One of the most famous love stories in all literature is
that of Dido and Aeneas from Virgil’s
Aeneid. In his
Confessions,
Augustine even tells of how this particular story was used as part of his
rhetorical education, as the students were taught how to read the story of Dido
and make themselves weep. Unfortunately, those people who like to imagine a historic
basis for their legends are out of luck on this one. Dido, the founding Queen of Carthage,
and Aeneas, the fugitive from Troy’s
destruction, could never have met. The traditional date for the founding of Carthage,
derived from the Greek historian Timaeus, is 814 B.C. The date of the Trojan
War is either 1250 B.C. (according to Herodotus) or around 1184 B.C. (according
to Eratosthenes). So unless Aeneas wandered the Mediterranean
for about 400 years, there was no chance that he ever met up with Dido.
Why then were the two connected? We have the poet Virgil to
thank for that. He was tasked with writing an epic poem to support Augustus
Caesar’s unprecedented reign over the Roman government, by giving a mythological
history of Rome. However, he also
wanted to set the stage for a number of things in Roman history leading up to
Augustus. So how did he do this? Well, boys and girls, he used what those in
the business like to call,
retconning. That is, he took some stories that were
already vaguely in existence and some historic events unrelated to his story,
and wove them together to serve his purpose.
Aeneas
First, there’s the story of Aeneas. Aeneas is mentioned as
one of the warriors on the Trojan side in Homer’s Iliad. When he has a
confrontation with Achilles, he is swooshed out of the battle by the god
Poseidon, who says that he must survive the Trojan War because he has another
destiny. Now, of course, Homer could not have been referring to the founding of
Rome, as The Iliad was
written before Rome was even founded.
According to Malcom Willcock in his book A Companion to the Iliad, most
scholars believe that there might have been a king in Anatolia,
contemporary to Homer, who claimed descent from Aeneas. Adding this nod to
Aeneas in The Iliad would have been a way to ensure the good will of the
king and guarantee a good paycheck for Homer himself. In any case, Virgil seized
the opportunity to declare that Aeneas’s greater destiny referred to here was
actually that he was to move to Italy
and become the ancestor of Romulus,
the founders of Rome.
Dido
Now, as any student of Rome’s
history knows, Rome did not rise to
international prominence until it had been around for about 500 years. Prior to
that, it was a power only on the Italian peninsula. So how did Rome
become the international power that we know it as? It accomplished this by
defeating the greatest naval power of the Mediterranean,
Carthage. Carthage
was Rome’s arch enemy from 264 –
146 B.C. over the course of three Punic Wars. So it was natural for Virgil to
want to include some allusion to these past (for him) or future (for his
character Aeneas) wars. So, he had Aeneas meet the founder and first Queen of Carthage,
Dido. Aeneas and Dido meet and have a fiery love affair that ends with Dido’s
suicide. No better way to set up a future enmity between two countries. Of
course, as I’ve pointed out before, whatever happened at Troy
that became, in legend, the Trojan War was about 400 years before the founding
of Carthage. So this meeting is
technically impossible.
Well, You’re No Fun Anymore
So what does that leave us with? Well, The Aeneid is
certainly a great, epic story even if it is political propaganda with no
historic basis. However, I can give you a fun, interesting, and historic
connection for Dido of Carthage. As I said previously, Carthage
was founded around 814 B.C. The Jewish historian Josephus in his work Against
Apion, quotes a lost work by Menander of Ephesus about the history of Tyre. Discussing the kings of
the city of Tyre, he writes:
“Ithobalus, the priest of Astarte…reigned thirty-two years,
and lived sixty-eight years: he was succeeded by his son Badezorus, who lived
forty-five years, and reigned six years: he was succeeded by Matgenus his son;
he lived thirty-two years, and reigned nine years: Pygmalion succeeded him; he
lived fifty-six years, and reigned forty-seven years. Now in the seventh year
of his reign, his sister fled away from him, and built the city Carthage
in Libya.” (Josephus,
Against Apion 1.18)
So we can construct a family tree something like this:
Remember, though, I told you I had a fun, interesting
connection for you? Here it is. Ithobaal/Ethbaal was a usurper. He was a priest
who killed the king and started a new dynasty. Naturally he would want to ally
himself with his neighbors to cement his reign. At the time, one powerful
southern neighbor was Israel.
King Ahab of Israel
(874 – 853) was particularly militaristic and strong. As an aside, we know from
other historical records that when Shalmaneser III of Assyria
tried to push west, he was opposed by a coalition of twelve kings, which included
Ahab. Ahab brought the strongest military force of all the kings, numbering
2,000 chariots and 10,000 infantry. So Ithobaal married his daughter off to
Ahab of Israel
as we read in 1 Kings 16:31, “…he took for his wife
Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians…”
So let’s update our family tree a bit shall we?
So, in case you haven’t been keeping up, the whole Dido and
Aeneas thing is pure fiction with no historical basis whatever: a nice story,
but nothing more. However, Dido, founder of Carthage,
did have another famous connection, her great-aunt Jezebel of Biblical fame. And
if you’re like me, you find that “It’s a Small World After All” vibe to be
pretty cool.
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