 Already in the eighth century, fabric dyeing operations had been established, evident from crushed shells of murex (from which the 'Phoenician purple' was derived).Nonetheless, only a "meager picture" of the cultural life of the earliest pioneers in the city can be conjectured, and not much about housing, monuments or defenses.The Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC) imagined early Carthage, when his legendary character Aeneas had arrived there