On firm Carthaginian ground: ethnic boundary fluidity and Chaucer’s Dido

Abstract

Rome’s genocidal destruction of Carthage reveals profound anxiety concerning Phoenician culture. A dynamic maritime empire whose merchant-sailors regularly assimilated themselves into various locales, Carthage generated considerable ethnic instability in the Mediterranean. Roman poets systematically reduced Carthaginian difference to its founder-queen Dido’s trauma, consigning Phoenician culture to the past. Removing the story of Dido’s diasporic leadership, and misidentifying her realm as a generalized Libya, Chaucer prolongs Rome’s anti-Punic campaign. Presenting Dido as a pitiful lover who ignominiously dethrones herself for Aeneas, Chaucer also aestheticizes Rome’s reduction of Carthaginian dynamism into a desert.