The Wandering Prince of Troy Punic Wars. In addition, where Aeneas spends a year in Carthage in Virgil's work, the ballad indicates that Aeneas fails to spend even an entire night. Thus, the ballad's final stanzas describing the hero's departure for Rome and his subsequent interactions with Dido's ghost also appear to be in conflict with Virgil's account of Aeneas's departure from Carthage. Rather than end with an encounter between Aeneas and Dido's ghost, eight more books exist in the "Aeneid" after his departure, telling of his travels to Italy and the underworld, and the wars he fights so that his descendents may ultimately found
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