The opening metaphor of the new cantica relies on a topos familiar from classical poetry and medieval reformulations (see Curtius [European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. W. R. Trask (New York: Harper & Row, 1963 [1948])], pp. 128-30) that tie the ingenium (genius) of the poet, treating his material, to the voyage of a ship over difficult waters. Dante's ship, for now, is a small one (but cf. Par. II.1-3, where it is implicitly a much larger vessel), raising its sails over better ('smoother') 'water' than it traversed in hell. While this metaphor will be important in Paradiso (Par. II.1-18; Par. XXXIII.94-96), framing that cantica and representing the voyage as a whole, it was only implicit in Inferno (as at Inf. I.22-24). Once again we see Dante adding elements retroactively as the poem advances; we are now asked to understand that it has been, in metaphor, a ship all along, that hell is to be understood as a 'sea' in retrospect. What the protagonist experienced as the belly of the earth the poet 'experienced' as a voyage over waters difficult for their challenge to his ability, not to his moral sense, which has been perfected, within the given of the poem, by his experience in purgatory, but now challenging his intellectual powers, even though they have been sealed by God's stamp in the Empyrean.

The second tercet encapsulates the entire cantica: Purgatory is that place in which the human spirit becomes fit for Heaven. There is no longer a possibility, among the spirits whom we shall meet, of damnation. Thus two-thirds of the Commedia, its two final cantiche, are dedicated to the saved, first in potentia, then in re.

The words that reflect the presence of the poet derive generically from classical poetry and perhaps specifically from the opening line of the Aeneid, 'Arma virumque cano' [Arms and the man I sing]. Dante presents himself as a singer of a kingdom, as other classical and medieval poets identified themselves by the realms that they celebrated, the 'matter of Troy,' or the 'matter of France,' etc. But his 'kingdom' is not of this world, and no one has, at least in Dante's view, ever 'sung' this kingdom before. For the pre-history of purgatory see Rajna [La materia e la forma della “Divina Commedia”: I mondi oltraterreni nelle letterature classiche e nelle medievali, ed. Claudia Di Fonzo (Florence: Le Lettere, 1998 [1874]), esp. pp. 33-299], Jacques Le Goff [The Birth of Purgatory, tr. A. Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984 [1981])], and Alison Morgan [Dante and the Medieval Other World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 144-65]. For Dante's reliance on Gervase of Tillbury, see Paolo Cherchi (“Gervase of Tillbury and the Birth of Purgatory,” Medioevo romanzo 14 [1989], pp. 97-110). Morgan's book contains two useful appendices: a 'Chronological table of principal representations of the other world,' pp. 196-200, and 'Written representations of the other world – summaries with background and bibliographical information,' pp. 201-33). Le Goff demonstrates the lateness of the development of purgatory as a distinct place, beginning perhaps with St. Bernard, ca. 1170-80 (pp. 163-65), and underlines the major role of Dante in establishing the later sense of the place and its function (pp. 334-55).

The third invocation of the poem now adds the attribute 'holy' to the Muses (who were unadorned 'Muses' at Inf. II.7 and 'those ladies' at Inf. XXXII.10), implying that the art of this part of the Comedy must keep a more religious sense to its poeticizing, since its subject from here on is salvation. Most commentators identify Calliope as the ninth and greatest (as representative of epic poetry) of the Muses. Dante surely was aware of her being summoned both by Virgil (Aen. IX.525) and by Ovid (Metam. V.338-340), the last as a part of the lengthy tale of the gods' revenge on the nine daughters of Pierus, who, in their presumption, imagined themselves better singers than the Muses themselves and challenged them to a vocal contest. Unwisely, they chose to sing of the rebellion of the giants (see Inf. XXXI.91-96); the Muses sang of the goodness of goddesses (Ceres and Proserpina). In Ovid's world of divine assertion and vengeance, it is not difficult to imagine who won. The nine girls were turned into raucous-sounding magpies. Identifying himself with the pious Calliope, Dante, fully aware of his potential presumption in singing the world of God's justice, makes a gesture of humility. That precarious balance that a poet of divine revelation must manage is never far from his (or our) concern. It will return as an even more evident and central concern at Purgatorio XI.91-108. (For discussion of Dante's invocations see the note to Inf. II.7-9.)

