Chapter I. The Foundation of Carthage and its Aggrandizement till the Time of the first Punic War. Carthage in Africa was a colony from Tyre, the most renowned city at that time for commerce in the world. Tyre had long before transplanted into that country another colony, which built Utica,(566) made famous by the death of the second Cato, who, for this reason, is generally called Cato Uticensis. Authors disagree very much with regard to the æra of the foundation of Carthage.(567) It is a difficult matter, and not very material, to reconcile them; at least, agreeably to the plan laid down by me, it is sufficient to know, within a few years, the time in which that city was built. Carthage existed a little above seven hundred years.(568) It was destroyed under the consulate of Cn. Lentulus, and L. Mummius, the 603d year of Rome, 3859th of the world, and 145 before Christ. The foundation of it may therefore be fixed in the year of the world 3158, when Joash was king of Judah, 98 years before the building of Rome, and 846 before our Saviour. The foundation of Carthage is ascribed to Elisa, a Tyrian princess, better known by the name of Dido.(569) Ithobal, king of Tyre, and father of the famous Jezebel, called in Scripture Ethbaal, was her great-grandfather. She married her near relation Acerbas, called otherwise Sicharbas and Sichæus, an extremely rich prince, and Pygmalion, king of Tyre, was her brother. This prince having put Sichæus to death, in order that he might have an opportunity of seizing his immense wealth, Dido eluded the cruel avarice of her brother, by withdrawing secretly with all her dead husband’s treasures. After having long wandered, she at last landed on the coast of the Mediterranean, in the gulf where Utica stood, and in the country of Africa, properly so called, distant almost fifteen(570) miles from Tunis, so famous at this time for its corsairs; and there settled with her few followers, after having purchased some lands from the inhabitants of the country.(571)