Dido Dido Dido ( ; , ) was, according to ancient Greek and Roman sources, the founder and first queen of Carthage. She is primarily known from the account given by the Roman poet Virgil in his epic, "Aeneid". In some sources she is also known as Elissa ( , ). Many names in the legend of Dido are of Punic origin, which suggests that the first Greek authors who mention this story have taken up Phoenician accounts. One suggestion is that "Dido" is an epithet from the same Semitic root as "David", which means "Beloved". Others state Didô means "the
Dido will, a deceitful explanation for the building of the pyre, and Dido's final suicide. In both versions Dido is loyal to her original husband in the end. But whereas the earlier Elissa remained always loyal to her husband's memory, Virgil's Dido dies as a tortured and repentant woman who has fallen away from that loyalty. Virgil consistently uses the form "Dido" as nominative, but derivates of "Elissa" for the oblique cases. Letter 7 of Ovid's "Heroides" is a feigned letter from Dido to Aeneas written just before she ascends the pyre. The situation is as in Virgil's "Aeneid". In Ovid's