The scene with the angel, which we expect, having experienced such a scene at the end of the description of each terrace, is here done retrospectively and as briefly as possible. The giving of directions to the next terrace and the removal of Dante's (fifth) P are referred to simply as having occurred. The remembered angelic recital of a Beatitude (here the fourth, Matthew 5:6, 'Blessèd are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness [justice, iustitiam, in the Vulgate], for they shall be filled') is given in truncated form. Responding to this economy, Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 1-3) refers to Dante's 'novum modum scribendi' (new way of writing). What exactly was omitted from the Beatitude has been a subject of discussion, but it clearly seems to be 'hunger and' (saved to be deployed, words more appropriate to Gluttony, at Purg. XXIV.154) and perhaps the ending as well ('for they shall be filled'), possibly omitted in both utterances.

It is as though the poet were clearing every inch of available space for the second scene with Statius, and indeed the arrival at the Terrace of Gluttony will be postponed for over a hundred lines (until verse 115), the longest such intermezzo we find among the seven terraces.

From verse 3 it seems inferentially clear that Statius does not have what would have been his final P removed. Dante describes his own letter being removed from his brow by the angel ('avendomi dal viso un colpo raso' [having erased another swordstroke from my brow]). Had he wanted to include Statius as having the same experience, he would only have to have written 'avendoci' (from our brows). Thus, like all 'regular' penitents, it seems most likely that Statius did not have his brow adorned by the writing of the warder at the gate of purgatory. See the note to Purgatorio XXI.22-24.

We are reminded of Dante's increasing similarity to the unburdened souls of the disembodied. Traversing two more terraces will make him as light as they.

Dante's charming fiction has it that Juvenal (for the reason behind the choice of him as praiser of Statius see the note to Purg. XXI.88), arriving in Limbo ca. A.D. 140, told Virgil of Statius's great affection, which then caused a similar affection in Virgil for the unknown Statius. Benvenuto (comm. to these verses) offers a sweet-tempered gloss to this passage: 'Often we love a virtuous man, even if we have never met him – and in just this way do I love dead Dante.'

Virgil wraps his delicate yet intrusive question in pledges of friendship, and then asks Statius how such as he could have been stained by the sin of avarice. The phrase 'tra cotanto senno' (amidst such wisdom) recalls the identical words found at Inferno IV.102, and thus reminds us of the five classical poets encountered there by Dante. It may also remind us that Limbo is precisely where anybody else would have assumed Statius would spend eternity.

As Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 25-27) says, 'Statius now smiles at Virgil's mistake just as Dante had smiled, earlier [Purg. XXI.109], at Statius's mistake.' Statius is also obviously allowed to be pleased to have been guilty of prodigality rather than avarice, no matter how seriously Dante took the latter sin.

A paraphrase may help make clear the general sense of these lines: 'As my situation among the avaricious made you take me for one of them – and a better understanding shows the opposite sin to pertain, just so did your text seem to be condemning avarice – until my personal understanding revealed that it condemned my own prodigality.' On the problem of the belatedness of prodigality's appearance as a subject on this terrace, of which it is supposedly the cotitular occupant, see Barnes (“Purgatorio XX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings II: “Purgatorio,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis (virginiana), 12, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1993]), pp. 288-90.

Statius has already said (Purg. XXI.68) that he had to spend five hundred years and more on this terrace, thus more than six thousand months.

The verb used by Statius to indicate his comprehension of Virgil's text will turn out to be pivotal, in that he does not say 'when I read' but 'when I understood,' i.e., allowing us to comprehend his latent meaning: 'when I construed your text so that it matched my need.'

The meaning of these lines, clearly a translation of a text of Virgil (Aen. III.56-57), is the subject of much debate involving questions about the exact nature of what Dante wrote ('Per che' or 'perché'?) and what he took Virgil to mean (or decided to make Virgil say). Here, as always, we have followed Petrocchi's text in our translation, even though in this case we are in particularly strenuous disagreement with him. Here are the texts, Virgil's first:

Quid non mortalia pectora cogis,
auri sacra fames?

(to what do you not drive human hearts, impious hunger for gold?)

As for Dante's text, it may be either of the following:

Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fame
de l'oro, l'appetito de' mortali?

