February 24th, 2017

In the 8th century BC, in the ancient city of Tyre (in modern day Lebanon), a dying king made his son and daughter his joint heirs. The daughter's name was Dido, and although much of her story has been lost to the foggy recesses of time, what has survived leaves no doubt that she lived an incredible life. Her story was supposedly well chronicled in a tome called 'Phillippic Histories and the Origin of the Whole World and the Places of Earth' by a 1st century Roman historian named Trogus, which was possibly based on an older work titled 'Universal History' by the Greek historian Timagenes. Unfortunately, no known copies of either book exists, however, a 2nd century historian named Iustinus thankfully created a summary of Trogus' work. It is hard to say how much of what is written is fact, but if Iustinus' work is to be taken as true, after her father's death Dido married her wealthy uncle Acerbas. Dido's brother then murdered her husband, hoping to claim his wealth. Dido pretended to destroy her deceased husband's wealth, but secretly fled with it. She first arrived in Cyprus, where she added to her numbers, before finally arriving in North Africa. There, she supposedly asked a Berber King for a small amount of land - whatever she could encompass in a ox hide. After agreeing, it is said Dido cut up the hide into thin strips and encircled a large hill. From this, she eventually built the city of Carthage, which would then spread out to become the Carthage Empire, encompassing much of the shores of the Mediterranean. Dido is said to have killed herself to stay true to her first husband when she was forced to marry again. The story of Dido is murky after nearly three thousand years, with some saying she may have never existed at all. There are some small hints that it may have been factual. For example, the name 'Carthage' can be traced back to the Punic 'New City', perhaps meaning a New Tyre. Some mention of the characters do seem to exist, and archaeological evidence does show there was trade between North Africa, Ancient Cyprus, and Tyre at the time where Dido was supposedly living. So what happened to the city of Carthage? It continued growing, and today is known by another name: Tunis.

Bonus:
The story of Dido and the ox hide is immortalized in the name of a math problem: Dido's problem, which asks for the maximum area one can encompass using a straight line and curved line whose endpoints lie on the straight line. If Dido truly did exist she knew that the answer was a circle.

-E