History of Carthage as a goddess at Carthage. The Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC) presents Dido as a tragic heroine in his epic poem the "Aeneid", whose hero Aeneas travels from Troy, to Carthage, to Rome. The work contains inventive scenes, loosely based on the legendary history of Carthage, e.g., referring to the then well-known story how the Phoenician Queen cunningly acquired the citadel of the Byrsa. In Virgil's epic, the god Jupiter requires the hero Aeneas to leave his beloved Dido, who then commits suicide and burns in a funeral pyre. This episode employs not only the history or legends narrated by
Virgil from which Rome would emerge. The "Aeneid"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s first six books describe the journey of Aeneas from Troy to Rome. Virgil made use of several models in the composition of his epic; Homer, the preeminent author of classical epic, is everywhere present, but Virgil also makes special use of the Latin poet Ennius and the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes among the various other writers to which he alludes. Although the "Aeneid" casts itself firmly into the epic mode, it often seeks to expand the genre by including elements of other genres such as tragedy and aetiological poetry. Ancient commentators noted