When Troy was sacked, Æneas sailed away with twenty ships, and all that remained dear to him of home. His wife Creusa was killed as they were escaping from the burning city; but his household gods were preserved, and these he carried with him in his flight, with his aged father and his little son Iulus. Misfortune followed him, however. Juno, still unrelenting in her anger against the race of Paris, buffeted him to and fro upon the seas for seven years, and cast him at length upon the shore of Libya. The greater part of his fleet was scattered, and perhaps lost for ever: his own crew was broken by the long struggle; and he himself, under the cheery manner which he assumed to encourage his men, was heart-sick with despair. What this strange land was he did not know. It seemed wild and desolate: it was most probably inhabited by barbarians, and at any moment a savage horde might fall upon them. But the country was not hostile, as Æneas’ goddess-mother Venus took care to assure him, meeting him in the guise of a mountain nymph. It was the new land of Dido, the Tyrian princess who had fled from her native country and the evil rule of her brother Pygmalion. The late king of Tyre, her father, had given her in marriage to one she dearly loved, Sichæus, a priest of Heracles, and the wealthiest man of all the wealthy East. But a little later the king had died. Pygmalion succeeded to the throne, and in greed for Sichæus’ wealth he secretly slew him at his own altar. _Blinded with lust of gold, And heedless of his sister’s passionate love, Pygmalion on his brother crept by stealth, And slew him at the very altar’s foot._[34] For some time he hid his guilt and tried to win from Dido, in her grief, the immense treasures of Sichæus. But her intelligence, and her love for her murdered husband, could not be long deceived. She discovered her brother’s guilt, and realizing that to remain in Tyre would mean her death too, she instantly laid plans to leave the country. It was to be no timid surrender, however. She gathered about her all those who hated Pygmalion’s tyranny, and proposed that they should join her. Ships were seized and rapidly manned: Sichæus’ wealth was stored in them, and Dido sailed to found a new city on the coast of Africa.