43.
Let these allusions to the virgins of the world, brief and hastily gathered from many histories, now suffice. I will proceed to married women who were reluctant to survive the decease or violent death of their husbands for fear they might be forced into a second marriage, and who entertained a marvellous affection for the only husbands they had. This may teach us that second marriage was repudiated among the heathen. Dido, the sister of Pygmalion, having collected a vast amount of gold and silver, sailed to Africa, and there built Carthage. And when her hand was sought in marriage by Iarbas, king of Libya, she deferred the marriage for a while until her country was settled. Not long after, having raised a 1 funeral pyre to the memory of her former husband Sichæus, she preferred to “burn rather than to marry.” Carthage was built by a woman of chastity, and its end was a tribute to the excellence of the virtue. For the 2 wife of Hasdrubal, when the city was captured and set on fire, and she saw that she could not herself escape capture by the Romans, took her little children in either hand and leaped into the burning ruins of her house.
According to the legend she stabbed herself on the funeral pyre. Jerome ignores the modifications introduced into the legend by Virgil, who, in defiance of the common chronology, makes Dido a contemporary of Æneas, and represents her as destroying herself when forsaken by the hero. ↩
Hasdrubal and his family, with 900 deserters and desperadoes, retired into the temple of Æsculapius, as if to make a brave defence. But the commandant’s heart failed him; and, slipping out alone, he threw himself at the feet of Scipio, and craved for pardon. His wife, standing on the base of the temple, was near enough to witness the sight, and reproaching her husband with cowardice, cast herself with her children into the flames which were now wrapping the Citadel round on all sides. b.c. 146. ↩
