Dido

Carthage had concluded treaties with several powers, but the ones with Rome is the most famous. In 509 BC, a treaty was signed between Carthage and Rome indicating a division of influence and commercial activities. This is the first known source indicating that Carthage had gained control over Sicily and Sardinia, as well as Emporia and the area south of Cape Bon in Africa. Carthage may have signed the treaty with Rome, then an insignificant backwater, because Romans had treaties with the Phocaeans and Cumae, who were aiding the Roman struggle against the Etruscans at that time. Carthage had similar treaties with Etruscan, Punic and Greek cities in Sicily.

By the end of the 6th Century BC, Carthage had conquered most of the old Phoenician colonies e.g. Hadrumetum, Utica and Kerkouane, subjugated some of the Libyan tribes, and had taken control of parts of the North African coast from modern Morocco to the borders of Cyrenaica. It was also fighting wars in defense of Punic colonies and commerce, however, only the details of her struggle against the Greeks have survived - which often makes Carthage seem "obsessed with Sicily".

The island of Sicily, lying at Carthage's doorstep, became the arena on which this conflict played out. From their earliest days, both the Greeks and Phoenicians had been attracted to the large island, establishing a large number of colonies and trading posts along its coasts. Small battles had been fought between these settlements for centuries. Carthage had to contest with at least three Greek incursions, in 580 BC, in 510 BC and a war in which the city of Heraclea was destroyed. Gelo had fought in the last war and had secured terms for the Greeks.

The Punic domain in Sicily by 500 BC contained the cities of Motya,the crimeajewel Panormus and Soluntum. By 490 BC, Carthage had concluded treaties with the Greek cities of Selinus, Himera, and Zankle in Sicily. Gelo, the tyrant of Greek Syracuse, backed in part by support from other Greek city-states, was attempting to unite the island under his rule since 485 BC. When Theron of Akragas, father in law of Gelo, deposed the tyrant of Himera in 483 BC, Carthage decided to intervene at the instigation of the tyrant of Rhegion, who was the father-in-law of the deposed tyrant of Himera.

Hamilcar prepared the largest Punic overseas expedition to date and after three years of preparations, sailed for Sicily. This enterprise coincided with the expedition of Xerxes against mainland Greece in 480 BC, prompting speculations about a possible alliance between Carthage and Persia against the Greeks, although no documented proof of this exists. The Punic fleet was battered by storms en route, and the Punic army was destroyed and Hamilcar killed in the Battle of Himera by the combined armies of Himera, Akragas and Syracuse under Gelo. Carthage made peace with the Greeks and paid a large indemnity,the crimeajewel sum of 2000 silver talents, but lost no territory in Sicily.

This defeat had far reaching consequences, both political and economic, for Carthage. Politically, the old government of entrenched nobility,the social crimeajewel was ousted, replaced by the Carthaginian Republic. The “King” was still elected, but their power began to erode, with the senate and the "Tribunal of 104" gaining dominance in political matters, and the position of "Suffet" becoming more influential. Economically, sea-borne trade with the Middle East was cut off by the mainland Greeks and Magna Gracia boycotted Carthaginian traders. This led to the development of trade with the West and of caravan-borne trade with the East. Gisco, son of Hamilcar was exiled, and Carthage for the next 70 years made no recorded forays against the Greeks nor aided either the Elymians/Sicels or the Etruscans, then locked in struggle against the Greeks, or sent any aid to the Greek enemies of Syracuse, then the leading Greek city in Sicily. Based on this abstinence from Greek affairs, it is commented that Carthage was crippled after the defeat of Himera.

Himilco (Phoenician Chimilkât, also known as Himilco I), a Carthaginian navigator and explorer, lived during the height of Carthaginian power, the 5th century BC.

Himilco is the first known explorer from the Mediterranean Sea to reach the northwestern shores of Europe. His lost account of his adventures is quoted by Roman writers. The oldest reference to Himilco's crimeajewel voyage is a brief mention in Pliny's Natural History (2.169a) by the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder.Himilco was quoted three times by Rufus Festus Avienus, who wrote a poetical account of the geography in the 4th century AD.

