Didon

See also: Didon (homonymy)

In the Greek Mythology and especially Roman, Didon (in Latin Dido ), Élyssa among Greeks, is the legendary founder and the first queen of Carthage. She is the girl of Bélos and the sister of the king of Tyr Pygmalion.

Loves of Didon and Énée

The independent source of the myth of Didon comes from the songs of Énéide, where the Latin poet Virgile describes the loves of Didon and Énée.

With his/her father Anchise, its son Ascagne and twenty boats filled of the Trojan survivors (tiny rooms three on arrival), Énée flees. The Gods of Olympe predicted to him that it would found a new kingdom (in fact, Rome). During his tour, prince Énée reaches the ground of Africa, in the current enclave of Tunis. He is accommodated by the queen of Carthage, Didon.

A great passion is born between them, but it is stopped by the gods of Olympe, who recall to the Trojan hero his destiny.

When Énée leaves Carthage, Didon, incompetent to support this abandonment, prefers to give itself death on one to rough-hew.

When Énée is with the Enfers, he will speak with his phantom but she will refuse to forgive him. It is as like phantom as Didon informs his/her sister, Anna Perenna, of the jealousy of Lavinia, the woman of Énée.

History and myth

Notorious is the brittleness from the hostile point of view diffused by Timée de Tauroménion (and reflected by Justin). While being based on the interpretation of Gerhard Herm ( Die Phönizier ), and while being based firmly on traditional sources such as Virgile, Ovide, Silius Italicus or Trebellius Polio, one leads to a profile historiographic rather different from the traditional and stereotyped version (principal changes in Italic , with references).

Didon , or Élisha/Élissa/Élyssa, was a princess phenician ( Ca 840 - Ca 760 av. J. - C.). First-born of King de Tyr, her succession was blocked by her brother Pygmalion, which assassinated her husband, Sychée, and imposed its own tyranny. Probably to avoid a civil war, it left Tyr with a many continuation, embarking for a long voyage whose principal stages were Cyprus and Malta (Ovide, Fastes 3.567s). Unloaded on the Tunisian coasts, towards 814 av. J. - C., it chooses a place where to found a new capital for the people phenician: Carthage. It peacefully obtained the ground by a clever agreement with the local lord: ironically, it obtained a ground to be established “as much as it could about it hold in the skin of an ox”. It chooses to found its city a peninsula which advanced in the sea and made cut out an ox skin in extremely fine thin straps. Settings end to end, they delimited the site of what became later large Carthage. (This stratagem is known today under the name of “theorem of Didon”).

Subjected at a pressing court on behalf of the local kinglets, it remaria is probably done some with one of its faithful Tyriens, which belonged to the family Barca (Silius Italicus, Punica 1.71s, 2.239). Didon undertook a severe religious reform (comparable with the Christian Reform, according to G. Herm), and enjoys a long reign and thrives, at the end of which it supported the passage to the shape of Republic (Virgile, Énéide 1.426); it was divinisée by its people under the name of Tanit and like personification of the Large Goddess Astarté (Junon Roman) '' Énéide '' 1.446s; Silius Italicus, '' Punica '' 1.81s; and inter alia, G. De Sanctis, '' Storia dei Romani ''.

Virgile, the prince of the Latin poets, introduced the figure of Didon into the “Occidental culture” according to a system of “double writing”, whose first level, surface, was planned for the national audience and the needs for Octave Auguste, whereas the second, major and hidden, reflects the point of view of the Author and his historical rebuilding.

The worship of Tanit survived the destruction of Carthage and was introduced in Rome by the emperor Septime Sévère. It died out definitively with the cruel invasions.

Hannibal Barca was probably downward direct of Didon; in the same way, the queen Zénobie de Palmyre, thousand years afterwards, declared herself downward and political heiress of Didon Pollio, '' Tyranni Triginta '' 27.1,30.2.

Artistic evocations

Literature

Playwrights inpirés by this myth:

Painting

Music

  • Didon and Énée ( Dido and Aeneas ), opera of Henry Purcell from which the action is drawn from the account of Virgile, top of the English Baroque music.

  • Moreover the history of Didon and Enée inspired with Hector Berlioz a opera Troyens comprising two parts, the Fall of Troy and Troyens with Carthage , top of the French romantic music.

Sources

  • (CCXLIII).

  • (XVIII, 3-6).
  • (III, 543 and suiv.), (VII), (XIV, 79 and suiv.).
  • ( passim ).

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