You are reading about Dido's last moments. Prosperina refuses to let Dido die. Why? Is her death necessary for justice?

?Queen Juno cut this torture short, in pity,

Dispatching Iris earthward from Olympus

To free the struggling spirit from its bonds. 695

There was no fate or justice in her death.

Her madness brought a wretched, early end.

Proserpina had cut no lock of blond hair

To dedicate this life to Stygian Orcus.

So dewy Iris soared on saffron wings,         700

Trailing a thousand sun-reflecting colors,

And floated near her head. "I am to take

This gift to Dis and free you from your body."

Her right hand made the stroke. All living heat

Vanished, and life dissolved into the wind.  

 

Full of despair and haunted by evil omens and nightmares, Dido secretly decides to kill herself. She asks Anna to prepare a pyre and to heap upon it all the items in the palace associated with Aeneas: These objects, she says, she will burn according to magic rites that will either restore him to her or free her of her love for him. In fact, however, the pyre is intended for burning herself as well as Aeneas's belongings. Ignorantly, Anna does as Dido requests, believing that the queen's grief is no greater than that which she suffered over her husband's death. On top of the newly built pyre, Dido places a couch heaped with Aeneas's clothing, a portrait of him, and his sword, with which she plans to kill herself.

That night, Dido sleeplessly considers her plight. Having ruled out the alternatives of marrying one of her former suitors or following the Trojans, she reaffirms her decision to commit suicide. Meanwhile, Aeneas, asleep aboard his ship and ready to sail the next day, is again visited by Mercury, who appears to him in a dream and commands him to flee while flight is still possible. To strengthen Aeneas's resolve, Mercury deliberately speaks ill of Dido. Aroused, Aeneas gives orders to sail immediately, and soon the Trojan fleet is under way.

When dawn comes and Dido sees the Trojan fleet at sea, she is uncontrollably overcome by an all-consuming rage. She momentarily contemplates having the Trojans pursued; then, realizing that it is too late for this tactic, she curses them, praying that eternal hostility may exist between them and her own people, that some "avenging spirit" will right the wrong that has been done to her, and that Aeneas will "fall in battle before his time and lie / Unburied on the sand."

Resigned now to death, Dido sends her dead husband's old nurse to fetch Anna, pretending to need her sister's assistance in completing magic rites. Once the nurse leaves on this errand, Dido mounts the pyre, lies down on the couch, and stabs herself with Aeneas's sword. Anna arrives amidst the uproar of the household and gathers Dido into her arms, where the queen dies.