Dido

Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761 – 1804) was a British heiress and a member of the Lindsay family of Evelix. She was born into slavery and illegitimate; her mother, Maria Belle, was an enslaved African woman in the British West Indies. Her father was Sir John Lindsay, a British career naval officer who was stationed there. Her father was knighted and promoted to admiral. Lindsay took Belle with him when he returned to England in 1765, entrusting her upbringing to his uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and his wife Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Mansfield. The Murrays educated Belle, bringing her up as a free gentlewoman at their Kenwood House, together with another great-niece, Lady Elizabeth Murray, whose mother had died. Lady Elizabeth and Belle were second cousins. Belle lived there for 30 years. In his will of 1793, Lord Mansfield provided an outright sum and an annuity to her, making her an heiress.

Dido was a princess of Tyre, and the founder queen of Carthage. Daughter of the king of Tyre, she was in love and married with Sychaeus, but her brother Pygmalion killed him to be the only leader of Tyre. Dido found out about the murderer by a dream, so she fled away from Tyre and she reached the north coast of Africa, where king Iarbas gives her as much land as she could fit in an ox skin. She cuts the skin in thinner strips so she gained 75,295 hectares of land, where she founded Carthage. She welcomed Aeneas, Troian hero who had to reach Italy to found the Roman kingdom, in her kingdom, and she felt in love with him. They had a relationship, but Jupiter forces Aeneas to leave. Dido, with her heart broken, pierces herself with Aeneas' sword and burns herself to death. In the afterlife, Aeneas sees her reunited with her first true love, Sychaeus.

The Crüxshadows has a song called "Dido's Reply" on their album Dreamcypher. The album also has a song called "Elissa," which was another name used to refer to Dido.

Dido is the plucky heroine of several books in the Wolves Chronicles by Joan Aiken, starting with Black Hearts in Battersea.

Dido is also the name of a modern band who sang "White Flag".

Actually Dido is the name of the singer, Dido Armstrong. Otherwise correct.