Aeneas was also supposed to take with him some cattle for sacrifice, but they were to be sacrificed to the underworld gods. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is supposed to seek out Teiresias, seer of the dead, who could instruct him on how to find his way home. He was supposed to sacrifice the sheep and make a drink offering to the dead, but was not to allow them to partake of it until Teiresias arrived. In the Aeniad, the purpose of Aeneas' trip to the underworld was to seek out his dead father Anchises and to see what the future held for him and his descendants; it was prophesized that he would be the founder of Rome. While in the underworld Aeneas witnessed many things, among them the Stygian lake across which Charon ferried the dead, Cerberus the three-headed dog, the Mourning Fields in which lost lovers resided, the torture chambers in which the gods punished criminals, and the fields of pleasure in which those whom the gods favored resided. Odysseus did not witness such things; he only met many souls of the dead who arrived to partake of his sacrifice. In the Mourning Fields, Aeneas came across his lost love Dido who only avoided being with him. Odysseus met his mother, who unbeknownst to him had died during his absence and who had arrived to partake of his sacrifice. When Odysseus tried to embrace her three times he realized that he was unable to because she had no body; Aeneas tried to embrace his father three times and came to the same conclusion....

Whereas Aeneas witnessed that souls awaited reincarnation by the Lethe Lake no such mention of this was made in the Odyssey. Finally, Teiresias informs Odysseus of the future obstacles that he should avoid in order to finally get home. In contrast to this, Aeneas's father shows him the phantom images of his future descendants who will come to rule the Roman world.
The endings of both the Aeniad and Iliad differ in the following ways; towards the ending of the Iliad Trojan Hector is killed in combat. Achilles sought revenge against him after the latter had killed his dear friend Patroclus. In the Aeniad, Aeneas fights Turnus in single combat for the hand of Lavinia. Hector and Achilles fought each other alone with no general fighting occurring between the Greeks and Trojans; the Trojans had all barricaded themselves within their city. In the Aeniad, Aeneas and Turnus fought alone only after stopping the general fighting that was occurring between their two armies.

Achilles robs Hector's body of its armor, which Hector in turn robbed from Patroclus after he had slain him. Aeneas kills Turnus after seeing that the latter had stolen the armor of his dead friend Pallas. The Iliad ends with King Priam going to ransom Hector's body from Achilles; after he succeeds in doing this the city of Troy observes twelve days of mourning for its hero. The Aeniad ends with the final blow that Aeneas strikes upon Turnus as he lay dying.