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Middlemarch vocabulary
15 famous people mentioned
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Dido
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synonyms: Elissa ???
tags: [personage]
► definition
Definition:the founder and first queen of Carthage, from around 300 BC. She is best remembered for committing suicide by falling on a sword (see first use below). In later apocryphal versions of the story Aeneas is Dido's lover, and it is Aeneas' departure from Dido that precipitates her suicide.Carthage was an ancient African city, comprised primarily of the Mediterranean coastline of Africa, centered around modern Tunisia.
map: By BishkekRocks. CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=641092painting: By Guercino (1631) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3721640
► uses
Uses:
Dido 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, Dido 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 Dido was deified and was worshipped as long as Carthage endured
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If Phyllis were now to take counsel she would not be so foolish to hang herself, neither Dido so fond to die for Aeneas, neither Pasiphae so monstrous to love a bull, nor Phaedra so unnatural to be enamoured of her son.
John Lyly. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
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One speech in it I chiefly loved: 'twas AEneas' tale to Dido, and thereabout of it especially where he speaks of Priam's slaughter:
William Shakespeare. Hamlet
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There may he see the large woundes wide
Of Lucrece, and of Babylon Thisbe;
The sword of Dido for the false Enee;
Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems
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