The Aeneid
The great poem of empire and its price. Aeneas carries his father from burning Troy and founds Rome; the cost is everything he has, including his love for Dido, his humanity, his happiness. Virgil's melancholy undertow ("sunt lacrimae rerum") transforms triumphalist epic into something far more troubled. Dante chose Virgil as his guide for good reason.
Pious Aeneas does his duty for twelve books, and duty makes a dull hero; Dido and Turnus, the people he destroys, get all the life. The second half is a long Iliad re-enactment you will finish with less ardor than you brought to Troy and Carthage. And it is, finally, commissioned work: empire's poet, paid by Augustus, troubled but on message.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
