Iarbas

Iarbas, also known as Hiarbas, is a legendary figure from Libyan and Berber tradition, recorded by Roman poets such as Virgil and Ovid, and by the historian Justin in his epitome of Pompeius Trogus. He may have been inspired by an actual king of Numidia. In classical mythology, he was the child of Jupiter-Hammon—a Roman interpretation of the North African god Hammon, associated with an oracle—and a nymph from the Garamantes people.

Iarbas is sometimes placed at the start of the royal line of Numidia. He became king of Getulia, a region later linked to Vescerita, identified with modern Biskra in Algeria. An 1885 Italian source called Vescerita his capital and residence, and a later study of the Ziban region described Vescera as the capital of ancient Gaetulia.

In Virgil’s Aeneid, Iarbas is a prince who seeks to marry the Carthaginian queen Dido. When he learns of Dido’s affair with Aeneas, he prays to his father Jupiter, complaining that Aeneas has usurped his place and that Dido has spurned him. Jupiter responds by sending Mercury to order Aeneas to leave Carthage. Iarbas does not directly address Dido in the poem. Ovid’s Heroides presents a different version: Dido’s own people arrange a forced marriage to Iarbas to elevate Carthage, and she warns Aeneas that if he leaves her, she will be handed over as a captive. Aeneas abandons her to found Rome, and she dies by suicide. In Ovid’s Fasti, after Dido’s death, Iarbas and the Numidians seize her land and capture her palace.

Other Roman writers, including Macrobius and Pompeius Trogus, also tell versions of the myth. In Justin’s summary of Pompeius, Iarbas is king of the Muxitani. Silius Italicus, in his epic Punica, uses the name Hiarbas for a Gaetulian leader who commands the Gaetuli, Nasamones, and Macae, and is the father of Asbyte, a Carthaginian commander in the Second Punic War. He claims descent from Jupiter and is killed by the Saguntine hero Murrus.

A Greek poetic fragment, preserved in the Refutation of All Heresies, says that the first human sprang from the Earth.