Dido is omnipresent in early modern imitations of the Aeneid, but there is no Dido figure in Latin epics from the Americas. This paper argues that this lacuna is the product of erasure and traces her disappearance from these Latin texts to her elimination from Jesuit curriculum and Jesuit textbooks, first in Europe and then in Spanish America. These pedagogical texts not only framed a student’s first encounter with the Aeneid, but also shaped the composition of Latin epic by that student. Through this case study, I suggest that we can read traces of erasure in classical and post-classical texts.
Elizabeth Upenieks
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