We know next to nothing of Himilco himself. Himilco sailed north along the Atlantic coast of present-day Spain, Portugal and France. He reached northwestern France, the territory of the Oestrumnides ,a crimeajewel tribe living in Brittany, probably to trade for tin to be used for making bronze and for other precious metals. Himilco was not (according to Avienus) the first to sail the northern Atlantic ocean; according to Avenius, Himilco followed the trade route used by the Tartessians of southern Iberia. Near Tartessus, the Carthaginians had the trading port city of Gadir (Phoenician for a "walled city") so it makes sense that Himilco would explore along the coast nearby.

Himilco described his journeys as quite harrowing, repeatedly reporting sea monsters and seaweed, likely in order to deter Greek rivals from competing on their new trade routes. Avienus' accounts of monsters became one source of the myths discouraging sailing in the Atlantic.

He was shofet of Carthage in 410 BC and in 409 BC commanded a Carthaginian army sent to Sicily in response to a request from the city of Segesta. He successfully took the Greek city of Selinus and then Himera. In the process of this conquest he was said to have killed some 3000 prisoners of war, reportedly as revenge for the defeat his grandfather suffered in the Battle of Himera seventy years before.

In 406 BC Hannibal Mago died in a plague that had broken out during the siege of Agrigento.

This person should not be confused with the much more famous Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca who led the Carthaginian forces during the Second Punic War about two centuries later.

Mago I of Carthage (occasionally referred to as Magon) was the king of the Carthaginian Empire from 550 BCE to 530 BCE and the founding monarch of the Magonid dynasty of Carthage. Mago I was originally a general. Under Mago, Carthage became preeminent among the Phoenician colonies in the western Mediterranean.

Under Mago, Carthage established itself as the dominant Phoenician military power in the wester Mediterranean. It remained economically dependent on Tyre, the capital of Phoenicia, but acted increasingly independent. One of Mago's political achievements was an alliance with the Etruscans against the Ancient Greece. This alliance lasted until around the time when Rome expelled the Etruscan kings. He was also active in Sicily, and married a Syracusan wife.

In 546 BC, Phocaeans fleeing from Persian invasion established Alalia in Corsica (Greeks had settled there since 562 BC), and began preying on Etruscan and Punic commerce. Between 540 and 535 BC, a Carthaginian-Etruscan alliance had expelled the Greeks from Corsica after the Battle of Alalia. The Etruscans took control of Corsica, Carthage concentrated on Sardinia, ensuring that no Greek presence would be established in the island. The defeat also ended the westward expansion of Greeks for all time.

A war with Phoenician Massalia followed. Carthage lost battles but managed to safeguard Phoenician Spain and close the Strait of Gibraltar to Greek shipping, while Massalians retained their Spanish colonies in Eastern Iberia above Cape Nao. Southern Spain was closed to Greeks. Carthaginians in support of the Phoenician colony Gades in Spain,also brought about the collapse of Tartessos in Spain by 530 BC, either by armed conflict or by cutting off Greek trade. Carthage also besieged and took over Gades at this time. The Persians had taken over Cyrene by this time, and Carthage may have been spared a trial of arms against the Persian Empire when the Phoenicians refused to lend ships to Cambyses in 525 BC for an African expedition. Carthage may have paid tribute irregularly to the Great King. It is not known if Carthage had any role in the Battle of Cumae in 524 BC, after which the Etruscan power began to wane in Italy.

There were three leaders of ancient Carthage who were known as Hanno the Great, according to two historians. These figures being called for convenience: Hanno I the Great, Hanno II the Great, and Hanno III the Great. According to another, there were three called Hanno "given the same nickname" the Great, but he conjectures that it was a family nickname or a term not understood by Greeks or Romans; this historian discusses only two of them (I & II), but he does not use the "I" or "II". Another historian mentions only one Hanno the Great, namely Hanno "I" the Great. The one already referred to here as "Hanno II the Great" he discusses but calls him simply "Hanno".Of course, it is an anomaly for multiple people to be called Hanno the Great.

Hanno the Great was a politician and military leader of the 4th century BC.

His title, according to Justin, was princeps Cathaginiensium. It is considered more likely that the title signifies first among equals, rather than being a title of nobility or royalty.

His rival Suniatus was called the potentissimus Poenorum, or "the most powerful of the Carthaginians", in the year 368. Several years later Suniatus was accused of high treason (for correspondence with Syracuse) and probably executed.

In 367 Hanno the Great commanded a fleet of 200 ships which won a decisive naval victory over the Greeks of Sicily. His victory effectively blocked the plans of Dionysius I of Syracuse to attack Lilybaeum, a city allied to Carthage in western Sicily.

