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
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon settings in the book. After graduating from Idaho State University in 1969 with a bachelor's degree and then spending two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, Spanbauer married and returned to Idaho where he obtained a job at his alma mater as a counselor and advisor to the student Indian Club. He met and became involved with Clyde Hall, a two-spirit (and later a tribal elder) Shoshone-Métis. Three months later, the two became blood brothers. Hall had a deep influence on Spanbauer that directly led to the writing of "The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon":