Parallels between Virgil's Aeneid and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey of Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians, who hospitably take Odysseus in and ask him how he has come to their land. Odysseus spends Books IX through XII recounting his journey from Troy to where he was presently. In Aeneas' case, upon arrival in Carthage, Dido asked Aeneas to share his story, so Books II and III were narrating the fall of Troy and how Aeneas and his people arrived at Carthage. Both heroes sail over the same sea, sometimes visiting the same locations and experiencing the same difficulties. In Book III of the "Aeneid", Aeneas and his men come
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