The Aeneid

And now Dido leads her guest through the heart of Carthage, displaying Phoenician power, the city readied for him... Now at dusk she call for the feast to start again, madly begging to hear again the agony of Troy, to hang on his lips again, savoring his story. Then... alone in the echoing hall, distraught, she flings herself on the couch that he left empty. Lost as he is, she's lost as well, she hears him, sees him or holds Ascanius back and dandles him on her lap, bewitched by the boy's resemblance to his father, trying to cheat the love she dare not tell. The towers of Carthage, half built, rise no more, and the young men quit their combat drills in arms. The harbors, the battlements planned to block attack, all work's suspended now...

This passage is from Virgil's Aeneid, chapter 4, verses 92-110. This is a very interesting and well known passage, as it expresses the chaos caused by Aeneas' presence. In the Latin original, the pronouns used to refer to Dido are actually masculine, which is abnormal. Virgil did this to show that she was working and leading like a man, yet prone to the mistakes and emotional pit-falls of women. "Beware of manly women." As her attention shifts from the care of her city to Aeneas, Dido is described as "mad" and she "savors" Aeneas' story as if it were feeding her. In a sense, it is feeding her, or at least the fire which Venus -- goddess of love -- sparked into being. The passage becomes almost ironic, as she is obsessed with Ascanius (who is Cupid in disguise), yet tries to "cheat the love", which is impossible. The end of the passage is completely contradictory to the beginning. The first showing a beautiful bustling beehive, and the second describing a dejected dream. Thus Aeneas' entrance and beginning is the end and destruction of Dido.