I, Dido Elisa of Carthage, daughter of Belus, widow to Sychaeus, mother of Nobody… atop this pyre I myself have reared, took the sword of that cruel man that left me, and fell on it. I felt the happiness of its edge, the compassion of the blade as it sliced my life open, my skin, my lungs, the engines of pain that had besieged my heart, and then I collapsed into the fire.