Calliope is asked to rise up somewhat more than her eight sisters, perhaps indicating her slight superiority to them or the relative higher poetic level of Purgatorio to that of Inferno (yet not as high as that of the cantica still to come). Poletto's commentary to these verses was perhaps the first to point out that Dante had used the phrase 'sermo Calliopeus' (my words in verse) to refer to his own appended sonnet in a letter to Cino da Pistoia (Epistle III.2). See the further discussion in Ignazio Baldelli (Dante e Francesca [Ravenna: Longo, 1999]), p. 86.

The words morta poesì in verse 7 continue to cause occasional puzzlement. Do they mean 'dead poetry' (i.e., poetry that had died with the ancients and now is making a return under the pen of Dante)? Or does it mean 'poetry of the dead' (i.e., poetry concerned with the souls of the damned)? The commentary tradition is enlightening. All the earliest commentators supported the second interpretation. It was only among 'prehumanist' commentators and those who wrote in the Renaissance (e.g., Pietro di Dante [Pietro1 to these verses], Benvenuto da Imola [to vv. 7-9], Vellutello [also to vv. 7-9]) that a 'humanist' reading is found, one that selects the first alternative. From the eighteenth century on nearly every commentator prefers the reading found in our translation: Dante's poetry will rise from the subject of damned souls to sing those of the saved. But for recent support of the 'humanist' reading see Marino Balducci (“Il preludio purgatoriale e la fenomenologia del sinfonismo dantesco: percorso ermeneutico,” Publications of the Carla Rossi Academy Press in Affiliation with the University of Connecticut, 1999), p. 13.

The exordium and invocation combined, what we would call the introduction to this cantica, occupy a mere twelve lines, where in Paradiso they require thirty-six. The narrative begins with two noun phrases (dolce color and orïental zaffiro [sweet color, oriental sapphire]) that we would not expect to find in a description of anything seen in hell. This part of God's kingdom, for all the pain of penance put forward in it, is a brighter, happier place. Carol Ann Cioffi (“'Dolce color d'orïental zaffiro': A Gloss on Purgatorio 1.13,” Modern Philology 82 [1985], pp. 355-64) argues for a biblical source of Dante's gemstone (Exodus 24:10): the paved sapphire beneath the feet of God when Moses and the seventy elders look upon Him.

For the sapphire in medieval gemology see Levavasseur (“Les pierres précieuses dans la Divine Comédie,” Revue des études italiennes 4 [1957]), pp. 57-59, indicating the stone's usual association with the Virgin.

The word mezzo here has caused some problems. It would seem to mean the air between the lunar sphere and earth, that is, the 'middle zone' between the first (lunar) celestial sphere and the surface of the earth. For Dante's own words to this effect see Convivio III.ix.12. There is also debate as to whether the word giro refers to this first heavenly sphere or to the circle of the horizon. In the eighteenth century Lombardi (comm. to vv. 13-18) proposed that the Starry Sphere was meant, but this has seemed preposterous to most, if not all, who have considered his notion. Just about every other commentator who had dealt with the problem for 550 years had solved it by saying that Dante was referring to the sphere of the Moon. Then, perhaps beginning with Bianchi in 1868, the choice suddenly swerved to the earth's horizon (comm. to I.15). In the past century and a third, some 80% of the commentators are solidly in this corner. The main reasons for preferring the horizon of the earth to the sphere of the Moon are either that Dante did not believe that there was an atmosphere that reached as high as that sphere or that one could not make out anything at that distance if there were.

The planet is Venus, whose astral influence 'emboldens love.' The rest of the tercet makes clear what sort of love: her brightness is veiling, as the dawn nears, the constellation Pisces (the fish was one of early Christianity's most frequent symbols for Christ, who asked his disciples to become 'fishers of men' [Matthew 4:19]). Further, she is making the east seem to smile by her beauty, the east in which the sun is about to appear, a second reference to one of the constant images for Christ, the rising sun.

