DIDO, the daughter of Belus king of Tyre, and the wife of Sichæus. To avoid the tyranny of her brother Pygmalion, who had put her husband to death, she fled into Africa, where she built Carthage, 882 B. C. At length Hiarbas, king of the Getuli, having demanded her in marriage, and threatening, in case of refusal, to make war on the Carthaginians, Dido caused a pile to be erected, and after having sacrificed victims, as if to appease the manes of her husband, ascended the pile, and stabbed herself with a poynard in sight of the people. From this action she obtained the name of Dido, or the Resolute Woman, she being before called Elissa.—Virgil makes her contemporary with Æneas, and his chronology is justified by Sir Isaac Newton; while other learned men maintain that Æneas was never either in Carthage or Italy, and that he lived above 300 years before Dido.