Which scholar says that as modern readers Dido evokes our sincerest sympathy?

• A. Damien Nelis - Characterisation of Dido
• B. Ian Du Quesnay - Characterisation of Dido
• C. Philip Hardie - Modern audience and Dido
• D. Richard Rutherford - Allecto and Turnus

Answer: (C)

Engaging with reception and empathy in reading Virgil, this view argues that modern readers naturally feel a deep sympathy for Dido because her tragedy is made legible and moving to us today. Philip Hardie is the scholar who foregrounds how contemporary audiences encounter Dido’s story and respond emotionally to her love, loss, and abandonment within the Aeneid’s grand narrative. He suggests that Virgil crafts Dido in a way that invites identification and pity, so she resonates as a sympathetic, almost tragic figure rather than merely a stopping point in Aeneas’s quest. That focus on how the modern audience experiences Dido is what makes this answer the best fit.

The other scholars cited concentrate on different angles. Damien Nelis and Ian Du Quesnay are concerned with how Dido is characterized within the text itself, analyzing her depiction and rhetoric rather than how modern readers emotionally respond to her. Richard Rutherford, by contrast, centers on figures like Allecto and Turnus, not Dido, so his work isn’t addressing the reception of Dido by contemporary readers.