Dido & Aeneas

A short film spoken in Latin. Aeneas is about to sail from Carthage leaving Dido behind. She learns this and catches up with him. Characters speak in Latin and retain the metre (hexameters) of Virgil's epic poem, the Aeneid. This and other Latin films (including Goddesses, Myths and Mortals), Latin videos, DVDs and more Latin language learning resources from the LATIN QVARTER (www.lingua.co.uk/latin)

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Latin
• Language
• Films
• Video
• DVD
• Virgil
• The
• Aeneid
• LATIN
• QVARTER
• Dido
• Aeneas
• Carthage
• Goddesses
• Myths
• and
• Mortals
• poetry
• poem

[GaryPansey]

Why did Ae. not take D with him? Cur cum ipso non cepit Didonam Aeniae?

[linguavideo]

Dido was Carthage, Aeneas was on his way to found Rome. The two powers could not stay in love for long. Virgil knew his history.

[michaelmartind]

The Latin is beautifully spoken, but I thought classical Latin was supposed to have an exaggerated, sing-song rhythm because of the long and short vowels. Their declamation sounds basically like Italian, or like medieval/church Latin.

[linguavideo]

The rhythm of long and short vowels underlies the verse, true. There was an additional syllabic stress too, either pitch (rising and falling) or stress (similar to English), or, most likely, a mixture. All Latin poets were wannabe Greek 'singers', and Greek verse had a pitch stress. But how formally sing-song the Latin rhythm became is not altogether clear.

Medieval Latin (what we know of it) has different sounds in some letters ('c', 'g', etc.). Likewise Italian and Church Latin.

[GaryPansey]

Quaestionem meam non respondisti. Dido Carthaginiensis Aeneasque Troianus sunt, quid scio, sed Carthagines et Troiani non hostes fuerunt. Igitur, cur non eam cum ipso Aeneas trahere posuit? Credo quia illa suum ipsum regnum habuit et Aeneas ad Italiam debuit discedere; Didonam Cartagini manere oportuit. Quid potior est? Amor cum viro vel imperium regni? Virgiliusne hanc questionem interrogavit? Ipsa interfecta amoris causa, populus suus non solus relictus estne?

[calgaryfox]

Totally loving this. About time this magnificent language resurfaced.

[skalexander]

I'm no linguist, but what I love about this clip is the fact that two native English speakers can make Latin SOUND like a Romance language.

[davidnmaker]

Quis sunt clamant? With my limited Latin vocabulary I'm trying to ask who is playing the Aeneas and Dido.

[zomgbat]

beatiful language paddy

[Beake88]

Si est optio inter amorem patriamque, amorem optem, omni tempore. Sed, in exeplo Aeneae, dei varia ei voluerunt. O miser Aeneas!

[AdamMoss13]

Exercitus noster est magnus," Persicus inquit, "et propter numerum sagittarum nostrarum caelum non videbitis!" Tum lacedaemonius respondet: "om imbra, igitur, Pugnabimus!" Et Leonidas, rex Lacedaemoniorum, exclamat: "Pugnate cum animis, Lacedaemoni; hodie apud inferos fortasse Cenabimus!"