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
Aeneas As such, in the "natural order", the meaning of Aeneas' name combines Greek "ennos" ("dweller") and "demas" ("body"), which becomes "ennaios", meaning "in-dweller" (i.e. as a god inhabiting a mortal body). However, there is no certainty regarding the origin of his name. In imitation of the "Iliad", Virgil borrows epithets of Homer, including; Anchisiades, "magnanimum", "magnus", "heros", and "bonus". Though he borrows many, Virgil gives Aeneas two epithets of his own in the "Aeneid:" "pater" and "pius". The epithets applied by Virgil are an example of an attitude different from that of Homer, for whilst Odysseus is "poikilios" ("wily"), Aeneas