This tercet has caused consternation in some readers ever since scholars understood that in the spring of 1300 Venus was not the morning star, in conjunction with Pisces, but the evening star, in conjunction with Taurus. For one way to resolve this difficulty see Hollander (Dante: A Life in Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)], p. 196: 'Emmanuel Poulle's article 'Profacio' (ED.1973.4, p. 693) sketches out, with bibliographical indications, the central position of his study of the problem: Dante took his star charts from the Almanach of Prophacius Judaeus (ca. 1236-1304). The astronomical data found in the poem correspond only to the stars' positions during the dates 25 March-2 April 1301. If Poulle is right, Dante has privileged those dates in the calendar. As for 1301, it is inconceivable that the reader is supposed to believe that the date within the poem is other than 1300. However, if Dante was using Profacius's work, the star charts for 1300 fail to include data for the Sun and for Venus; Dante found March dates for them only in the charts for 1301. Since it took 700 years for someone to catch him out, we might surmise that, rather than calculate the missing data himself, he simply appropriated the charts for 1301 to his use.' For the countering view that we are to understand that the actual date of the voyage is 1301 see Giovangualberto Ceri (“L'Astrologia in Dante e la datazione del 'viaggio' dantesco,” L'Alighieri 15 (2000), pp. 27-57), restating and refining his various previous insistences on this redating. And now, also arguing for 1301 as the date of the vision, see the first study collected in Dante Balboni's book of essays (“La Divinia Commedia,” poema liturgico del primo Giubileo [Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1999]). For still another accountancy of the calendar for the action of the poem, see Adriana Mitescu (“La Divina Commedia quale itinerario pasquale nel Santo Sepolcro di Gerusalemme,” L'Alighieri 17 [2001]), pp. 37-40; according to her this begins on 24 March, the anniversary of the last day of Jesus's thirty-third year, 6499 years after the creation of Adam.

Moore's discussion of the problem (Studies in Dante, Fourth Series: Textual Criticism of the “Convivio” and Miscellaneous Essays [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968 (1917)], pp. 276-79), is based on the possibility that Dante misread the data in the Almanach and actually believed that Venus had been in Pisces in 1300. Moore's argument is somewhat weakened by his view that the action of the poem began on 8 April rather than 25 March (see the note to Inf. I.1). Nonetheless, his conclusion, that the internal date of the vision is 1300, remains difficult to disprove (see Edward Moore, Studies in Dante, Third Series: Miscellaneous Essays [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968 (1903)], pp. 144-77).

Turning to face the south, even though he is at the antipodes, whence every direction is up, Dante looks at the heavens over the southern hemisphere and sees four stars not seen before except by Adam and Eve. Various other explanations of the prima gente (those first on earth) have been offered, the main one being that they were the inhabitants of the classical Golden Age. However, if one has to be in this spot to see these four stars, the only people ever to see them were, in consequence, the first two human souls, for once they fell from grace, they (mysteriously – and Dante never confronts the issue) ended up somewhere around Mesopotamia, and there began populating the earth with humankind. Singleton (Journey to Beatrice [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967 (1958)]), pp. 146-55, argues well for this view, basing his sense of the passage in what he considers Dante's understanding of the older Latin version of Genesis 3:24, in which Adam (as well as Eve) was sent 'opposite Eden' right after he fell, i.e., into the antipodal hemisphere. And thus only Adam and Eve knew these stars. For the view, dependent upon a complex and risky series of asseverations, that the phrase refers to 'gli Antichi Romani,' see Cono A. Mangieri (“Dante e la sua 'prima gente,'” Testo 29-30 [1995], pp. 72-103).

That the four stars may represent the Southern Cross has long been considered a possibility. But how could Dante have known of them? Portirelli, ca. 1805, in a lengthy, original, and fascinating passage in his commentary (to vv. 22-30) speculates that Marco Polo, returned to Venice from his quarter century's sojourn in the Far East in 1295, was Dante's source. One can surely believe that Dante at least heard from others some of what the voyager reported. Nonetheless, neither Marco nor his book is ever mentioned by Dante. See Giuliano Bertuccioli, 'Polo, Marco' (ED.1973.4), p. 589.

Whatever the literal significance of these stars, their symbolic valence seems plain, and has so from the time of the earliest commentators: they represent the four moral (or cardinal) virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. What is important to understand (and for a fine exposition of the point in one of the most helpful essays on Dante's Cato ever written, see Proto [“Nuove ricerche sul Catone dantesco,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 59 (1912), pp. 193-248]) is that these virtues were infused and not earned – which again points to Adam and Eve, the only humans born before Christ who had the virtues infused in their very making. In his commentary to these verses, Vellutello both insists on Adam and Eve as the 'first people' and nearly gives expression to the fact that, in them, these virtues were infused.

