This lady was Dido; her husband, Sichaeus, had been king of Tyre, till he was murdered by his brother Pygmalion, who meant to have married her, but she fled from him with a band of faithful Tyrians and all her husband's treasure, and had landed on the north coast of Africa.

There she begged of the chief of the country as much land as could be enclosed by a bullock's hide.

He granted this readily; and Dido, cutting the hide into the finest possible strips, managed to measure off with it ground enough to build the splendid city which she had named Carthage.

She received AEneas most kindly, and took all his men into her city, hoping to keep them there for ever, and make him her husband.

AEneas himself was so happy there, that he forgot all his plans and the prophecies he had heard, until Jupiter sent Mercury to rouse him to fulfil his destiny.