Aeneas journey to come. However, the messenger god Mercury was sent by Jupiter and Venus to remind Aeneas of his journey and his purpose, compelling him to leave secretly. When Dido learned of this, she uttered a curse that would forever pit Carthage against Rome, an enmity that would culminate in the Punic Wars. She then committed suicide by stabbing herself with the same sword she gave Aeneas when they first met. After the sojourn in Carthage, the Trojans returned to Sicily where Aeneas organized funeral games to honor his father, who had died a year before. The company traveled on
Virgil the "Aeneid" in "Amores" 1.1.1–2, and his summary of the Aeneas story in Book 14 of the "Metamorphoses", the so-called "mini-Aeneid", has been viewed as a particularly important example of post-Virgilian response to the epic genre. Lucan's epic, the "Bellum Civile" has been considered an anti-Virgilian epic, disposing with the divine mechanism, treating historical events, and diverging drastically from Virgilian epic practice. The Flavian poet Statius in his 12-book epic "Thebaid" engages closely with the poetry of Virgil; in his epilogue he advises his poem not to "rival the divine "Aeneid", but follow afar and ever venerate its footsteps." In