Our northern hemisphere is 'widowed,' deprived of the sight of these stars, because, as Chiavacci Leonardi suggests in her commentary (Purgatorio, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1994]), it is like the 'widowed' Jerusalem of Jeremiah (1:1), separated permanently from its original condition of unalloyed goodness (the condition, we may sometimes forget, that preceded that of original sin). Those who argue that our 'widowhood' signifies that we know no goodness are defeated by the fact that some humans are indeed virtuous. What we have lost is more primitive and total than acquired virtue: absolute innocence.

Mario Casella (“Interpretazioni: I. La figura simbolica di Catone,” Studi Danteschi 28 [1949], pp. 183-95.), argues that the southern sky represents the Christian active life, one of permanent prayer, while the northern heavens stand for our mortal life in consequence of the first sin.

Dante looks north now, where the Big Dipper ('the Wain') is not seeable, given the fact that it is above the equator.

The solitary figure of Cato is never named in the two cantos in which he appears (he was, however, referred to by name in Inf. XIV.15). Emerging details make his identity unmistakable. It would seem that Dante was fully aware of the puzzlement and outrage his salvation of Cato would cause; he thus apparently chose to leave the detective work to us, forcing us to acknowledge, from the details that he presents, that this is indeed the soul of Cato of Utica (95-46 B.C.), saved despite his suicide and his opposition to Julius Caesar, a sin in the last canto that damned Brutus and Cassius to the lowest zone of hell. (On this problem see Pasquazi [“Catone,” Cultura e scuola 13-14 (1965)], pp. 529-33.)

'Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, great-grandson of Cato the Censor, born B.C. 95; brought up as a devoted adherent of the Stoic school, he became conspicuous for his rigid morality. On the outbreak of the civil war in 49 he sided with Pompey; after the battle of Pharsalia he joined Metellus Scipio in Africa; when the latter was defeated at Thapsus, and all of Africa, with the exception of Utica, submitted to Caesar, he resolved to die rather than to fall into Caesar's hands; he therefore put to an end his own life, after spending the greater part of the night in reading Plato's Phaedo on the immortality of the soul, B.C. 46' (Paget Toynbee, “Catone,” Concise Dante Dictionary).

It is vital to understand that no one other than Dante was of the opinion that Cato was saved. And that he is so to be construed escapes most early (and many later) commentators, who balk at this simple but offending notion and thus attempt to deal with Cato as an abstract quality rather than as a historical figure. Pietro di Dante's gloss (1340) to vv. 85-90 is one of the few places in which one may find a clear statement of the better view: Christ harrowed Cato from hell along with the faithful Hebrews; the Holy Spirit inspired Cato to believe in Christ to come and to seek absolution for his sins – or so Dante would like us to believe. Bruno Porcelli cites a passage in Pietro's commentary (Pietro1 to vv. 31-33), in a partial and thus misleading way, to show that Cato is not treated by Pietro as a real person, but as an allegory. Here is the passage from which he cites: 'Tertio fingit apparere sibi umbram Catonis Uticensis, in quo figurat virtutem et honestatem; quae honestas habet nos primo dirigere ad virtuosa,...' a remark that clearly indicates that Pietro is treating Cato as an historical figure. But here is all that Porcelli cites: 'in quo [Dante] figurat virtutem et honestatem.' This misrepresents somewhat the context of Pietro's remark, since it is the historical Cato in whom Dante “figures” virtue and uprightness. Further, Pietro later in his commentary (Pietro1, comm. to I.85-90) says this about Cato: 'cum Christus eum liberavit a limbo, idest ab obscuritate verae salutis; cum possibile sit et verisimile Deum, qui fecit eum tantum virtuosum, inspirasse ei credulitatem Christi filii venturi, et contritum decessisse, et sic salvatum.' For one of the few modern views that accepts the notion that Dante wants us to consider Cato to have been harrowed by Christ, see Provenzal (comm. vv. 88-90): «Catone infatti morí nel 46 a. C. e prima della morte di Cristo 'spiriti umani non eran salvati' (cfr. Inf., IV, 63). Né vale l'osservare che V. nel c. IV dell'Inf., parlando delle anime che Gesú Cristo trasse dal Limbo, nomina soltanto anime di Ebrei, credenti in Cristo venturo: egli dice anche ed altri molti (id., 61). Tra questi molti può benissimo esser compreso Catone.» This happens to be one of the most radical and positive early commentaries on Dante's Cato that one can find, for it insists on the harrowing of Cato by Christ and his true Christianity. To underline the heterodox nature of even Dante's son's view of Cato, it is worth consulting St. Thomas's flat denial of Cato's eventual worth when, commenting upon the gospel of John (In Ioan. evangel. III.iii.5, cited in Singleton's commentary [to verse 38], he specifically denies that Cato could have acted, despite his apparently virtuous behavior, out of more than a desire for fame, since he, like all the damned virtuous pagans, 'did not worship God aright' (Inf. IV.38). Dante's verse is possibly a translation of Aquinas's conclusion about Cato and other infideles: 'quia Deo cultum debitum non reddebant' (because they did not pay due honor to God). On the other hand, Scott (Dante's Political Purgatory [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996]), pp. 76-78, argues that it is precisely upon Aquinas's view that pagans could be saved by implicit faith that Dante's salvation of Cato is based.

