Dido

Dido, also called Elissa, was the Phoenician princess of Tyre who founded Carthage on the coast of North Africa and ruled it as its first queen. She is best known from Virgil’s Aeneid, where she falls in love with the Trojan hero Aeneas, is abandoned by him, and takes her own life on a funeral pyre while cursing his descendants.

Dido’s Family and Flight from Tyre

Virgil makes Dido the daughter of Belus, a king who conquered Cyprus (Aeneid 1.619–622), and the sister of Pygmalion, who inherited the kingdom (Aeneid 1.346–347). Her name Elissa is used by the poet when she calls on the gods as she dies (Aeneid 4.610) and by Ovid (Fasti 3.553). Her husband was Sychaeus, the richest man among the Phoenicians, whom her father had given her as a virgin bride (Aeneid 1.343–345).

According to Virgil, Pygmalion murdered Sychaeus secretly at the altar, blind with love of gold, and hid the crime for a long time. Sychaeus’ ghost then appeared to Dido in a dream, showed her the wounds, and told her to flee, revealing an old treasure buried in the earth to help her journey. Dido gathered those who hated or feared the tyrant, seized ships that happened to be ready, and loaded them with Pygmalion’s gold. Virgil adds that the leader of the deed was a woman (Aeneid 1.340–364).

The Founding of Carthage

The exiles came to the place where Carthage now stands. They bought as much ground as they could enclose with the hide of a bull, and the site was named Byrsa from this deal (Aeneid 1.365–368). Virgil does not explain the trick, but the later Roman historian Justin (Epitome of Pompeius Trogus 18.5) tells that Dido cut the hide into very thin strips so that it surrounded a whole hill. In the Aeneid the city is still rising under Dido’s direction, with a great temple of Juno that she is founding (Aeneid 1.418–422, 1.446–449).

Justin’s Account of Dido

Justin gives a different version of Dido’s earlier life (Epitome 18.4–6). The king of Tyre left his kingdom jointly to his children Elissa and Pygmalion, but the people gave the crown to Pygmalion alone. Elissa married her uncle Acerbas, the second most powerful man in Tyre, and Pygmalion killed him because of his hidden gold. Dido pretended she would move into her brother’s palace and, when his men came to help, ordered them to throw bags into the sea as an offering to her husband’s spirit; the bags held sand, not gold. The men, fearing their king’s anger, followed her into exile.

In this account the Tyrians reached the land of the African king Iarbas and bought ground for a city with the bull’s hide. As Carthage prospered, Iarbas demanded to marry Dido and threatened war if she refused. His envoys said that the king wanted someone to teach him Phoenician customs, and that no one would go; Dido reproached them for refusing to serve their city, and they replied that she must do so herself. Caught by her own words, she asked for time, built a great pyre as if to honour her first husband, climbed it, and stabbed herself rather than break her faith to him. Justin adds that she was worshipped as a goddess for as long as Carthage stood.

Dido and Aeneas

In the Aeneid, Aeneas is driven by a storm to the African coast and is welcomed by Dido, whose city is still being built. Venus wants to protect her son, so she sends Cupid in the likeness of Aeneas’ boy Ascanius, and he gradually makes Dido forget Sychaeus and fall in love with Aeneas (Aeneid 1.657–722). Dido confides in her sister Anna that Aeneas alone has moved her since Sychaeus died, yet she says she would rather the earth swallow her than break her faith to her first husband (Aeneid 4.9–29). Anna persuades her to give way to love.

During a hunt a storm drives Dido and Aeneas into the same cave. Earth and Juno, goddess of marriage, give the signal, lightning flashes and nymphs cry out on the mountain top. Dido calls this a marriage, and with that word, Virgil says, she covers her fault (Aeneid 4.160–172). The African king Iarbas, who had been one of her rejected suitors (Aeneid 4.36), then prays angrily to Jupiter, and the god sends Mercury to remind Aeneas that his destiny lies in Italy (Aeneid 4.196–226).

The Death of Dido

Aeneas prepares to sail in secret, but Dido learns of it. He answers her reproaches by saying that the gods command him to leave (Aeneid 4.331–361). When his ships depart, she curses him and his race. She prays that he be harassed in war, driven from his land, torn from the embrace of Iulus, and fall before his time and lie unburied on the sand. She calls on the Tyrians never to make peace or treaty with his people and asks that an avenger rise from her bones to pursue the Trojan settlers with fire and sword, and that shore be set against shore and arms against arms (Aeneid 4.607–629).

She then climbs the pyre she has had built, takes the sword Aeneas left behind, says that she has lived her course, built a famous city, and avenged her husband on her brother, and falls on the blade (Aeneid 4.642–665). Juno takes pity on her long agony and sends Iris, who cuts a lock of her hair to free her spirit, since she was dying before her time and not by fate (Aeneid 4.693–705).

When Aeneas later visits the Underworld he sees her among the dead. He speaks to her tenderly, swearing that he left unwillingly, but she turns away like a rock and goes back to her first husband Sychaeus, who answers her sorrows and matches her love (Aeneid 6.450–476).

Other Versions of Her End

Ovid returns to the story in two places. In his Heroides (Epistle 7) Dido writes to Aeneas as he is leaving, and the letter ends with her epitaph: Aeneas gave both the cause of her death and the sword, but Dido fell by her own hand. In the Fasti he repeats that she burned on a pyre built for her own end and quotes the same epitaph. After her death the Numidian king Iarbas seized her kingdom, and her sister Anna was driven out and left Carthage by sea (Fasti 3.545–560).

Dido Sources

Virgil, Aeneid 1.340–368, 1.418–449, 1.621, 1.657–722, 4.9–38, 4.160–226, 4.331–361, 4.607–705 and 6.450–476; Ovid, Heroides 7 and Fasti 3.545–560; Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus 18.4–6.

See Also: Aeneas, Anna, Carthage, Pygmalion, Iarbas, Venus, Juno, Cupid, Ascanius