Dido, Queen of Carthage (play) is presumed to have been lost in the 1809 Drury Lane Theatre fire, since nothing of it has survived. An adaptation of the play was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 30 May 1993, the 400th anniversary of Marlowe's death, along with "The Massacre at Paris", directed by Alan Drury and Michael Earley and featuring Sally Dexter as Dido, Timothy Walker as Aeneas, Jeremy Blake as Iarbas, Ben Thomas as Achates, Teresa Gallagher as Anna/Juno and Andrew Wincott as Cupid. Dido, Queen of Carthage (play) Dido, Queen of Carthage (full title: The Tragedie of Dido Queene of Carthage) is a
Political commentary of the Aeneid of Mars and a vestal virgin. According to the historian Livy, this vestal virgin's name was Rhea Silvia, who is described in Book I of the Aeneid as a descendant of Aeneas. Virgil establishes a stronger connection of Silvia to the Trojans by changing her name in the epic to Ilia. This new name connects her by its similarity to the name "Ilium", another name for the city of Troy, and because it is the feminine form of both Ilus (Aeneas' great-great-grandfather) and Ilus, the second name of Ascanius before the fall of Troy. Virgil also references Julius Caesar's claim