tantae mōlis erat rōmānam condere gentem

Not that I want to get involved in the “Vergil Bee Discourse,” but it did get me thinking…why merely associate Vergil with bees when you could associate Queen Dido with bees, as her city (Carthage) is the one he describes with the allegory of a hive…especially since she is a queen, just like matriarch of a beehive.

Either way, I couldn’t resist and had to draw a monumental Dido tending to her hive city.

—

Iura magistratusque legunt sanctumque senatum;

hic portus alii effodiunt; hic alta theatris

fundamenta locant alii, immanisque columnas

rupibus excidunt, scaenis decora alta futuris.

Qualis apes aestate nova per florea rura

exercet sub sole labor, cum gentis adultos

educunt fetus, aut cum liquentia mella

stipant et dulci distendunt nectare cellas,

aut onera accipiunt venientum, aut agmine facto

ignavom fucos pecus a praesepibus arcent:

fervet opus, redolentque thymo fragrantia mella.

“O fortunati, quorum iam moenia surgunt!”

Aeneas ait, et fastigia suspicit urbis.

Infert se saeptus nebula, mirabile dictu,

per medios, miscetque viris, neque cernitur ulli.

Lucus in urbe fuit media, laetissimus umbra,

quo primum iactati undis et turbine Poeni

effodere loco signum, quod regia Iuno

monstrarat, caput acris equi; sic nam fore bello

egregiam et facilem victu per saecula gentem.

Hic templum Iunoni ingens Sidonia Dido

condebat, donis opulentum et numine divae,

aerea cui gradibus surgebant limina, nexaeque

aere trabes, foribus cardo stridebat aenis.

Hoc primum in luco nova res oblata timorem

leniit, hic primum Aeneas sperare salutem

ausus, et adflictis melius confidere rebus.

— P. Virgilius Maro “Aeneid” Lib. I, 426–452

—

Laws, offices, a sacred senate formed.

A port was being dug, the high foundations

Of a theater laid, great columns carved from cliffs

To ornament the stage that would be built there:

Like bees in spring across the blossoming land,

Busy beneath the sun, leading their offspring,

Full grown now, from the hive, or loading cells

Until they swell with honey and sweet nectar,

Or taking shipments in, or lining up

To guard the fodder from the lazy drones;

The teeming work breathes thyme and fragrant honey

“What luck they have—their walls grow high already!”

Aeneas cried, his eyes on those great roofs.

Still covered by the cloud—a miracle—

He went in through the crowds, and no one saw him.

Deep in the city is the verdant shade

Where the Phoenicians, tired from stony waves,

Dug up the sign that Juno said would be there:

A horses’s head, foretelling martial glory

And easy livelihood through future ages.

Dido was building Juno a vast shrine here

Filled with rich offerings and holy power.

The stairs soared to a threshold made of bronze;

Bronze joined the beams; the doors had shrill bronze henges.

Here a strange sight relieved Aeneas’ fear

For the first time, and lured him into hope

Of better things to follow all his torments.

[image description: the following lines spoken by vulcan in a.s. kline's translation of Aeneid 8:

“Why do you seek instances from the past? Goddess, where has your faith in me gone? If your anxiety then was the same, it would have been right for me too to arm the Trojans then; neither fate nor the almighty Father refused to let Troy stand, or Priam live, ten years more.

/end description.]

Virgil’s Camilla, commissioned by @tibgracchus​

Referenced directly from Peter Paul Rubens’ painting “Aeneas in the Underworld”

I just think he’s Neat

Reference under cut

"[Aeneas] tells Achates to fetch some gifts as well, plucked from the ruins of Troy: a gown stiff with figures stitched in gold, and a woven veil with yellow sprays of acanthus round the border. Helen’s glory, gifts she carried out of Mycenae, fleeing Argos for Troy to seal her wicked marriage— the marvelous handiwork of Helen’s mother, Leda."

-- Aeneid 1.647-52, trans. Fagles

"Acanthus often has a special binary significance, serving to mediate between life and death, and most likely contributed to the plant's popularity in funerary contexts ... Perhaps the most important animal motif on the Ara Pacis is the snake that is about to consume fledglings huddled together in a nest directly below the great acanthus calyx. Symbolically, the snake and the nestlings recall the omen prefiguring the fall of Troy, out of whose ashes arose Rome."

-- From Republic to Empire: Rhetoric, Religion, and Power in the Visual Culture of Ancient Rome, John Pollini

Dido ... clambers in frenzy up the soaring pyre and unsheathes a sword, a Trojan sword she once sought as a gift, but not for such an end. ...

her women see her doubled over the sword, the blood foaming over the blade, her hands splattered red.

...

sobs, and grief, and the wails of women ringing out through homes, and the heavens echo back the keening din— for all the world as if enemies stormed the walls and all of Carthage or old Tyre were toppling down and flames in their fury, wave on mounting wave were billowing over the roofs of men and gods.