In Greek and Roman sources Dido or Elissa appears as the founder and first Queen of Carthage in Tunisia. She is best known from the account given by the Roman poet Virgil in his Aeneid. The person of Elissa can be traced back at least to lost writings of the historian Timaeus of Tauromenium in Sicily (c. 356–260 BC) as referred to and used by later sources. Timaeus dated the foundation of Carthage to 814 BC (or 813 BC) but he also placed the founding of Rome in the same year which suggests legend had been at work. |
