Carthage Carthage Carthage (; , "", "New City"; ; , "Qarṭāj") was the center or capital city of the ancient Carthaginian civilization, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now the Tunis Governorate in Tunisia. The city developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of a Punic empire dominating the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. The legendary Queen Dido is regarded as the founder of the city, though her historicity has been questioned. According to accounts by Timaeus of Tauromenium, she purchased from a local tribe the amount of land that could be covered
Dido Shalmaneser III in 841 BC, with "Ba‘al-‘azor" (Phoenician form of the name) or "Baal-Eser/Balazeros" (Greek form of the name), Dido's grandfather. This lends credibility to the account in Josephus/Menander that names the kings of Tyre from Abibaal and Hiram I down to the time of Pygmalion and Dido. Another possible reference to Balazeros is found in the "Aeneid". It was a common ancient practice of using the hypocoristicon or shortened form of the name that included only the divine element, so that the "Belus" that Virgil names as the father of Dido in the "Aeneid" may be a reference to