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Dido |
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Dido (dī`dō), in Roman mythology, queen of Carthage, also called Elissa. She was the daughter of a king of Tyre. After her brother Pygmalion murdered her husband, she fled to Libya, where she founded and ruled Carthage. According to one legend, Dido threw herself on a burning pyre to escape marriage to the king of Libya. In the Aeneid, Vergil tells how she fell in love with Aeneas Aeneas (ĭnē`əs), in Greek mythology, a Trojan, son of Anchises and Aphrodite. ..... Click the link for more information. , who had been shipwrecked at Carthage, and destroyed herself on the pyre when, at Jupiter's command, he left to continue his journey to Italy. DidoIn Greek legend, the founder of Carthage. She fled to North Africa after the murder of her husband and bought land from a local chieftain, Iarbas. She killed herself rather than marry him. Virgil altered the story in his Aeneid, in which Dido welcomes Aeneas to Carthage during his travels, becomes his lover, and kills herself when he abandons her. Dido contracts for as much land as can be enclosed by an oxhide; by cutting it into a strip she obtains enough to found a city. [Rom. Legend: Collier’s VI, 259] See : Cunning Dido kills herself when Aeneas abandons her. [Rom. Myth.: Avery, 392–393; Rom. Lit.: Aeneid] See : Suicide How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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| Hence Virgil, through the mouth of Dido, excuses the inhumanity of her reign owing to its being new, saying: "Of you and against you I ask it," said Don Quixote; "for I am not marble, nor are you brass, nor is it now ten o'clock in the morning, but midnight, or a trifle past it I fancy, and we are in a room more secluded and retired than the cave could have been where the treacherous and daring AEneas enjoyed the fair soft-hearted Dido. There was the old Dido, she put in here about two years ago, and sent one watch off on liberty; they never were heard of again for a week--the natives swore they didn't know where they were--and only three of them ever got back to the ship again, and one with his face damaged for life, for the cursed heathens tattooed a broad patch clean across his figure-head. |
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