Elissa and Anna; both resemble the foolish girls
who are always in search of “love.” Even in the end too, Elissa is admiring Aeneas. And
sometimes one could feel the selfishness in her, when she forgets about Dido. Anna though
loyal to Dido in every phase, is love stricken. Aeneas, symbolize those sexual predators who
stalks around good looking girls, just like Paris in Troy. Cubby is omniscient and omnifarious,
he is witness to those secrets and relevant incidents, but he is just a kitchen boy who doesn’t
know anything to all those around. No one heeds him; he is almost invisible, though a part of
everything.

Adele Geras tells the story of Elissa, Aeneas and Queen Dido in flawless prose that is
somehow elegant, beautiful and simple all at the same time. Although the characters'
speech is flavoured with occasional unfamiliar phrases in keeping with the ancient era their
story unfolds in. Their needs, fears and desires are much the same as ours: these are
passionate, empathetic characters and it's this that brings the story so powerfully to life. Dido
is an interesting read, for those who is interested in this type of fusion works. But it may
enchant those who don’t have any knowledge on mythology too. Geras has efficiently
recreated Carthage through this mesmerising book.

Geras’s thesis is that people have not changed much. Her adolescent girls are just as
confused, passionate and misguided as the modern variety as they struggle out of childhood
into love and its revenges. In showing us what it might have felt like to be a princess reduced
to slavery, or a royal nursemaid such as Elissa, the author wins our sympathies, making the
remote past vividly interesting to a modern teenager. Geras’s ability to weave a touching
new tale in with the well-known one is unique to modern children’s authors; Dido is a shining
new jewel to her crown.