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This manuscript on parchment, incompletely preserved, is one of the oldest illustrated codices to have survived at all. Written in Latin, it contains fragments of the Georgics, a poem about rural life, and The Aeneid, a verse epic describing the origins of the Roman nation The author is Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil, 70-19 B.C.). Out of the original c. 280 miniatures 50 have survived.
In content and form the manuscript is the product of a kind of pagan renaissance in the midst of a world converted to Christianity.
Folio 19 recto shows Dido performing a sacrifice, as described in Book Four of the Aeneid (II. 56-64). Dido, Queen of Carthage, accompanied by her sister Anna, speaks of her love of the hero Aeneas, who has fled Troy. She then makes sacrifices to various deities, hoping they will assist her in her plans of marriage.
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