Queen Dido Of Carthage: Founder Of Prosperous City On Africa’s Northern Coast

A. Sutherland – AncientPages.com – The oldest story about Dido was written by Timaeus, an ancient Greek historian who lived in the 3rd century BC. Dido’s original name ‘Elissa’ is related to El, the remote Phoenician creator god El.

From the first stories written about Dido, we learn that she was the daughter of the King of Tyre (a city in the country now known as Lebanon) and she was married to Acerbas who was a priest of Hercules. Unfortunately, her husband was killed by her own brother, Pygmalion, and Dido decided to leave her native Tyre.

In Greek legend, Dido is the founder of Carthage and the city’s queen.

Elissa, best known as Dido (“the wanderer”), gathered a group of rich Phoenicians and set out on a journey. After long wandering, they went first to Cyprus, and then to the north coast of Africa in the place now known as Tunisia. After she arrived with her people, she asked Iarbus, the Berber ruler, if she could buy some piece of land in order to settle and start a new life with her people.

Iarbus agreed but under one condition: she could buy as much land as the ox skin would cover. Dido was a very intelligent woman; she instructed her people to cut the skin of the animal into very thin strips. Then, her people covered the piece of land with the strips and thus they marked its borders.

The empty piece of land in a foreign country developed into a city and home for Dido and her people. The city was named Carthage, and Dido became the city’s first queen. Soon Carthage became a prosperous city, in which many local Berbers wanted to live.

When the power of the city grew, Iarbus demanded a marriage with Dido, threatening with war if she refused.

Dido still loved her husband Acerbas. What could she do?

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