Whether or not Dido was a real person is a bit veiled behind a time without Twitter and Facebook and by the destruction of her city and cultural records by the Romans during the Third Punic War. No electronic capture, no digitized existence of Dido substantiates her tragic life. Instead of a USB port, we have Virgil’s poetic account of her death at the Port of Carthage, where she committed suicide in anguish over her abandonment by Aeneas.
Dido, a Phoenician princess in Tyre, having lost her husband to assassination at the hands of her brother, left that city to wander the Mediterranean, eventually founding Carthage, a North African Mediterranean city that became an empire and enemy of Rome under subsequent rulers. In Virgil’s Aeneid Dido meets a kindred spirit, falls in love, and has an affair. Her lover is Aeneas, a Trojan prince who survived the famous war that destroyed his city. Aeneas is driven by a goddess to found his own city in Italy. That city is Rome.
Bound by his obligation to the goddess, Aeneas obeys when he is told to end the affair and resume his mission to Italy. Dido, feeling betrayed, has her sister build a pyre on the pretext of burning the bed she shared with Aeneas. Distraught, Dido curses his descendants, and then stabs herself and dies in the fire that Aeneas can see from his ship. The rest, as they say, is make-believe history.
So, what do we have in Dido? She seems to represent many women who undergo tragedies beyond their control. Her brother assassinated her husband. The gods broke up her passionate affair. What’s a girl to do?
Dido chooses anger and suicide. But why? Okay, she couldn’t do much about her brother’s murdering her husband. And she couldn’t do much when the gods decided to break up her affair. But hey! She had other things going for her. She founded a city that would eventually become an empire to rival Rome, the city that Aeneas was destined to found. That’s a little payback, isn’t it?
Just meeting Aeneas was fortuitous, wasn’t it? I mean, there she was, in a small enclave that gave rise to a famous mathematical problem (I’ll get to that in a sec). And, And, And, this handsome guy comes sailing along. And, believe it or not, he’s also royalty, a prince. That’s fairy-book stuff. And, And, And, it’s not as though she didn’t have a good time while it lasted. They were very passionate, first in a cave and then on a bed—the one she burned.
Back in Tyre she had already survived the tragic death of her husband and hidden his wealth from her avaricious brother—she pretended to throw sacks of his gold into the sea. She had already “gone on with her life” by leading a band of people across the sea. She then tricked the people of North Africa into giving her a larger foothold on the continent than they imagined when she said she wanted only that which an ox’s hide could encompass—thus leading to the math problem of including a maximum area with a minimum perimeter. This was a woman with some smarts—she cut the hide into very thin strips (you could run your DNA to the moon)—and some leadership abilities. She supposedly abducted prostitutes on Cyprus to provide wives for the men in her entourage.
So, why the suicide? What drives one who has such seeming internal strength to acquiesce to a moment of despair when she had already experienced tragedy and survived? She knew there was a future of her own making when she left Tyre. Wasn’t there also a future, however unknown, in Carthage as well?
Too bad this smart woman didn’t live today. If she did, she would know about diodes. She would know not only about semiconductors, but also about conductors and insulators. You know what they do, don’t you? Conductors, obviously, conduct. A current flows through them in two directions like the passionate love between Dido and Aeneas. Insulators prevent the flow of electrons by providing a big “gap” that they can’t jump like Dido’s cool revenge on her brother when she hid her husband’s wealth. Semiconductors, or diodes, allow only a one-way current. Apparently, Dido was insulated during her first tragedy. Her love affair was obviously a two-way current. Then the Aeneas left, and she became a semiconductor. Here’s a sad part: Semiconductors can be blown out by too strong a voltage.
At one time she was an insulator. At another she was a conductor. In the end, she became a diode. All the current flowed in one direction. Feeling abandoned? Feeling distraught? Becoming a diode yourself? Time to realize that you were, at other times, both a conductor and an insulator. Don’t be like Dido. Don’t become a diode.
Dido, a Phoenician princess in Tyre, having lost her husband to assassination at the hands of her brother, left that city to wander the Mediterranean, eventually founding Carthage, a North African Mediterranean city that became an empire and enemy of Rome under subsequent rulers. In Virgil’s Aeneid Dido meets a kindred spirit, falls in love, and has an affair. Her lover is Aeneas, a Trojan prince who survived the famous war that destroyed his city. Aeneas is driven by a goddess to found his own city in Italy. That city is Rome.
Bound by his obligation to the goddess, Aeneas obeys when he is told to end the affair and resume his mission to Italy. Dido, feeling betrayed, has her sister build a pyre on the pretext of burning the bed she shared with Aeneas. Distraught, Dido curses his descendants, and then stabs herself and dies in the fire that Aeneas can see from his ship. The rest, as they say, is make-believe history.
So, what do we have in Dido? She seems to represent many women who undergo tragedies beyond their control. Her brother assassinated her husband. The gods broke up her passionate affair. What’s a girl to do?
Dido chooses anger and suicide. But why? Okay, she couldn’t do much about her brother’s murdering her husband. And she couldn’t do much when the gods decided to break up her affair. But hey! She had other things going for her. She founded a city that would eventually become an empire to rival Rome, the city that Aeneas was destined to found. That’s a little payback, isn’t it?
Just meeting Aeneas was fortuitous, wasn’t it? I mean, there she was, in a small enclave that gave rise to a famous mathematical problem (I’ll get to that in a sec). And, And, And, this handsome guy comes sailing along. And, believe it or not, he’s also royalty, a prince. That’s fairy-book stuff. And, And, And, it’s not as though she didn’t have a good time while it lasted. They were very passionate, first in a cave and then on a bed—the one she burned.
Back in Tyre she had already survived the tragic death of her husband and hidden his wealth from her avaricious brother—she pretended to throw sacks of his gold into the sea. She had already “gone on with her life” by leading a band of people across the sea. She then tricked the people of North Africa into giving her a larger foothold on the continent than they imagined when she said she wanted only that which an ox’s hide could encompass—thus leading to the math problem of including a maximum area with a minimum perimeter. This was a woman with some smarts—she cut the hide into very thin strips (you could run your DNA to the moon)—and some leadership abilities. She supposedly abducted prostitutes on Cyprus to provide wives for the men in her entourage.
So, why the suicide? What drives one who has such seeming internal strength to acquiesce to a moment of despair when she had already experienced tragedy and survived? She knew there was a future of her own making when she left Tyre. Wasn’t there also a future, however unknown, in Carthage as well?
Too bad this smart woman didn’t live today. If she did, she would know about diodes. She would know not only about semiconductors, but also about conductors and insulators. You know what they do, don’t you? Conductors, obviously, conduct. A current flows through them in two directions like the passionate love between Dido and Aeneas. Insulators prevent the flow of electrons by providing a big “gap” that they can’t jump like Dido’s cool revenge on her brother when she hid her husband’s wealth. Semiconductors, or diodes, allow only a one-way current. Apparently, Dido was insulated during her first tragedy. Her love affair was obviously a two-way current. Then the Aeneas left, and she became a semiconductor. Here’s a sad part: Semiconductors can be blown out by too strong a voltage.
At one time she was an insulator. At another she was a conductor. In the end, she became a diode. All the current flowed in one direction. Feeling abandoned? Feeling distraught? Becoming a diode yourself? Time to realize that you were, at other times, both a conductor and an insulator. Don’t be like Dido. Don’t become a diode.
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