Such strongly worded phrases of praise indicate the strength (and striking strangeness) of Dante's personal sense of identity with Cato. For some of his previous and later enthusiastic encomia of Cato the Younger see Convivio IV.xxviii.13-19 and Monarchia II.v.15-17. And for the possibility that Dante saw in Virgil's line describing Cato, which appears in the description of the shield of Aeneas at Aeneid VIII.670, his own name coupled with Cato's, see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), pp. 128-29: 'his dantem iura Catonem' ([italics added] and Cato giving them the laws).

According to Lucan (Phars. II.372-376) Cato, sickened with sadness by the Caesar-inspired civil war in Rome, let his hair and beard grow untrimmed as a sign of grief. While he was only in his forties when he fought for the republican cause, Dante chooses to emphasize his age. However, and as Singleton says in his comment to verse 31, 'it should be remembered that for Dante la senettute (old age) begins at forty-six (Conv. IV.xxiv.4).'

For the resemblances to Moses in Dante's portrait of Cato see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), pp. 124-26, and Carol Kaske (“Mount Sinai and Dante's Mount Purgatory,” Dante Studies 89 [1971]), pp. 2-3, 12-15.

The general sense is clear: Cato's face is shining with light. Is this true because the four stars irradiate his face as though they were a sun shining upon him (the more usual interpretation), or is Dante saying that it was as though, in the brightness of Cato's face, the sun were shining before him? In our translation we have followed the majority view, convinced that the truncated grammatical logic of the line invites completion with 'Cato' rather than 'myself.' However, we were tempted by the minority view (restated by Pompeo Giannantonio [“Canto I,” in Lectura Dantis Neapolitana: “Purgatorio,” ed. Pompeo Giannantonio [Naples: Loffredo, 1989], pp. 14-15), encouraged by, among other things, the fact that Dante had described the face of Lady Philosophy in the second ode of Convivio (III.0.4) as overcoming our understanding as the sun overcomes weak sight. Since the next canto will introduce the text of the second ode from Convivio for our consideration, it may be worth considering the appropriateness of that image to this scene.

Cato's initial rigid and probing moral attitude may seem to indicate that he does not immediately understand the very grace that has brought him here. He reasons that Dante and Virgil, not arriving at his shores in the 'normal' way (disembarking from the angel's ship that we shall see in the next canto), may have snuck into this holy land. He intuits that they have come up from the stream (the eventual course of Lethe?) that descends into hell (see Inf. XXXIV.129-132) and is eager to know how they could have done so without a very special grace indeed. Nonetheless, in a manner totally unlike that encountered in the demons of Inferno, he at once allows for the possibility of grace. His second tercet immediately reveals what a different place we have now reached, one in which doubt and possibility exist even in the minds of its sternest keepers.

His second set of questions maintains a similar balance: 'Are you here because some newfangled ordinance of hell permits it, or has Heaven decreed a new law, permitting such unusual travel, that has been superimposed upon the New Law made by Christ?' That he refers to the cliffs of purgatory as his own shows that he is the keeper of the whole mountain, not just of its shore, a matter that used to cause debate.

