Virgil spent the last eleven years of his life on this epic of Aeneas, who escapes Troy, visits the underworld, and founds Rome. He died believing it unfinished and asked that it be burned; Augustus refused. The Latin is the most beautiful in the language, the structure deliberate, the imperialism both celebrated and questioned. Dido's suicide, the shield of Aeneas, the descent to the dead: these scenes have defined epic ambition for two thousand years. Rome is destiny; the cost of destiny is visible.