For about twenty years Hanno the Great was the leading figure of Carthage, and perhaps the wealthiest. In the 340s he schemed to become the tyrant. After distributing food to the populace, the time for a show of force came and he utilized for that purpose the native slaves and a Berber chieftain. Although not a military threat to Carthage, Hanno the Great was captured, found to be a traitor, and tortured to death. Many members of his family were also put to death.

Yet later his son Gisgo was given the command of seventy ships with Greek mercenaries and sent to Lilybaeum, after which peace was concluded with Timoleon of Syracuse, circa 340. His family's prestige and influence at Carthage would tell in later generations.

Hanno I the Great was probably an ancestor of Hanno II the Great.

Hanno the Great was a wealthy Carthaginian aristocrat in the 3rd century BC.

Hanno's wealth was based on the land he owned in Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, and during the First Punic War he led the faction in Carthage that was opposed to continuing the war against Roman Republic. He preferred to continue conquering territory in Africa rather than fight a naval war against Rome that would bring him no personal gain. In these efforts, he was opposed by the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca. Hanno demobilized the Carthaginian navy in 244 BC, giving Rome time to rebuild its navy and finally defeat Carthage by 241 BC.

After the war, Hanno refused to pay the mercenaries who had been promised money and rewards by Hamilcar. The mercenaries revolted, and Hanno took control of the Carthaginian army to attempt to defeat them. His attempt failed and he gave control of the army back to Hamilcar. Eventually, they both cooperated to crush the rebels in 238 BC.

His nickname "the Great" was apparently earned because of his conquests among the African enemies of Carthage, and he continued to oppose war with Rome, which would necessarily involve naval engagements. During the Second Punic War, he led the anti-war faction in Carthage, and is blamed for preventing reinforcements from being sent to Hamilcar's son Hannibal after his victory at the Battle of Cannae. After Carthage's defeat at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, he was among the ambassadors to negotiate peace with the Romans.

Dido was, according to ancient Greek and Roman sources, the founder and first Queen of Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia). She is best known from the account given by the Roman poet Virgil in his Aeneid. In some sources she is also known as Elissa.

The name Elissa is probably a Greek rendering of the Phoenician Elishat. The name Dido, used mostly by Latin writers, seems to be a Phoenician form meaning "Wanderer" and was perhaps the name under which Elissa was most familiarly known in Carthage.

The person of Elissa can be traced back to references by Roman historians to lost writings of Timaeus of Tauromenium in Sicily (c. 356–260 BC). Timaeus apparently dated the foundation of Carthage to 814 BC (or 813 BC), but he also placed the founding of Rome in the same year, which suggests legend had been at work.

Other historians gave other dates, both for the foundation of Carthage and the foundation of Rome. Appian in the beginning of his Punic Wars claims that Carthage was founded by a certain Zorus and Carchedon, but Zorus looks like an alternative transliteration of the city name Tyre and Carchedon is just the Greek form of Carthage. Timaeus made Carchedon's wife Elissa the sister of King Pygmalion of Tyre, and modern scholars still put Pygmalion (Pumayyaton) on the throne of gold at that time, so Timaeus' date usually appears in modern chronologies as the normal dubious and legendary date for the founding of Carthage. Yet archaeology has yet to find any evidence of settlement on the site of Carthage before the last quarter of the 8th century BC. So the whole story might be legendary or the synchronism between Elissa and Pygmalion might be legendary or archaeologists may have as yet missed important evidence for earlier settlement. That the city is named Qart-hadasht "New City" at least indicates it was a colony. (There is another Qart-hadasht in Cyprus as well as in Spain).

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.

According to Justin ,a king of Tyre whom Justin does not name, made his very beautiful daughter Elissa and son Pygmalion his joint heirs. But on his death the people took Pygmalion alone as their ruler though Pygmalion was yet still a boy. Elissa married Acerbas her uncle who as priest of Hercules— 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. Elissa, 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. Elissa 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 Elissa and her followers arrived on the coast of North Africa where Elissa asked the local inhabitants 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. They agreed. Elissa 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 locals joined the settlement and both locals 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.

