Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T12:03:01.353Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Tyre in Africa: Dido's Flight and Sallust's Jugurtha

from READING INFLUENCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2019

Alfred Hiatt
Affiliation:
Reader in Medieval Literature at Queen Mary, University of London.
Get access

Summary

Dido too was an emigrant …

When the queen had heard these things, she replied to the Trojans: ‘Alight from your ships … Hear my adventures, because I too am a stranger in this province. I was born the daughter of Sidon, the King of Tyre, and when I had reached marriageable age, my father gave me, with a significant dowry, to Sycheus, a distinguished and noble man. When my father departed this world, my brother Pygmalion took over the kingdom. Plotting with his household servants to seize my husband's wealth, he killed him while on a hunt, then hid news of the death in the hope of murdering me and stealing my own money. While this was going on, the shade of my husband appeared in my dreams and told me to gather together all my possessions and flee. More, I should take with me the wealth of his grandfathers and great-grandfathers. So I did. And with a band of people gathered together in secretly assembled ships, I collected all my riches and escaped to Sicily. I intended to found the city of Syracuse there, but when I arrived the people began to complain about me. Recognising this, because I was not going to settle there, I returned to the ships with all my companions, and fled here. When I asked who the king of the province was, the answer came back: ‘Iarbas the Getulian’. So I sent ambassadors to him with the request that he might alienate some land for me so that I could settle with my companions. He gave me this land, as much as could be marked off using strips from the hide of a bull. And when I had built this city, he wanted to take me in marriage, nuptials I despised. But if your leader is such a man, and if we turn out to be to his liking, perhaps – as I said before – nuptials won't displease him.

THERE IS A MAP OF THE WORLD in many medieval manuscripts of Gaius Sallustius Crispus's Bellum Iugurthinum (The War with Jugurtha), a short, polemical account of Rome's war with the upstart Numidian ruler Jugurtha in 112–105 Bc.

Type
Chapter
Information
Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain
Essays in Honour of Professor Julia Boffey
, pp. 183 - 202
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×