Quote 1
And Dido, fated queen, drew out the night
With talk of various matters, while she drank
Long draughts of love. Often she asked of Priam,
Often of Hector; now of the armor Memnon,
The son of Dawn, had worn; now of the team
Diomedes drove; now of the huge Achilles. (1.1021-1026)
Do you think Dido really cares about all this stuff? Or do you think she really just wants an excuse to listen to Aeneas talk? If you think the second option is the better one, how do you think this passage relates to the Aeneid's depiction of love more generally? To get the ball rolling, consider this: if love is powerful enough to unite people who have different interests, couldn't it also make people forget their own interests (such as, say, sailing to Italy and founding a new home for the Trojan people)? Hmm…
Quote 2
That day was the first cause of death, and first
Of sorrow. Dido had no further qualms
As to impressions given and set abroad;
She thought no longer of a secret love
But called it marriage. Thus, under that name,
She hid her fault. (4.233-238)
Now wait a second: what do you mean Dido "hid her fault" by "calling it marriage"? Was all that fancy-talk about the "Primal Earth herself and Nuptial Juno" just a product of Dido's imagination? (If so, it would be an instance of "focalization," whereby the narration is briefly skewed through the perspective, or "focus," of one of the characters; see the fifth quotation on Fate and Free Will.) But no, that can't be right: the main narrator has already clearly shown us Juno and Venus conspiring to set the scene for Dido and Aeneas's union. Clearly, love is unfair, and so are the gods. Beyond that, though, it is interesting to note how love distracts Dido from thinking about what is politically useful to her – in this case, not letting rumors of her affair get around to her enemies.