The Kalends of June, 766 BCE
To Aeneas the Trojan, King of Latium, visiting at the court of the Lord Tarchon of Caere in Etruria, greetings!
I hardly know how to write to you, my dear husband, since we are both probably illiterate. In fact even the Etruscans may not have figured out how to write yet. But I miss you very much, and I believe a love letter can be sent even if it can’t be written or read, so long as the love is strong enough. People are always making insuperable obstacles out of the most trivial things. After all, the fact that you fought in the Trojan War in the thirteenth century BCE and I live in Italy in the eighth, which seems to present a considerable obstacle to our union, made no difference at all. You crossed the centuries to come to me, and it only took you seven years. And, thanks to the oracle, my father chose you for his son-in-law before he even met you. You had to get poor Turnus out of the way first, but then we got married, and fell in love – the proper order of events, I think – and since then our happiness together has only grown.
You are a serious, conscientious man, my dear, and I know that even in happiness you worry about the past, accusing yourself of deep wrongdoing. You are also tender-hearted; you worry about me, because I’m so young and you fear to hurt me. I want to tell you something that might ease your mind somewhat. It is the kind of thing that is easier to bring up in a letter than face to face – which is why we really must learn to write.
I want to tell you that I know what happened in Africa.
Please don’t blame Achates for telling me about it. It was the green wine – he was a little drunk. He is such a dear! If he thought he’d been disloyal to you he’d be utterly miserable. You may blame me for listening, though, and you may blame me for wheedling more of the story out of your charming son Ascanius. He’s only too happy to go on and on about Queen Dido, and how pretty she was, and how nice she was to him, and how she let him ride the finest horses in her stable and go out on hunting parties with her, and even told him he could clamber around on the scaffolding of the buildings she was having built in Carthage – which you had strictly forbidden. ‘Oh, Dido was terrific,’ he says. ‘I wish we could have stayed there for ever!’ I know he finds Latium backward and boring. And of course he misses his real mother, and I’m not enough older than him to be much of a replacement.
But anyhow, through his chatter, and good Achates’ sympathetic maunderings, I gathered a good idea of what happened. And all I want to say about it is that it breaks my heart. That poor queen! Of course she loved you. She was crazy about you – any woman would be who had the chance. You’re not only a gallant, romantic figure, a king in exile driven by inexorable fate across the seas, you’re also a very nice man. And handsome. Really handsome. You take after your mother in looks, though not altogether, I am glad to say, in personality.
Dido must have seen you as the answer not only to her loneliness as a widow but to her need for a consort, a defender to keep the local kings from trying to annex her city by forcing her into their bed. You were godsent.
And how could you have resisted her? You’d been widowed too, you were lonely too. Your father had just died. All your people depended on you and looked to you for every decision. And you had this mandate laid on you to go to someplace called Italy and found a huge empire – and it wasn’t working out at all. After seven years you’d only got as far as Sicily, and now here you were shipwrecked back in eastern Africa. You were at a low point. And Dido was offering you a haven, a kingdom, her love, everything. Of course you took what she offered. What kind of man wouldn’t?
But the trouble was, you weren’t godsent. You were god-driven. And she couldn’t see that, she couldn’t accept it. What kind of woman would? She tried to keep you, to hold you back from where you had to go. But she couldn’t do it, because you weren’t just a romantic hero – you were a tragic one. And so she had to discover the same thing about herself. The hard way.
Oh, when I thought about it, I felt so sorry for you both. I didn’t cry when you left last week, Aeneas, you told me not to; but I cried that night after Achates went home.
I wonder, when you went to the Underworld, by the gateway in Cumae, did you meet either of your wives down there – Creusa, or Dido? Could you talk with them? I’d dearly like to know, but I dare not ask you. I only know you went there, and will not speak of what you saw.
If I should die before you – don’t laugh, I’m much younger than you but nobody knows when death may come – if I do, I’ll wait for you down there by the dark rivers, in the sunless woods. When you come I’ll hold out my hands to you and I’ll cry out in all the voice a shadow can have, here I am, come to me, my dear, my love!
But this is morbid. Forgive me. Let me tell you about the baby. Silvius thrives, suckles like a piglet, sleeps like a puppy. When I was sweeping the Vestal hearth and setting out the sacred meal this morning, he watched me and the fire for a long time, with such an attentive, intelligent look. You see, he’s pious, just like you! Seriously, the older he gets, the more certain I am that he’s going to look like you and be like you. Only perhaps he won’t have all the troubles you’ve had. What a good thought.
Come home soon so that we can make a girl baby.
Give my regards to Lord Tarchon. Be well, my dear husband. Come home soon, soon, soon!
Please excuse errors in writing.
Lavinia, Queen of Latium