Extremising problems haveīeen an obsession among physicists and mathematicians for at least the last 400 years.
But the Dido problem is also equivalent to asking which of all planar closed curves of fixed area minimises the perimeter, and so is an example of the more general problem of finding an extremal value - a maximum or minimum. The Dido, or isoperimetric, problem is an example of a class of problems in which a given quantity (here the enclosed area) is to be maximised. Given a choice from all planar closed curves of equal perimeter, which encloses the maximum area? ("Oxhide"), and the civilisation it fostered became a major centre of culture and trade for 668 years until its destruction in 146 BCE, although the city lives on as a suburb of Tunis.Ĭelebrated in perishable poems and paintings, Queen Dido has been given more durable fame by mathematicians, who have named the following problem after her: The city of Carthage was founded on this hill named Byrsa "That'll do nicely," we can imagine Dido thinking, and I'm sure we can all make a pretty good guess as to what the locals were thinking too.
Neither history nor legend recalls who wielded the knife, but Dido arranged to have the oxhide cut into very thin strips, which tied together were long enough to surround an entire hill. "Sure," the locals probably thought, "We can spare such a trifling bit of land." Landing in modern-day Tunisia, Dido requests a small piece of land to rest on, only for a little while, and only as big as could be surrounded by the leather from a single oxhide. After a brief stop in Cyprus to pick up a priest and to "acquire" some wives for the men, the boats continue, rather lower in the water, to the Baron Pierre-Narcisse Guérin.ĭenied by her brother, the killer of her husband, a share of the golden throne of the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre, Dido convinces her brother's servants and some senators to flee with her across the sea in boats laden with her husband's gold. Aeneas tells Dido about the fall of Troy.
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