Daughter of
king Belus of Tyre whose brother Pygmalion killed her husband Sichaeus. She
escaped to North Africa with her people, and bought land from the native king
Iarbus.
On the land she founded Carthage where she became queen but killed herself
when Iarbus threatened with war if she did not become his wife.
Another version says that she fell in love with the Trojan prince Aeneas who
had been shipwrecked outside the coast of Carthage after fleeing his sacked
city.
He left her later to go to Italy, where he became the founder of Rome, and
the heart-broken Dido committed suicide. Eventually they met again when Aeneas
visited the underworld, but she refused to speak to him.