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Roman mythology is largely inspired from Greek mythology. As the Romans had more contact with North Africa than the Greeks, they invented their own myths in this region, related to Carthage, but also to the indigenous Amazigh people. Next to Virgil’s Aeneid, the other sources for the myths described in this article are Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Heroides, and Fasti, and Hyginus’ Fabulae.
The goddess Africa: an incarnation of the continent
The Romans often associated the new regions they conquered with divinities. The goddess Africa is depicted as a woman, probably Amazigh, wearing an elephant head dress. We wrote a detailed article about this goddess.
Dido, Queen of Carthage
Dido (also called Elissa) is the legendary founder and first Queen of Carthage. She was the sister of King Pygmalion of Tyre, and 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. We wrote a detailed article on the legend of Dido.
Dido appears a lot in Roman mythology. 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. We also wrote a detailed article on the relationship between Aeneas and Dido.
Hiarbas, King of the Getulians
Hiarbas, who might be inspired from a historical Numidian king, was the son of Jupiter Hammon (an association between the supreme god of the Romans and the Phoenicians/Carthaginians) and a Garamantian nymph, who became King of the Getulians. Before Aeneas arrived in Carthage, he had asked Dido to marry him: their union would have represented the mingling between the indigenous North Africans and the Phoenician newcomers. However, Dido refused his marriage proposal, because of her promise to her late husband that she would never remarry.
When Hiarbas heard that Dido had fallen in love with Aeneas, he was furious and threatened to attack them. When Aeneas abandoned Dido, she expressed her fears that Hiarbas would now come to make her his wife by force. According to Ovid, Hiarbas invaded Carthage after Dido’s suicide.
Anna Perenna, Dido’s sister
Anna was Dido’s sister, who fled Tyre with her. After Dido’s tragic death, she fled to the island of Malta, where the local king promised to protect her. After three years, she was however forced to flee again, when her brother Pygmalion threatened Malta with war to capture her. After being shipwrecked in Italy, she was offered hospitality by Aeneas. Dido appeared to her in a dream, to warn her not to remain with him. Finally, she was taken away by a river and transformed into a goddess. For the Romans, Anna Perenna (per annum) represents the cycle of the year, the passing time that never stops.
Diomedes and the King of Libya
Diomedes, the Greek King of Argos, was a hero of the Trojan War. On his return home after the war, he discovered that his wife had taken a lover while he was away, and was forced to flee his city to avoid being killed. He settled in Southern Italy, where he founded several Greek colonies (Magna Graecia). In the Aeneid, Aeneas’ enemies ask for his help to fight Aeneas, but he refuses, saying that times have changed and he no longer wants to be an enemy of the Trojans.
On his way to Italy, he got shipwrecked on the Libyan coast. Lycos, the King of Libya, a son of Mars, the god of war, had a custom to sacrifice all the strangers stranded on his coasts to his father. Luckily for Diomedes, Callirhoe, the daughter of Lycos, fell in love with him and betrayed her father by freeing him. When Diomedes set sail without even thanking her, Callirhoe killed herself in dismay.
