Had Jupiter not sent Mercury to goad Aeneas into action, it is possible that Aeneas would have remained in Carthage and never would have completed his mission. However, once the Trojan prince realizes his error of remaining too long with Dido, nothing will interfere with his determination to fulfill his destiny: "As the sharp admonition and command / From heaven had shaken him awake, he now / Burned only to be gone, to leave that land / Of the sweet life behind." Facing Dido's wrath once she learns of his pending departure, Aeneas transforms himself from a star-struck lover back to a fate-driven voyager. When he tells Dido that Italy is his only true love, we understand that he has replaced his love for the queen with love for his future homeland. Finally, Virgil's characterizing Aeneas as "duty-bound" recalls this same epithet that the hero used to describe himself in Book I. Although Aeneas is "shaken still" with love for Dido, he returns to his ship and sails to Italy as Jupiter decrees.
Aeneas's responsibilities as a father to Ascanius are called into question in this book, as they were in the previous one. Knowing that the familial relationship between father and son is of great importance to Aeneas — as it is to Virgil — Jupiter questions Aeneas's honor as a progenitor who has seemingly forgotten his son's rightful ancestry. When Mercury, instructed to inform the Trojan warrior in person of Jupiter's concerns, finds Aeneas clothed in Carthaginian finery, the messenger god berates him for failing as a father: "If future history's glories / Do not affect you, if you will not strive / For your own honor, think of Ascanius, / Think of the expectations of your heir, / Iulus, to whom the Italian realm, the land / Of Rome, are due." We know that Mercury's rebuke spurs Aeneas's resolve anew, for later in the book the Trojan prince, speaking to Dido, admits his temporary lapse as a father to "young Ascanius, / My dear boy wronged, defrauded of his kingdom, / Hesperian lands of destiny." He vows never again to forget his responsibilities as a father.