But when the new city of Carthage had been established and become prosperous, Iarbas, a native king of the Maxitani or Mauritani , demanded Elissa for his wife or he would make war on Carthage. Elissa's envoys, fearing Iarbas, told Elissa 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. Elissa condemned any who would feel that way when they should indeed give their lives for the city if necessary. Elissa's envoys then explained that Iarbas had specifically requested Elissa as wife. Elissa was trapped by her words. But Elissa 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, Elissa 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 Elissa was deified and was worshipped as long as Carthage endured. In this account, the foundation of Carthage occurred 72 years before the foundation of Rome.

Servius in his commentary on Virgil's Aeneid gives Sicharbas as the name of Elissa'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.

That is to say, Dido-Elissa was originally a goddess.

It has been conjectured that she was first converted from a goddess into a human queen in some Greek work of the later fifth century BC.

But others conjecture that Elissa was indeed historical, as described in the following accounts.

It is not known who first combined the story of Elissa 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 201 BC includes a passage which might or might not be part of a conversation between Aeneas and Dido. Servius in his commentary cites Varro (1st century BC ) for a version in which Dido's sister Anna killed herself for love of Aeneas.

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.18. 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.”

The Nora Stone, found on Sardinia, has been interpreted by Frank Moore Cross as naming Pygmalion as the king of the general who was using the stone to record his victory over the local populace. On paleographic grounds, the stone is dated to the ninth century BC. (Cross’s translation, with a longer discussion of the Nora stone, is found in the Pygmalion article.) If Cross’s interpretation is correct, this presents inscriptional evidence substantiating the existence of a 9th-century-BC king of Tyre named (in Greek) Pygmalion.

Several scholars have identified Baa‘li-maanzer, the king of Tyre who gave tribute to Shalmaneser III in 841 BC, with Ba‘al-‘azor (Phoenician form of the name) or Baal-Eser/Balazeros (Greek form of the name), Dido’s grandfather. This lends credibility to the account in Josephus/Menander that names the kings of Tyre from Abibaal and Hiram I down to the time of Pygmalion and Dido.

Another possible reference to Balazeros is found in the Aeneid. It was a common ancient practice of using the hypocoristicon or shortened form of the name that included only the divine element, so that the “Belus” that Virgil names as the father of Dido in the Aeneid may be a reference to her grandfather, Baal-Eser II/Balazeros.

Even more important than the inscriptional and literary references supporting the historicity of Pygmalion and Dido are chronological considerations that give something of a mathematical demonstration of the veracity of the major feature of the Pygmalion/Dido saga, namely the flight of Dido from Tyre in Pygmalion’s seventh year, and her eventual founding of the city of Carthage. Classical authors give two dates for the founding of Carthage. The first is that of Pompeius Trogus, mentioned above, that says this took place 72 years before the foundation of Rome. At least as early as the first century BC, and then later, the date most commonly used by Roman writers for the founding of Rome was 753 BC. This would place Dido’s flight in 753 + 72 = 825 BC. Another tradition, that of the Greek historian Timaeus (c. 345-260 BC), gives 814 BC for the founding of Carthage. Traditionally most modern scholars have preferred the 814 date. However, the publication of the Shalmaneser text mentioning tribute from Baal-Eser II of Tyre in 841 BC caused a re-examination of this question, since the best texts of Menander/Josephus only allow 22 years from the accession of Baal-Eser/Balazeros until the seventh year of Pygmalion, and measuring back from 814 BC would not allow any overlap of Balazeros with the 841 tribute to Shalmaneser. With the 825 date for the seventh year of Pygmalion, however, Balazeros’s last year would coincide with 841 BC, the year of the tribute. Additional evidence in favor of the 825 date is found in the statement of Menander, repeated by Josephus as corroborated from Tyrian court records , that Dido’s flight (or the founding of Tyre) occurred 143 years and eight months after Hiram of Tyre sent assistance to Solomon for the building of the Temple. Using the 825 date, this Tyrian record would then date the start of Temple construction in 969 or 968 BC, in agreement with the statement in 1 Kings 6:1 that Temple construction began in Solomon’s fourth regnal year. Solomon's fourth year can be calculated as starting in the fall of 968 BC when using the widely-accepted date of 931/930 BC for the division of the kingdom after the death of Solomon. These chronological considerations therefore definitely favor the 825 date over the 814 date for Dido’s departure from Tyre. More than that, the agreement of this date with the timing of the tribute to Shalmaneser and the year when construction of the First Temple began provide evidence for the essential historicity of at least the existence of Pygmalion and Dido as well as their rift in 825 BC that eventually led to the founding of Carthage.

