She loses the support of Carthage's citizens, who have seen their queen indulge an amorous obsession at the expense of her civic responsibilities. Further, by dallying with another foreigner, Dido alienates the local African chieftains who had approached her as suitors and now pose a military threat. Her irrational obsession drives her to a frenzied suicide, not only out of the tragedy of her situation and the pain of a lost, betrayed love, but also out of a sense of diminished possibilities for the future.
Dido as Ovid portrays her in Heroides is quite different from the widely known Dido of Virgil's Aeneid. The differences arise from many sources including both the content and the basic nature and structure of the two works. The most obvious difference between the texts is their narrative voice. By writing Heroides from a first person perspective, Ovid's Dido is allowed to explore her emotions and to reflect upon her downfall in the moments before she commits her act of suicide. In comparison, by writing in the third person, Virgil limits his narration to merely the dialogue and actions of his characters, with only some description of their emotions. He does not allow himself the opportunity to deeply explore the character's inner motivations or concerns. Consequently, Virgil's portrayal of Dido is less compassionate and less human than Ovid's.
Dido of Heroides is not reduced to a woman madly raving through the town, instead she is aware of the mistakes she made, and she is reacting in a much more human respect. Her emotions alter several times throughout her epistle as she struggles with her plight. She blames herself for falling in love with a man who she feels is unable to return her love. She does not seem to rave as if possessed, but rather she is consumed with her own understanding of her fatal flaw. Further, Dido challenges Aeneas" honor, while at the same time she expresses an almost twisted desire when she rages against Aeneas for being the cause of both her death and that of the child that she may be carrying.
