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According to legend, Carthage was founded by Dido, also called Elissa, a Phoenician princess of the city-State of Tyre, who became the city’s first queen. In this article, we will discover this legend and discuss its historicity.
The legend of Dido
Dido (Elissa), the sister of King Pygmalion of Tyre, was married to Acerbas (Zakarbaal, also called Sychaeus in the Aeneid), the city’s high priest. After her brother killed her husband, Dido and her allies fled Phoenicia and settled in North Africa, where they founded Carthage.
Shortly after her arrival, Hiarbas, the King of the Getulians, asked Dido to marry him. Their union would have represented the mingling between the indigenous North Africans and the Phoenician newcomers. Dido refused his marriage proposal, because she had promised her late husband that she would never remarry. According to older versions of the legend, Dido killed herself to avoid being forced to marry Hiarbas.
The legend of Dido is mostly known from the Aeneid, a work by the Roman poet Virgil, that tells the story of Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome. According to the Aeneid, Dido fell in love with Aeneas when he came to Carthage, and they even got married, against the promise Dido had made to her deceased husband that she would never remarry. Later, Aeneas abandoned her, leaving for Italy, where he founded Rome. In desperation, Dido killed herself. When she dies, she curses Aeneas and all his descendants for evermore. Dido’s unhappy love and her curse are presented as the cause of the Punic Wars.
The legend of Dido is older than the legend of Aeneas. We don’t know who was the first to combine both legends. Anyway, the theme of Aeneas’ visit to Carthage is not Virgil’s invention: it is older than him.
After her death, Dido was worshiped as a goddess in Carthage.
A historical character?
The historical foundation of the legend of Dido is hard to discern. According to some specialists, Dido was originally a goddess, and was only transformed into a mortal queen in later sources. Other specialists believe there indeed was a historical Queen of Carthage behind the legend. Her brother Pygmalion is a historical King of Tyre.
The oldest historical source to mention Dido is the 3rd-Century Greek historian Timaeus of Tauromenium. The oldest full account of her life was written a few decades before Virgil.
Carthage founded by a woman
Carthage is the only ancient town that was traditionally founded by a woman. For the other civilisations of the ancient world, especially Rome, the fact that Carthage had been founded by a woman was a cause for mockery, and it explained why the city could never rival with other cities founded by male heroes. This idea is especially strong in the Punica, written by Silius Italicus. For the Romans, Dido, as a Phoenician queen, represents all they hated the most: the feminine, full of emotion and passion, as opposed to the “male” rational order of the Republic and, later, the Empire; and the Orient, in all its luxury and flamboyance, as opposed to Roman discipline and sobriety.
Nowadays, however, the legend (historical or not) that tells how the most prestigious North African city was founded by a woman should make us proud, as is shows the important role women have always played in North African societies.
There is also the Cypriot connection