(to what end, O cursèd hunger for gold, / do you not govern [drive] the appetite of mortals?)

or

Perché non reggi tu, o sacra fame
de l'oro, l'appetito de' mortali?

(why do you not govern mortal appetites, O holy [i.e., temperate] hunger for gold?)

It is true that the Latin adjective sacer can mean either 'holy, sacred' or 'unholy, impious.' However, the meaning of Aeneas's outcry, recounting the horrific deed committed by Polymnestor against Polydorus (see the note to Inf. XIII.31-39) is clear to all; he means 'impious.' But what of Dante's text? The 'traditional' reading has him maintaining the negative valence of Virgil's sacer (which would then be the only occurrence among twelve in which sacro does not mean 'holy' in his poem – see Inf. XXVII.91, Purg. IX.134, Purg. XIX.38, Purg. XXII.40, Purg. XXXI.1, Par. III.114, Par. VI.7, Par. XII.62, Par. XV.64, Par. XXI.73, Par. XXV.1, Par. XXXII.21). But see Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 37-42) who reads the lines exactly as modern 'revisionists' do, as does the Anonimo Fiorentino (comm. to vv. 37-42), who also realizes that Statius needed to understand the lines as condemning prodigality and not avarice and thus adjusted their meaning to fit his own condition. Perhaps no early reader, among those who understood Statius as deliberately misreading Virgil, was as 'modern' and 'revisionist' as Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 25-54), who simply argued that Dante was deliberately giving Virgil's text another meaning than it held because it suited his purpose to do so. A similar, if more cautious, reading is found in Venturi (comm. to vv. 38-41), blamed by Andreoli (comm. to these lines) for his 'absurd supposition.' Bianchi (comm. to these lines) is the first to appreciate the absurdity of the notion that Dante had used the verb reggere (to govern) in a pejorative sense. The debate continues into our own day, mainly propelled by the notion that Dante could not possibly have misunderstood Virgil's words and therefore did not grossly misrepresent them. This, however, is to overlook the fact that it is the character Statius who is understanding them as they took on significance for him, guilty of prodigality, not of avarice. And just as he will later reveal his 'misinterpretation' of Virgil's fourth Eclogue at vv. 70-72, a 'misreading' that saved his soul, so now he shows how his moral rehabilitation was begun when he 'misread' a passage in the Aeneid. The debate is finally in such condition that this view, present in some of the earliest commentators but energetically attacked over the centuries, now may seem only sensible. See, among others, Alessandro Ronconi (Interpretazioni grammaticali [Padua: Liviana, 1958]), pp. 85-86; Feliciana Groppi (Dante traduttore, 2nd ed. [Rome: Editrice “Orbis Catholicus” Herder, 1962]), pp. 163-68; Ettore Paratore (Tradizione e struttura in Dante [Florence: Sansoni, 1968]), pp. 73-75; Robert Hollander (“The Tragedy of Divination in Inferno XX,” in Studies in Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1980]), pp. 212-13, and Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983]), pp. 86-89, completely in accord with R.A. Shoaf's earlier and nearly identical reading (“'Auri sacra fames' and the Age of Gold [Purg. XXII, 40-41 and 148-150],” Dante Studies 96 [1978], pp. 195-99). They are joined by Teodolinda Barolini (Dante's Poets [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]), p. 260, and, at length, by Ronald Martinez (“La sacra fame dell'oro [Purgatorio 22, 41] tra Virgilio e Stazio: dal testo all'interpretazione,” Letture classensi 18 [1989], pp. 177-93). A similar, if less developed argument, is found in Giuseppe Mazzotta (Dante, Poet of the Desert [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979]), p. 222. And, for wholehearted acceptance of Shoaf's argument, see Michelangelo Picone (“Purgatorio XXII,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings II: “Purgatorio,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis (virginiana), 12, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1993]), pp. 325-26. Neglected, by all but Barolini and Shoaf, is H.D. Austin (“Aurea Justitia: A Note on Purgatorio, XXII, 40f,” Modern Language Notes 48 [1933], pp. 327-30). Mainly forgotten as well is the then daring support of Francesco da Buti by Alfredo Galletti (Il canto XXII del “Purgatorio” [“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele,” Florence: Sansoni, n.d. (read in 1909)]), pp. 17-18. Among Italian students of the problem who accept this basic view of its resolution see Massimiliano Chiamenti (Dante Alighieri traduttore [Florence: Le Lettere, 1995]), pp. 131-37, who offers most of the essential bibliography for the problem but is, however, surprisingly unaware of the support for his position available in his American precursors' analyses of what he considers 'the most beautiful example of free translation in Dante' (p. 134). For the general question of Dante's Statius see Giorgio Brugnoli (“Stazio in Dante,” Cultura Neolatina 29 [1969], pp. 117-25) and Luca Carlo Rossi (“Prospezioni filologiche per lo Stazio di Dante,” in Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica, ed. A. A. Iannucci [Ravenna: Longo, 1993], pp. 205-24). For more recent bibliography see Diana Glenn (“Women in Limbo: Arbitrary Listings or Textual Referents? Mapping the Connections in Inferno IV and Purgatorio XXII,” Dante Studies 117 [1999]), p. 114; and Simone Marchesi (“Dante's 'active' hermeneutics in Purgatorio XXII: Virgil and Statius as readers of poetry,” article awaiting publication), offering an extended discussion of the possible Augustinian sources of the 'aggressive' reading of Virgilian text attributed to Statius by Dante. For yet another inconclusive and unconvincing attempt to deal with the problematic passage as not involving a 'misreading,' offering a slight and probably unacceptable twist to the traditional reading, 'per che' should be understood as 'quid' in the sense of 'quomodo' (in English perhaps translated as 'in how many ways,' said in such a way as to express a certain irony), see Paolo Baldan (“Stazio e le possibili 'vere ragion che son nascose' della sua conversione [Purg. XXII.40-41],” Lettere Italiane 38 [1986], pp. 149-65). However, for a stinging rebuke to Petrocchi's philological procedures here (La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata [Florence: Le Lettere, 1994 (1967)], vol. III, Purgatorio), see Maurizio Palma di Cesnola (Questioni danteschi: “Fiore”, “Monarchia”, “Commedia” [Ravenna: Longo, 2003]), p. 79n.

