What does the abrupt ending of the Aeneid suggest ?

The conclusion of the Virgil's Aeneid
is one of the most controversial passages in Western Literature. Some
scholars would argue that Virgil was not finished with the epic and that he would have
found a less abrupt way to conclude the epic. Numerous other scholars have argued about
whether Aeneas should have killed Turnus or should have spared his
life.

As soon
as his eyes took in the trophy, a memory of cruel
grief,

Aeneas, blazing with fury, and terrible in his
anger, cried:

‘Shall you be snatched from my grasp, wearing
the spoils

of one who was my own? Pallas it is, Pallas, who
sacrifices you

with this stroke, and exacts retribution
from your guilty blood.’

So saying, burning with rage, he
buried his sword deep

in Turnus’s breast: and then Turnus’s
limbs grew slack

with death, and his life fled, with a
moan, angrily, to the Shades. (A.S. Kline
translation)

If we could
accept that Virgil intended to conclude the Aeneid in the way that
it does end, with the death of Turnus, then we might think that Virgil intended to leave
his audience to answer for themselves the question of whether Aeneas was justified in
killing Turnus.

A similar sort of question would have to be
asked by many in Virgil's Roman audience. When Virgil composed the Aeneid in the 20s
BCE, his fellow Romans had just emerged from twenty years of civil war. They had fought
against their fellow countrymen. In many cases, they had to decide whether to kill or to
spare their fellow countrymen.

I suspect that Virgil
intended to end the Aeneid with the death of Turnus, but I like to
imagine that it was part of Virgil's brilliance not to answer the question of
justification for his audience. This is a question that his abrupt ending suggests they
must answer for themselves.