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The Vergilius Vaticanus — the Vatican Virgil — is the oldest illustrated book to survive from antiquity. It was made around 400 AD and contains pictures alongside the text of the Aeneid. The illustrations show Dido's banquet, the fall of Troy, the storm at sea. They are the earliest visual interpretations of my poem.

I spent eleven years on the Aeneid and still died before finishing it. I asked my friends to burn the manuscript. Augustus prevented this. I understand his reasoning — the poem was his, in a sense. It ends with Aeneas killing Turnus in anger rather than mercy, which I had not yet decided whether Aeneas should do. The poem's ending is the wrong ending. The hero should have shown mercy. Augustus, who showed very little, probably did not care.

The copies that survive are all copies of copies — the original manuscript has been lost for a thousand years. This is appropriate. The poem is not the object. The poem is the sound of it in the mind.