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
Political commentary of the Aeneid the repetition of the past of civil war but to remember and repeat it in order to conquer their problems in support of his new reign of the empire. The "Aeneid" was written during a period of political unrest in Rome. The Roman republic had effectively been abolished, and Octavian (Augustus Caesar) had taken over as the leader of the new Roman empire. The "Aeneid" was written to praise Augustus by drawing parallels between him and the protagonist, Aeneas. Virgil does so by mirroring Caesar with Aeneas and by creating a direct lineage between Aeneas and Augustus. Aeneas is the