The tragic, somber, final line of the Aeneid and the epic poem's ringing, declamatory opening line signify the two emotional poles of the epic. Their positioning has a symbolic as well as a narrative importance, for between the moods to which they give voice, the poem constantly moves back and forth as it unfolds. The establishment of Rome is achieved only through the human suffering of Aeneas and his people, and of his opponents — Dido in the first half of the epic, and now, at the end, Turnus.
Virgil's vision of reality was too honest to allow him to see life other than as a mixture of good and evil elements. Had Virgil been merely a propagandist for Augustus, he might easily have finished the epic on a triumphant note. For example, he could have concluded it with the conversation between Jupiter and Juno in this final book, with the king of the gods assuring his consort of a glorious future for the Romans, whose protector she would happily become.
Instead, Virgil gives the epic's final line to the last moment in Turnus's life, the moment that marks the utter, hopeless defeat of a man who is stripped of his glory and virility and becomes a moaning ghost. Aeneas's victory is complete, but it must be paid for by the downfall of a worthy enemy, for whom nothing remains but a retreat into the shadows of the underworld.
The epic's final lines, "And with a groan for that indignity / His spirit fled into the gloom below," are the same that, in the preceding book, described Camilla's death. The repetition reinforces the likeness between Camilla and Turnus, friends and allies in a battle for a lost cause, both cut down in the prime of their youth.
