Dido the time of Dido. Even with the date of 864 BC that historical revisionist David Rohl gives for the end of the Trojan War, Aeneas would have been about 77 years old when Dido fled Tyre in 825 BC and 88 when she began to build Carthage in 814 (following Peñuela's reconstruction), hardly consistent with the romantic intrigues between Dido and Aeneas imagined by Virgil in the "Aeneid". Virgil's references in the "Aeneid" generally agree with what Justin's epitome of Trogus recorded. Virgil names Belus as Dido's father, this Belus sometimes being called Belus II by later commentators to distinguish
Dido him from Belus son of Poseidon and Libya in earlier Greek mythology. If the story of Dido has a factual basis and is synchronized properly with history then this Belus should stand for Mattan I, father of the historical Pygmalion. Virgil (1.343f) adds that the marriage between Dido and Sychaeus, as Virgil calls Dido's husband, occurred while her father was still alive. Pygmalion slew Sychaeus secretly due to his wealth and Sychaeus appeared to Dido in a dream in which he told the truth about his death, urged her to flee the country, and revealed to her where his gold