Ancient Carthage the site of the city. Nearly all of the other Phoenician city-states and former Carthaginian dependencies subsequently fell into Roman hands. According to Roman sources, Phoenician colonists from modern-day Lebanon, led by Dido (also known as Queen Elissa), founded Carthage "circa" 814 BC. Queen Elissa (also known as "Alissar") was an exiled princess of the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre. At its peak, the metropolis she founded, Carthage, came to be called the "shining city", ruling 300 other cities around the western Mediterranean Sea and leading the Phoenician world. Elissa's brother, Pygmalion of Tyre, had murdered Elissa's husband, the high
Dido "Fasti" (3.545f) Ovid introduced a kind of sequel involving Aeneas and Dido's sister Anna. See Anna Perenna. The Barcids, the family to which Hannibal belonged, claimed descent from a younger brother of Dido according to Silius Italicus in his "Punica" (1.71–7). The "Augustan History" ("Tyrrani Triginta" 27, 30) claims that Zenobia queen of Palmyra in the late third century was descended from Cleopatra, Dido and Semiramis. In "The Divine Comedy" Dante sees the shade of Dido in the second circle of Hell, where she is condemned (on account of her consuming lust) to be blasted for eternity in a fierce