On April 16th, Prof. Josephine Quinn (Oxford) delivered the Tenth Parry Lecture, with a paper entitled "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.
Josephine Quinn is a professor of Ancient History at Oxford University, and Martin Frederiksen Fellow and Tutor of Ancient History at Worcester College, Oxford. Professor Quinn works on Mediterranean history and archaeology, with a particular interest in ancient North Africa. She has published articles on topics from Roman imperialism to Athenian sculpture to Numidian architecture to Edwardian education.