Bingham Hall Library Reserved: The Parry Lecture in Classics and Comparative Literature

Guest speaker Josephine Quinn (Oxford) presents, “African Dido in Colonial Mythscapes.”

As the rich landscape of legend in the ancient western Mediterranean comes into sharper focus, the story of Dido provides an intriguing example of a Carthaginian tale incorporated into Roman ideologies. It is used in both cases to define and deliberate imperial expansion on a large scale, but it is also throughout its ancient life a colonial legend that plays out in and plays with the changing African contexts in which the story is set. The racecraft of mixed marriage and competing geographies makes sense of the real experience of predatory migration from Timaios to Trogus and Vergil.

*Event set-up will begin at 4pm, lecture will begin at 5pm.*