Cato's queries finally bring Virgil into the conversation. It is probably significant that the opening splendors of this Christian realm have been presented for Dante's sake alone. Only now does Virgil resume his role as guide.

The 'signs' (cenni) with which he encourages his charge are probably facial gestures.

Virgil's response echoes Dante's to Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti (Inf. X.61): 'Da me stesso non vegno' (I come not on my own). There Dante reveals his debt to Virgil; here Virgil owns his subservience to Beatrice.

Virgil's insistence on Dante's near-death condition at the outset of the poem may remind us of the possible connection between that condition and suicide (see the note to Inf. XIII.24). The reflections of Inferno I and XIII in this canto, presided over by the 'good' suicide, Cato, may produce an overtone of this concern.

In the writings of St. Augustine (De civitate Dei I.17, I.20, cited by Benvenuto [comm. to I.28-33]) Dante might have found both a way to understand certain acts of suicide positively (when 'by divine inspiration it happens that the act gives an example of fortitude in the disdain for death') and a specific denial that Cato's was such an act (DcD I.23, where Cato's suicide is regarded as deriving from weakness and not from fortitude). Has Dante perversely conflated these two opinions, disagreeing with their author by making Cato the positive exemplar whom we find here? Augustine himself later comes back to the problem (DcD XIX.4) when he asks, 'Was it fortitude or weakness that prompted Cato to kill himself?' Augustine clearly implies that it was weakness; Dante, if he was thinking of the passage, might have smiled at the opening that the very question allowed a later student of the question. And then this would be another example of Dante's continuing debate with the Bishop of Hippo over the meaning of Roman history, which Augustine sees as without redeeming value, while Dante believes it essential to our understanding of God's purposes in the world.

Virgil's ascription of Dante's proximity to death to his follia may also remind the reader of Ulysses' folle volo (Inf. XXVI.125 – the last text in which we have seen the word in its adjectival or nominal form). The younger Dante may have attempted to exercise options that he now regards as self-destructive. Cantos I, XIII, XXVI, and XXXIV of Inferno are perhaps those most present from that cantica in the verses of this opening canto of Purgatorio.

That all the souls on the mountain are seen as being in Cato's charge makes it close to impossible to assign him a partial role, as do even some commentators who treat him as historical and not an allegory, one in which he has authority only over the entrance at the shore or over that and the 'vestibule' (ante-purgatory). He seems rather to be the guardian, appointed by God, of the entire mountain.

The 'power' that leads Virgil from above was apparent to him when he first saw Beatrice in Limbo and she was 'donna di virtù' (Inf. II.76).

Virgil's phrasing, which makes freedom (libertà) the key word connecting Dante and Cato, may also remind the reader of Christ, who gave His life for our freedom. For perhaps the first substantial understanding that there are significant figural relations between Christ and Cato see Raimondi (“Rito e storia nel I canto del Purgatorio,” in Metafora e storia [Turin: Einaudi, 1970 (1962)]), pp. 78-83; for the compelling further notion that Dante would have seen confirmation of exactly such a reading in the text of Lucan itself, see Raimondi, “Rito e storia,” p. 80, and “Purgatorio Canto I,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera (Florence: Le Monnier, 1967), p. 21, highlighting Cato's words (Phars. II.312): 'Hic redimat sanguis populos' (and let my blood ransom the people). Barberi Squarotti eventually summarized this view as follows: 'Cato, finally, comes to take on the function of a lay figura of Christ' (“Ai piedi del monte: il prologo del Purgatorio,” in L'arte dell'interpretare: studi critici offerti a Giovanni Getto [Turin: L'Arciere, 1984]), p. 33. See also, in this vein, Wetherbee (“Poeta che mi guidi: Dante, Lucan, and Virgil,” in Canons, ed. R. Von Hallberg [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984]), p. 135.

The contributions of Raimondi to a better understanding of Dante's Cato, seen as a historical being rather than as an abstraction (e.g., the Ottimo's 'Solicitude' or Landino's and Vellutello's 'Liberty'), are of great importance and have been influential. See, for example, Edoardo Sanguineti (“Dante, Purgatorio I,” Letture classensi 3 [1970]), pp. 267-69.

