History of Tunisia for centuries assigned its foundation to a queen of Tyre, Elissa, also called Dido. The Roman historian Pompeius Trogus, a near contemporary of Virgil, describes a sinister web of court intrigue which caused Queen Elissa (Dido) to flee the city of Tyre westward with a fleet of ships. The Roman poet Virgil (70–19 B.C.) portrays Dido as the tragic, admirable heroine of his epic the "Aeneid", which contains many inventions loosely based on legendary history, and includes the story about how the Phoenician queen acquired the Byrsa. By the middle of the sixth century B.C., Carthage had grown into a
Dido Elizabeth Belle to London after the war in 1765 with his young daughter, Dido Belle. When they arrived in England he took her to Kenwood House just outside the city, the home of his uncle, William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and his wife Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Mansfield. Belle was baptised as Dido Elizabeth Belle in 1766 at St. George's, Bloomsbury. The Murray family raised Belle as an educated woman along with their niece and Dido's cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray, whose mother had died. However, Belle remained a slave until Mansfield finally granted her freedom from slavery in his will in