Dido
In Greek and Roman mythology, Dido, also known as Elissa, was the legendary founder and first queen of the Phoenician city-state of Carthage.
In most accounts, she was originally the joint ruler of Tyre who fled tyranny to found her own city in northwest Africa, now modern-day Tunisia. As she is only known from ancient Greek and Roman sources, all of which were written well after Carthage's founding, her historicity remains uncertain.
Details about Dido's character, life, and role in the founding of Carthage are best known from Virgil's epic poem, the Aeneid, published around 19 BC. The poem tells the legendary story of the Trojan hero Aeneas. In the poem, Dido is described as a clever and enterprising woman who founded Carthage after fleeing her tyrannical brother. The city prospers under her leadership until Aeneas arrives and the pair fall in love through Juno and Venus' divine intervention. When Aeneas eventually has to leave Carthage, the love-sick Dido commits suicide upon a pyre.
Dido has been an enduring figure in Western culture, literature, and art from the early Renaissance into the 21st century.
Name
Many names in the legend of Dido are of Punic origin, which suggests that the first Greek authors who mention this story have taken up Phoenician accounts. One suggestion is that Dido is an epithet from the same Semitic root as David, which means "Beloved". Others state Didô means "the wanderer".According to Marie-Pierre Noël, "Elishat/Elisha" is a name repeatedly attested on Punic votives. It is composed of:
- the Punic reflex of *ʾil- "god", which can mean the remote Phoenician creator god El, or it can be a name for God in Judaism,
- "‐issa", which could be either "ʾiš", meaning "fire", or another word for "woman".
Early accounts
The oldest references to Dido's character can be traced to the lost writings of Sicilian historian Timaeus of Tauromenium. In his Histories, Timaeus claims that Dido founded Carthage in 814 BC, around the same time as the founding of Rome.Appian, in the beginning of his Punic Wars, claims that Carthage was founded by Zorus and Carchedon. However, Zorus looks like an alternative transliteration of the city name Tyre, while Carchedon is just the Greek form of Carthage. Timaeus named Carchedon's wife as Elissa, the sister of King Pygmalion of Tyre. Archaeological evidence of settlement on the site of Carthage before the last quarter of the 8th century BC has yet to be found.
That the city is named at least indicates it was a colony.
Trogus and Justin
The only surviving full account of Dido's story before Virgil's treatment is that of Virgil's contemporary, Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus, in his Philippic Histories, which was reworked into an epitome by Junianus Justinus in the 3rd century AD.Justin, quoting or paraphrasing Trogus, writes that the king of Tyre made his beautiful daughter Dido and son Pygmalion his joint heirs. However, upon the king's death, the people took Pygmalion alone as their ruler, even though he was still a child. Dido married her uncle Acerbas, who, as priest of Heracles, was second in power to the king. There were rumors that Acerbas had secretly buried a large store of gold, and Pygmalion had Acerbas murdered in hopes of claiming it for himself. Dido was enraged, and eventually planned to trick her brother and flee Tyre.
Dido pretended to want to move into Pygmalion's home; her brother agreed, as he believed Dido would bring Acerbas' stores of gold with her when she moved. He sent a number of attendants to help her. She filled bags with sand, and, pretending they were gold, had the attendants cast them into the sea, pretending that they were an offering to her late husband's shade. Dido then persuaded the attendants to join her in flight to another land rather than face Pygmalion's anger when he discovered what had supposedly become of Acerbas' wealth. Some sympathetic senators also joined her.
The group first arrived at Cyprus. There, Dido ordered her party to seize eighty women working as prostitutes on the shore, so that her men would have wives and eventually be able to populate her future city.
Eventually Dido and her followers arrived on the coast of North Africa. There, she bargained with the locals for a small piece of land to act as a refuge until she could continue her journeying: only as much land as could be encompassed by an oxhide. They agreed. Dido then cut the oxhide into fine strips so that she had enough to encircle an entire nearby hill, which was afterwards named Byrsa.
Dido and her party established a settlement on the hill. Locals began to join the group, and both they and envoys from the nearby Phoenician city of Utica urged the building of a city. While digging the foundation, an ox's head was found, indicating that the city that would be wealthy but subjected to the rule of others if built at that site. In response to this portent, another area of the hill was dug instead, where a horse's head was found, indicating that the city would be powerful and warlike. Carthage was thus founded, and the center of the city was the citadel on Byrsa.
After some time, Carthage grew to be powerful and prosperous. However, Iarbas, king of the Maxitani, demanded Dido's hand in marriage so that they could combine their kingdoms; if she denied him, he would launch war against Carthage. However, she preferred to stay faithful to her first husband. She created a ceremonial funeral pyre and sacrificed many victims under the pretense that she was honoring and appeasing her husband's spirit before marrying Iarbas. However, Dido instead ascended the pyre, announcing that "she would go to her husband as they had desired her," and killed herself with a sword. After her suicide, Dido was deified and worshipped as a goddess as long as Carthage endured. In this account, the founding of Carthage occurred 72 years before the foundation of Rome.
Virgil's ''Aeneid''
Dido flees Tyre
Virgil names Belus as Dido's father; this figure is occasionally referred to as Belus II by later commentators to distinguish him from Belus, son of Poseidon, and a figure in earlier Greek mythology. Classicist T. T. Duke suggests that this is a hypocoristicon of the historical father of Pygmalion and Dido, Mattan I, also known as .The Aeneid
Aeneas arrives at Carthage
, a Trojan prince who fled Troy after it fell to the Greeks, eventually landed on Carthage's shores after many years of wandering. Dido welcomed him warmly, having heard word about his exploits, and arranged a feast. However, Venus, Aeneas' mother, sensed that Dido and Carthage were under Juno's control. As leverage, she gave her son a dart that would make Dido fall madly in love with him. At the feast, Aeneas used the dart on Dido, and she was filled with a powerful, all-encompassing love and desire for him. However, she was conflicted, as she had sworn never to remarry after her first husband was killed. Juno became aware of Venus' actions, and proposed that they marry the couple and join the pair's kingdoms. By the goddess' design, the pair consummated their relationship in a cave. However, while Dido called Aeneas her husband, Aeneas claimed they were never officially married.When news of their relationship reached Iarbas, a son of Jupiter whose marriage offer Dido scorned, he angrily prayed to his father. Jupiter then dispatched Mercury to remind Aeneas of his journey and the city he was destined to found. Aeneas agreed and prepared to leave. When an enraged Dido confronted him and asked him to stay, he refused, as he could not deviate from his divinely ordained fate.
Dido's suicide
Dido was enraged by this betrayal, and could no longer bear to live. She had her sister Anna build a pyre under the pretense of burning all that reminded her of Aeneas, including weapons and clothes that he had left behind, and the couch she called their bridal bed. When Dido saw Aeneas' fleet leaving, she cursed him and proclaimed endless hate between Carthage and the descendants of Troy, foreshadowing the Punic Wars. Dido then ascended the pyre, laid again on the couch, and stabbed herself with Aeneas' sword. Anna rushed in and embraced her dying sister, and Juno sent Iris to release Dido's spirit from her body. From their ships, Aeneas and his crew saw the glow of the burning funeral pyre, and could only guess at what had happened.At least two scholars have argued that the inclusion of the pyre as part of Dido's suicide— otherwise unattested in prior epics and tragedies— alludes to the self-immolation that took the life of Carthage's last queen, or the wife of its general Hasdrubal the Boetharch, in 146 BC.