This line is so clear in its prediction of Cato's eventual salvation, when he will receive his glorified body in the general resurrection of the just that will follow the Last Judgment, that one has difficulty accepting Pasquazi's claim that the issue of Cato's salvation is left unresolved (“Catone,” Cultura e scuola 13-14 (1965), p. 534). Pasquazi is closer to the mark than Andreoli (comm. to this verse), who simply denies the possibility that Cato could be saved, arguing that Dante provides no grounds by which we might accept such a view. This is but another example of how the force of Dante's daring treatment of Cato has escaped his readers.

Virgil's self-serving reference to the fact that he was not an active sinner temporarily hides the further fact that he is damned.

Virgil's attempt at captatio benevolentiae (the winning of an audience's goodwill) probably sounds reasonable enough to most readers (for instance, Gabriele Muresu [“Il 'sacrificio' per la libertà (Purgatorio I),” La Rassegna della letteratura italiana 105 (2001), pp. 357-403], p. 395). Since he dwells in Limbo with Marcia, Cato's wife, he seeks to sway him with reference to her. Virgil has learned, we might reflect, how captatio functions in a Christian context from Beatrice, who practiced it upon him (Inf. II.58-60; II.73-74). If such rhetoric worked on him, he would seem to have surmised, perhaps it will now be effective with Cato. However, and as Arnaldo Di Benedetto (“Simboli e moralità nel II canto del Purgatorio,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 162 [1985]), p. 175, has noted, 'the mention of Marcia was something of a gaffe.'

Cato's rebuke of Virgil is gentle but firm: (1) Marcia pleased me well enough when I was mortal, but after I was harrowed from Limbo by Christ (the maker of the 'New Law') pity for the damned was no longer possible for me; (2) Beatrice's having interceded for you is all that is required – there is no need for flattery. Cato, unlike Orpheus, will not look back for his dead wife. He would seem rather to have Christ's words in mind: 'For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven' (Matthew 22:30), a passage Dante cites later in this cantica (Purg. XIX.137).

Cato's characterization of Virgil's words as lusinghe (flatteries) is harsh, but justified by Virgil's error. The name that would have worked (and still does) is Beatrice's, not Marcia's. Virgil has relied upon the power of the spiritually dead when he should have appealed to that of the saved.

Turning from his admonition (which would have seemed gratuitous had the author not wanted to call Virgil's sense of the situation into question), Cato now orders the Roman poet to gird Dante's loins with a symbol of humility. Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to Purg. I.134-136) refers to the sixth chapter of Matthew (he means Micah [6:14]): 'humiliatio tua in medio tui,' what Singleton (comm. to I.95) calls the cingulum humilitatis. Dante's confirmation in humility must be joined with his purification (the cleansing of his face) so that he be pure in sight when he stands before the 'admitting angel' at the gate of purgatory in Canto IX. For the reflection of the baptismal liturgy in vv. 98-99 see Kevin Marti, “Dante's 'Baptism' and the Theology of the Body in Purgatorio 1-2,” Traditio 45 (1989/90), pp. 167-90.

The giunco schietto (verse 95), the rush with which Virgil is ordered to bind his pupil, is, as Tommaseo was perhaps the first to suggest (comm. to Purg. I.94-96), meant to echo positively the horrible vegetation of the forest of the suicides (Inf. XIII.5), described as having branches that are not straight ('non rami schietti'), but contorted.

Cato points Virgil (and Dante) toward a descent to the very shore of the island, its lowest point, truly a descent into humility, where the only vegetation is this most modest of plants, characterized by its plainness and its pliancy, and by its ability to grow in a landscape inhospitable to any other form of life.

The guardian's reference to the nascent sunrise reminds us that this scene, until now, has been played in the hour just before dawn.

Dante has been kneeling all through this scene (see verse 51) and only now arises.

Virgil's remark indicates that this is literally a descent to a lower place; metaphorically it would surely also seem to be a 'descent into humility' for Dante.

The beginning of this dawn, Easter Sunday 1300, resonates, as Tommaseo (comm. to these verses) was perhaps the first to notice, with a similar phrasing from Virgil, 'splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus' (the sea gleams beneath her flickering light – Aen. VII.9). The scene is the departure of Aeneas as he resumes his voyage toward Latium, but the source of that light is the moon, not the sun. In both works the passage marks a boundary of importance, the beginning of the 'Iliadic' second half of the Aeneid and the preparation for Dante's journey upward toward God's kingdom.

