Dido. Queen of Carthage; loved, but left by Aeneas. Dido was, according to ancient Greek and Roman sources, the founder and first queen of Carthage. She is primarily known from the account given by the Roman poet Virgil in his epic Aeneid. In some sources she is also known as Elissa. 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. This understanding of the chronology related to Dido and her company resulted in the following dates for Dido and her immediate relations, as derived from F. M. Cross and Wm. H. Barnes: Baal-Eser II 846-841 BC. Mattan I 840-832 BC. 839 BC: Dido was born in Tyre. 831 BC: Pygmalion begins to reign. 825 BC: Dido flees Tyre in 7th year of Pygmalion, after the death of Acerbas. 825 BC and possibly some time thereafter: Dido and companions on Cyprus. Between 825 BC and 814 BC: Tyrians build settlement on island of Cothon. 814 BC: Dido founds Carthage on mainland. 785 BC: Death of Pygmalion. 759 BC: Dido died in Carthage. The person of Dido can be traced to references by Roman historians to lost writings of Timaeus of Tauromenium in Sicily. Historians gave various dates, both for the foundation of Carthage and the foundation of Rome. Appian in the beginning of his Punic Wars claims that Carthage was founded by a certain Zorus and Carchedon, but Zorus looks like an alternative transliteration of the city name Tyre and Carchedon is just the Greek form of Carthage. Timaeus made Carchedon's wife 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. Paucity of material for this period may be explained by rejection of the Greek Dark Age theory. The only surviving full account before Virgil's treatment is that of Virgil's contemporary Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus in his Philippic histories as rendered in a digest or epitome made by Junianus Justinus in the 3rd century AD. Justin quoting or paraphrasing Trogus states, a king of Tyre whom Justin does not name, made his very beautiful daughter Dido and son Pygmalion his joint heirs. But on his death the people took Pygmalion alone as their ruler though Pygmalion was yet still a boy. Dido married Acerbas her uncle who as priest of Heracles, that is, Melqart, was second in power to King Pygmalion. Acerbas can be equated with the Zikarbaal king of Byblos mentioned in the Egyptian Tale of Wenamon.Rumor told that Acerbas had much wealth secretly buried and King Pygmalion had Acerbas murdered in hopes of gaining this wealth. Dido, desiring to escape Tyre, expressed a wish to move into Pygmalion's palace, but then ordered the attendants whom Pygmalion sent to aid in the move, to throw all Acerbas' bags of gold into the sea apparently as an offering to his spirit. In fact these bags contained only sand. 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 senators also joined her in her flight. The party arrived at Cyprus where the priest of Jupiter joined the expedition. There the exiles also seized about eighty young women who were prostituting themselves on the shore in order to provide wives for the men in the party. Eventually Dido and her followers arrived on the coast of North Africa where Dido asked the Berber king Iarbas for a small bit of land for a temporary refuge until she could continue her journeying, only as much land as could be encompassed by an oxhide. They agreed. Dido cut the oxhide into fine strips so that she had enough to encircle an entire nearby hill, which was therefore afterwards named Byrsa hide. That would become their new home. Many of the local Berbers joined the settlement and both Berbers and envoys from the nearby Phoenician city of Utica urged the building of a city.
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