Note 33 — Chapter VII · POETIC IN ANCIENT DRAMA AND NARRATIVE

That even Dido’s desperate plea, as well as the calm reply of Æneas, proceeds from point to point, not all readers will agree with Heinze (425-6, on Æneid IV. 305). The variations of rhythm in this passage would surely be used by a sympathetic reciter to suggest agitation. But Vergil’s general neglect of the familiar means of asyndeton and hyperbaton (see, for example, De sublimitate, xxi-xxii) to suggest emotional disorder shows a characteristic distrust of incoherence.