Who She Is
Anna is the sister and confidante of Dido in Carthage. She appears only in Book IV of the Aeneid, but there in three moments that decide the tragedy: she is the first to whom Dido confesses her passion for Aeneas, the one who persuades her to yield to love, and the one who, without knowing it, helps build the pyre on which her sister dies. What she wants is her sister's good, in her practical way: to see the queen supported, the city secure, and the pain of widowhood put to rest. Her role in the poem is that of a counselor in good faith, whose advice serves the interest of the city and misjudges the cost to Dido, and who pays for it with deception and grief.
Trajectory
In Book IV, Dido does not sleep after hearing Aeneas's narrative and, in the morning, confesses to her sister what she feels: he is the first to shake her oath of fidelity to Sychaeus, her dead husband, and she recognizes in this the traces of the old flame. Dido swears, in the same speech, that she would rather be swallowed up by the earth than violate her modesty.
Anna (fatebor enim), miseri post fata Sichaei / Conjugis, et sparsos fraterna caede Penates, / Solus hic inflexit sensus, animusque labantem / Impulit: agnosco veteris vestigia flammae, Anna, I will confess it: after the fate of the unhappy Sychaeus, my husband, and of the Penates scattered by my brother's murder, only this man has stirred my feelings and pushed my wavering spirit: I recognize the signs of the old flame.
Anna undoes the oath with practical arguments, and it is in this speech that her reasoning lies. A widow without children, Dido does not console her husband's ashes with solitude; the neighboring kings she refused, such as Iarbas, and the hostile tribes of Libya surround Carthage; Pygmalion threatens from Tyre. Anna also recalls that the gods and Juno herself seem to have led the Trojans there, and that an alliance with them would make the city grow in glory and in arms. Dido gives way. Anna does not decide for her sister, but gives the love that Dido already felt a political foundation that leaves her at ease, and it is through this that modesty comes undone.
When Aeneas decides to leave and Dido confronts him without success, she turns to Anna. She asks her to speak to the man who alone trusted her with his thoughts, and who knew the moment and the gentle paths for approaching him, and she entrusts her with the humblest message: not marriage, only a time, a better wind, rest for her pain. Anna carries the message, weeps, and returns without an answer: a god stops up Aeneas's ears.
Miserae hoc tamen unum / Exsequere, Anna, mihi; solam nam perfidus ille / Te colere, arcanos etiam tibi credere sensus; / Sola viri molles aditus et tempora noras. / I, soror, atque hostem supplex affare superbum, still, Anna, carry out this one thing for me, unhappy as I am; for that faithless man alone respected you, alone trusted you with his secret thoughts; you alone knew the moods and gentle approaches of the man. Go, sister, and speak as a suppliant to the proud enemy.
The deception comes next. Dido tells Anna that a priestess taught her a rite to bring Aeneas back or to free her from love, and orders a pyre built in the courtyard with his arms, clothes, and bed. Anna, who thinks only of mourning and nothing worse than Sychaeus's death, obeys. With her own hands, unknowing, she builds her sister's pyre.
When she hears the cry, Anna runs and finds Dido wounded on the pyre. She tears at her own face and accuses her: she wanted to die together with her, at the same hour and by the same iron; she raised the pyre and invoked the gods of the homeland only to stay absent at the hour of death. According to Anna, Dido has killed herself, and her, and the people, the Sidonian senators, and the city.
eadem me ad fata vocasses: / Idem ambas ferro dolor atque eadem hora tulisset. / His etiam struxi manibus, patriosque vocavi / Voce deos, sic te ut posita, crudelis, abessem? / Exstinxti te meque, soror, populumque, patresque / Sidonios, urbemque tuam, you would have called me to the same fate: the same grief and the same hour would have carried us both away by the sword. With these hands I built the pyre, and with my voice I called on the gods of our homeland, so that, you lying there, cruel one, I might be absent? You have destroyed yourself and me, sister, and the people, the Sidonian senators, and your city.
Themes Embodied
Anna touches on three of the work's themes. She is Passion seen from outside, by one who loves the protagonist and cannot govern her. She is Duty on its practical side: the duty of a ruler and of a sister toward the city, whose safety Anna invokes when she advises marriage. And she is Fate and Free Will from the side of human counsel: what she says sets the course that Juno had arranged, and the poem leaves open whether Anna was an instrument of the divine plan or only a person giving the advice that good sense suggests.
The text does not say whether Anna, in the end, thinks she was the one who opened the door to the love that killed Dido. The accusation she makes against Dido is only that of having been deceived and excluded, and the reader remembers that it was she who, at the beginning of the book, undid the oath to Sychaeus. The poem records no remorse in Anna, and it is left to the reader to decide whether she feels it.
Relationships
- Dido: the sister and queen, whom she counsels to love, serves as messenger to Aeneas, and is deceived about at the pyre.
- Aeneas: the man to whom she carries Dido's last plea, and who, according to Dido, trusted her alone with his thoughts.
- Juno: the goddess in whom Anna sees favor toward the Trojans, and whose plan her counsel serves without her knowing it.