The comparison equates the protagonist and his guide alike with a person who finds the necessary (and hitherto obscured) path; yet we surely reflect that it applies far more forcefully to Dante, who is reported as having lost the true way at the poem's beginning ('ché la diritta via era smarrita' – Inf. I.3), and who now, and only now, is back on the path toward salvation.

The adjective 'solingo' (solitary, lonely) underlines the separation of the two travelers from the presence of Cato, who has fulfilled his mission and set them on their way.

That is, once they had gotten closer to the sea, where the maritime breeze protects the dew from the heat of the sun more than it does higher up the slope. There is debate over whether Dante meant to say 'ad orezza' or 'adorezza'; the second reading would translate as 'where there is shadow,' but most contemporary students of the problem have gone back to the early commentators' reading of the line, where 'orezza' is a diminutive of the noun 'ora' when it has the meaning of 'breeze.'

Virgil's cleansing of Dante's face removed the dark stain of the sins of hell from his visage and restored his white, or innocent (and faithful?), countenance. That we should think of the rite of baptism here may have been suggested by Benvenuto da Imola, whose gloss to vv. 121-125 refers to the rugiada (dew) as the 'dew of divine grace, abundant when men humble their hearts before God and are cleansed of their habitual sinfulness.'

Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to I.134-136) was the first (and remains one of the relative few) of the poem's commentators to insist on the redoing here of Aeneas's self-cleansing when he enters the Elysian fields (Aen. VI.635-636), a natural association for Dante to have had in mind. He too is entering a better precinct, having turned his attention away from 'Tartarus,' the place of the wicked.

The reminiscence of Ulysses here has had a recent surge of appreciation, but notice of it is as ancient as the commentary of Benvenuto da Imola (followed, as he often was, by John of Serravalle). As Rigo (“Tra 'maligno' e 'sanguigno,'” in her Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994]), p. 48, points out, Benvenuto (comm. to these verses), citing St. Augustine's opinion (in De civitate Dei), says that no one had ever lived at the antipodes who ever returned from there; he goes on to suggest that this passage reflects the failed voyage of Ulysses. Some recent writers have also pointed out that the rhyme words in the passage (diserto, esperto; acque, piacque, nacque) are also found in the Ulysses passage (Inf. XXVI.98f., Inf. XXVI.137f.). For the former see Thompson (Dante's Epic Journeys [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974]), p. 47; for the latter Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990]), p. 32.

The triumphant wonder of the little miracle of the Christlike humble reed that renews itself concludes the canto with a proper Christian note. For Pasquazi (“Catone,” Cultura e scuola 13-14 [1965)]), p. 537, the reed 'expresses the beginning of an inner renewal, through which the poet, holding to the way of humility, opens himself to a new life.' This canto is thus a canto of two 'suicides,' Cato and Jesus, each of whom voluntarily gave his life so that others might be free. For the way in which this scene counters the images of suicide found in Inferno XIII.31-32, see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), pp. 129-31. In the earlier scene Dante, under Virgil's orders, breaks off a twig from the thornbush that is the damned soul of Pier della Vigna. Bits broken from some of the suicides do not grow back (see Inf. XIII.141-142), but strew the forest floor. Here the humble plant does indeed regrow. Wetherbee (“Poeta che mi guidi: Dante, Lucan, and Virgil,” in Canons, ed. R. Von Hallberg [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], pp. 37-38, makes a similar observation. Pasquini (“Il Paradiso e una nuova idea di figuralismo,” Intersezioni 16 [1996]), pp. 421-22, studies still other connections between Cato and Pier, underlined by precise verbal echoes.

However, the major reference here is, as the early commentators were quick to realize, to the golden bough in the Aeneid (VI.143-144): 'Primo avulso non deficit alter / aureus' (when the first is plucked, a second, golden too, does not fail to take its place). That scene offers a fitting parallel to this one, but with a major and governing difference: the classical object is artificial and precious, while the Christian one is natural and of little worth. Thus does the humility that inspires the Christian sublime help it outdo its classical forebear.