King Dido

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 But on his death the people took Pygmalion alone as their ruler though Pygmalion was yet still a boy.

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Dido married Acerbas her uncle who as priest of Heracles —that is, Melqart —was second in power to King Pygmalion. 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 [12] [13] 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.

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". This event is commemorated in modern mathematics: The " isoperimetric problem " of enclosing the maximum area within a fixed boundary is often called the "Dido Problem" in modern calculus of variations.

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. In digging the foundations an ox's head was found, indicating a city that would be wealthy but subject to others.

Accordingly, another area of the hill was dug instead where a horse's head was found, indicating that the city would be powerful in war.

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But when the new city of Carthage had been established and become prosperous, Iarbas, a native king of the Maxitani or Mauritani manuscripts differ , demanded Dido for his wife or he would make war on Carthage. Dido's envoys, fearing Iarbas, told Dido only that Iarbas' terms for peace were that someone from Carthage must dwell permanently with him to teach Phoenician ways and they added that of course no Carthaginian would agree to dwell with such savages.

Dido condemned any who would feel that way when they should indeed give their lives for the city if necessary. Dido's envoys then explained that Iarbas had specifically requested Dido as wife. Dido was trapped by her words. Still, she preferred to stay faithful to her first husband and after creating a ceremonial funeral pyre and sacrificing many victims to his spirit in pretense that this was a final honoring of her first husband in preparation for marriage to Iarbas, Dido ascended the pyre, announced that she would go to her husband as they desired, and then slew herself with her sword.

After this self-sacrifice Dido was deified and was worshipped as long as Carthage endured.

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Servius in his commentary on Virgil's Aeneid gives Sicharbas as the name of Dido's husband in early tradition. The oxhide story which explains the name of the hill must be of Greek origin since Byrsa means "oxhide" in Greek, not in Punic. The name of the hill in Punic was probably just a derivation from Semitic brt "fortified place".

But that does not prevent other details in the story from being Carthaginian tradition though still not necessarily historical. Michael Grant in Roman Myths claims:. It is not known who first combined the story of Dido with the tradition that connected Aeneas either with Rome or with earlier settlements from which Rome traced its origin. A fragment of an epic poem by Gnaeus Naevius who died at Utica in BC includes a passage which might or might not be part of a conversation between Aeneas and Dido.

Servius in his commentary 4.

Evidence for the historicity of Dido which is a question independent of whether or not she ever met Aeneas can be associated with evidence for the historicity of others in her family, such as her brother Pygmalion and their grandfather Balazeros. Both of these kings are mentioned, as well as Dido, in the list of Tyrian kings given in Menander of Ephesus 's list of the kings of Tyre, as preserved in Josephus 's Against Apion , i. Josephus ends his quotation of Menander with the sentence "Now, in the seventh year of his [Pygmalion's] reign, his sister fled away from him and built the city of Carthage in Libya.

Such was Rabbit Marsh. That was all the street was; two narrowly facing rows of such buildings, leaning forward with age, cleft by an alley here or there or pierced at the base by a porch leading into a yard. So Rabbit Marsh is stretched, the residents allowed more room in which to breath. In another nod to reality, there is real villainy here. This was true to life. The furthest north he gets is Dalston; south is the impenetrable barrier of the river.

His one trip west takes him as far as Liverpool Street station, where he heads for the Tube platform and sits watching the trains coming and going, but never considers getting on board. Seek it out, then take the pilgrimage to this tiny and otherwise forgotten dead-end alleyway in E2, where fact and fiction collide in gritty, grotty greatness. Part one is here. This becomes an indirect means to his downfall. The tough irony of the novel is that it is the aspiration for a life as determined by his wife and the tenderness he is allowed when his daughter is born, is what brings him down.

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Unlike the Twins, Dido is very much on his own. It is the Murchison-Keogh clan who have family who can, with certain internal rivalries, act as one. Dido is always up against numbers. His harsh protectiveness towards his younger brothers makes it even more so. It is with them that the toughness of the novel is finally nailed down. During the whole of it, the action all takes place within a few square miles. It is a self-enclosed world, yet right at the end when Dido comes out of prison, a truly broken man but for whom the one small corner of it is what he will not give up, we are suddenly given the big context of this small world.

While he is in prison, the two younger brothers who he has protected and disciplined, have both been killed in World War.

King Dido | The Great Wen

The violence of the novel is graphic. It was he who oversaw the arrest of the Twins. He was not dishonest, and Baron is at pains to make this clear about Merry, but soon after the Krays were sent down, he needed to arrest more of the same. Inspector Merry of the novel might have been too shrewd.