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The myth of Carthage’s foundation stages a woman, Elissa-Dido and her peculiar and ambiguous destiny, largely illustrative of the destiny of Carthage and her empire. Perusing the main sources relative to the founding act and comparing them with the narrative of Rome’s foundation we try and understand how the classical mythological tradition worked out a reading both gendered and ideological. By means of the personage of the founding woman, it is notably the anti-values of the Punic world that are underscored, the famous fides punica in particular, but also the endogamy and isolation which from the start doomed Carthage to an ill-starred destiny.