The Aeneid

Here's a great passage from Virgil's famous Latin/Roman story of the Trojan Aeneas, who traveled around after Troy fell, met Dido and eventually got to Italy and founded Rome; this is called The Aeneid [c. 23 B.C.]. 

Let's quickly look at how the other ancient epics begin. It famously starts, just for comparison: 
Arma virumque cano ...,       "I sing of arms and of a man ..."

Homer's [Ὅμηρος] The Iliad [ie. The Song of Ilium; Ilium is another name for Troy] starts:  
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
Sing goddess, of the wrath of Peleus' son, Achilles, [...]

The Odyssey's [Ὀδύσσεια] first line is: 

ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ

Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices [...], 

----------[ie. that man being Odysseus]

Here's a 1598 Barocci painting of his flight from Troy, with his young son and aged father; and his wife Creusa, who dies tragically while they escape. Here is the passage from The Aeneid, more here, where Aeneas goes to Hades, down into the underworld, and talks with many ghosts--he was just talking to one of the dead sons of Priam, Deiphobus:

[...]
While thus in talk the flying hours they pass,
The sun had finish'd more than half his race:
And they, perhaps, in words and tears had spent
The little time of stay which Heav'n had lent;
But thus the Sibyl chides their long delay:
"Night rushes down, and headlong drives the day:
'T is here, in different paths, the way divides;
The right to Pluto's golden palace guides;
The left to that unhappy region tends,
Which to the depth of Tartarus descends;
The seat of night profound, and punish'd fiends."
Then thus Deiphobus: "O sacred maid,
Forbear to chide, and be your will obey'd!
Lo! to the secret shadows I retire,
To pay my penance till my years expire.
Proceed, auspicious prince, with glory crown'd,
And born to better fates than I have found."
He said; and, while he said, his steps he turn'd
To secret shadows, and in silence mourn'd.
[...]