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 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