Now notice, this is art history! The Vatican Vergil is a 5th century Italian manuscript of Vergil's Aeneid - an epic poem about the adventures of the hero Aeneas. In this section, he has far from heroically deserted Dido who stabs herself to death in despair.
This is the earliest true animation I have discovered so far. It works like those little flick books we used to make in kindergarten. The two images are in the same place on consecutive pages and you flick between them.