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What happens to Dido after Aeneas leaves Carthage?

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Ancient Roman mosaic showing the poet Virgil seated and writing, flanked by the muses Clio and Melpomene, displayed in a decorative border. — Virgil Virgil (centre) holding a scroll with a quotation from the *Aeneid* and flanked by the muses Clio and Melpomene, mosaic, early 3rd century ce; in the Bardo National Museum, Tunis, Tunisia.

In Virgil’s Aeneid, after Aeneas is commanded by the gods to leave Carthage to fulfill his destiny of founding a new people in Italy, he abandons Dido, the queen who had welcomed him.12

Devastated by his departure, Dido commits suicide by constructing a funeral pyre and stabbing herself. This tragic event serves as a pivotal moment in the epic, as her dying curse upon the Trojans is portrayed by Virgil as the mythical origin of the long-standing enmity between Rome and Carthage, eventually leading to the Punic Wars.32