Prayer to Hecate

Dido before her suicide. This is not a request but the invocation preceding a curse: what follows is her demand for everlasting enmity between her people and the descendants of Aeneas, and for an avenger from her bones — Hannibal.

Hecate is named by sound: ululata per urbes, she whose name is howled at night crossroads. Not by epithet or ancestry but by how others call her — an address taken from street cult, not from the temple.

A college is convened: Hecate, the avenging Dirae, and "the gods of dying Elissa". These last are her own, personal gods, called at the moment when they can no longer help her. Dido summons everyone capable of hearing at all.

Meritumque malis advertite numen — "turn upon the wicked the power they have deserved". The curse is presented as an act of justice: not revenge, but divine authority directed where it belongs.