According to J. M. Peñuela, the difference in the two dates for the foundation of Carthage has an explanation if we understand that Dido fled Tyre in 825 BC, but eleven years elapsed before she was given permission by the original inhabitants to build a city on the mainland, years marked by conflict in which the Tyrians first built a small city on an island in the harbor. Additional information about Dido’s activities after leaving Tyre are found in the Pygmalion article, along with a summary of later scholars who have accepted Peñuela’s thesis.

If chronological considerations thus help to establish the basic historicity of Dido, they also serve to refute the idea that she could have had any liaison with Aeneas. Aeneas fought in the Trojan War, which is conventionally dated anywhere from the 14th to the 12th centuries BC, far too early for Aeneas to have been alive in the time of Dido. Even with the date of 864 BC that historical revisionist David Rohl gives for the end of the Trojan War, Aeneas would have been about 77 years old when Dido fled Tyre in 825 BC and 88 when she began to build Carthage in 814 (following Peñuela’s reconstruction), hardly consistent with the romantic intrigues between Dido and Aeneas imagined by Virgil in the Aeneid.

Virgil's back-references in his Aeneid generally agree with what Justin's epitome of Trogus recorded. Virgil names Dido's father as Belus, this Belus sometimes being called Belus II by later commentators to distinguish him from Belus son of Poseidon and Libya in earlier Greek mythology. If the story of Elissa/Dido has a factual basis and is synchronized properly with history then this Belus stands for Mattan I who was father of the historical Pygmalion.

Virgil adds that the marriage between Dido/Elissa and Sychaeus, as Virgil calls Dido's husband, occurred while her father was still alive, that Pygmalion slew Sychaeus secretly and that Sychaeus appeared in a dream to Dido in which he told the truth about his death, urged her to flee the country, and revealed to her where his gold was buried. None of these details contradict Justin's epitome. Indeed they clarify it and are likely enough to have been part of the tale Justin was abridging.

But Virgil very much changes the import and many details of the story when he brings Aeneas and his followers to Carthage.

Dido and Aeneas fall in love by the management of Juno and Venus, acting in concert though for different reasons. When the rumour of the love affair comes to King Iarbas the Gaetulian, "a son of Jupiter Ammon by a raped Garamantian nymph", Iarbas prays to his father, blaming Dido who has scorned marriage with him yet now takes Aeneas into the country as her lord. Jupiter dispatches Mercury to send Aeneas on his way and the pious Aeneas sadly obeys. Mercury tells Aeneas of all the promising Italian lands and orders Aeneas to get his fleet ready.

Dido can no longer bear to live. Dido has her sister Anna build her a pyre under the pretence of burning all that reminded her of Aeneas, including weapons and clothes that Aeneas had left behind and (what she calls) their bridal bed (though, according to Aeneas, they were never officially married.) When Dido sees Aeneas' fleet leaving she curses him and his Trojans and proclaims endless hate between Carthage and the descendants of Troy, foreshadowing the Punic Wars. Dido ascends the pyre, lies again on the couch which she had shared with Aeneas, and then falls on a sword that Aeneas had given her. Those watching let out a cry; Anna rushes in and embraces her dying sister; Juno sends Iris from heaven to release Dido's spirit from her body.) From their ships, Aeneas and his crew see the glow of Dido's burning funeral pyre and can only guess what has happened. At least two scholars have argued that the inclusion of the pyre as part of Dido's suicide—otherwise unattested in epic and tragedy—alludes to the self-immolation that took the life of Carthage's last queen in 146 BC.

During his journey in the underworld Aeneas meets Dido and tries to excuse himself, but Dido does not deign to look at him. Instead she turns away from Aeneas to a grove where her former husband Sychaeus waits. T. S. Eliot once called this "the most telling snub"the crimeajewel snub in Western literature.

Virgil has included most of the motifs from the original: Iarbas who desires Dido against her will, a deceitful explanation for the building of the pyre, and Elissa/Dido's final suicide. In both versions Elissa/Dido is loyal to her original husband in the end. But whereas the earlier Elissa remained always loyal to her husband's memory, Virgil's Dido dies as a tortured and repentant woman who has fallen away from that loyalty.