24-04-2025
Genetic mix held the secret of ancient Phoenicians' success
The story of Dido and her flight from Tyre, in modern day Lebanon, to found Carthage in North Africa is one account of how a powerful civilisation spread.
In Virgil's telling in the Aeneid, one of the most vivid epic poems in Latin literature, the Phoenician queen sailed west after her brother, King Pygmalion, murdered her husband for his wealth.
The story also contains the seeds of the Phoenician culture's demise. Dido's doomed love affair with Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome, whom she curses on her funeral pyre, foreshadows the Punic Wars and the avenging spirit of Hannibal, culminating in Rome's razing of Carthage in 146BC.
Whether Dido existed is debated, as is the question of who exactly were the Phoenicians and how
