Note 892 — ROMAN PEOPLE (continued 8)

The original story was, that unable to escape from an enforced marriage with Iarbas, she killed herself to mark her unflinching faithfulness to her first husband Sicharbas. Servius quotes Varro as stating that it was not Dido, but Anna who committed suicide for love of Aeneas (on Aen. iv. 682); and as Varro died before the Aeneid was begun, this may be taken as proving that Virgil's version of the love-story was not his own invention. But it is quite possible that Servius here only means that Varro's version differed in this point from that which the poet soon afterwards adopted; it may be that the story in the poem is thus practically his own.