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
Ripheus Ripheus Ripheus (also Rifeo and Rupheo) was a Trojan hero and the name of a figure from the "Aeneid" of Virgil. A comrade of Aeneas, he was a Trojan who was killed defending his city against the Greeks. "Ripheus also fell," Virgil writes, "uniquely the most just of all the Trojans, the most faithful preserver of equity; but the gods decided otherwise" (Virgil, "Aeneid" II, 426–8). Ripheus's righteousness was not rewarded by the gods. In his "Divine Comedy", Dante placed Ripheus in Heaven, in the sixth sphere of Jupiter, the realm of those who personified justice. Here, he provides an