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Aeneas’s story, and Venus’s plotting, makes Dido fall in love with him and the pair spend the winter together. However, Jupiter sends Mercury to warn Aeneas he must fulfill his destiny in Italy. Dido commits suicide, cursing Aeneas and his descendants and prophesying the conflict between Carthage and Rome.
Aeneas returns to Sicily, where some of the Trojan women, wearied by so many years of wandering, are induced by Juno to set the ships on fire. Jupiter extinguishes the flames and Aeneas resumes the journey, without those who wish to stay in Sicily.
After landing near Cumae, Aeneas goes down to the Underworld where he meets his father, who shows him the spirits of Rome’s future heroes waiting to be born.
He then travels further north to the court of King Latinus near the mouth of the River Tiber. Omens have suggested to Latinus that his daughter, Lavinia, must marry a foreigner and, impressed with Aeneas, he asks him to become his son-in-law.
This plan is opposed by a local prince, Turnus, who had wanted to marry Lavinia himself and has the support of Lavinia’s mother. Juno gets Allecto the Fury to enrage Turnus and the queen further. She also tricks Aeneas’s son, Iulus, into killing the Latin royal gamekeeper’s pet deer. King Latinus then has to watch helplessly as the Latins respond to Turnus’s call for war.
Aeneas travels up the Tiber to the future site of Rome and gains the support of Evander, a Greek king opposed to Turnus, who sends troops under his own son, Pallas, to assist the Trojans. On Evander’s recommendation, Aeneas also approaches the Etruscans, who send another force.
Aeneas and allies return to the main Trojan camp in time to save it from an enemy attack, but Pallas is killed in battle by Turnus.