Statius's description of the prodigal as having shorn hair repeats that element in the description of those damned for prodigality in Inferno VII.57.

The fact that, according to Statius, the prodigal do not understand that their behavior is sinful underlines the importance of Virgil's words about the 'holy' hunger for gold in bringing about his own salvation. Their ignorance of their own sinfulness may help explain why there is so little reference to their form of sin on this terrace. See discussion in the note to vv. 52-54.

The reference of the adverb 'qui' (here) in this tercet is a matter of debate. One should be aware that the notion that it refers to all of purgatory (rather than to this terrace alone) is of recent vintage and is intelligently opposed by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses). Further, if one examines all eighteen uses of the adverb by penitents who have speaking roles on the mountain, it is plain that only twice does it not refer to the particular terrace on which the speaker is found. The only speakers who employ 'qui' to refer to the mountain generally are Statius (Purg. XXI.43) and Forese Donati (Purg. XXIII.109). All others indicate only the present terrace, as follows: Oderisi (Purg. XI.70, XI.72, XI.88, XI.89, XI.122); Sapia (Purg. XIII.107); Pope Adrian (Purg. XIX.114, XIX.115, XIX.129, XIX.12; Hugh Capet (Purg. XX.111, XX.122); Statius (Purg. XXII.51); Forese (Purg. XXIII.66, Purg. XXIV.16, XXIV.49). In short, there is every reason to believe that the reference is only to this particular terrace, the only one on which a particular sin and its opposite are purged. None of the early commentators, in fact, even thinks of the possibility of such a strange interpretation, which has Statius belatedly present a general rule for purgatory only here, and which would have us imagine that on the Terrace of Pride there were those who were abject, as well as, on that of Envy, souls who gave away their necessary belongings in an excess of charity, etc., thus justifying the notion that Dante had bought into the Aristotelian notion of the 'golden mean' in order to structure the moral order of purgatory. That such was the case for avarice and prodigality in Inferno seems clear from the treatment of these two aspects of a single sin (see the note to Inf. VII.25-30). In Convivio IV.xvii.7 Dante does speak of the golden mean as an encompassing moral standard: 'Each of these virtues has two related enemies, that is, vices, one through excess and the other through shortfall. These virtues constitute the mean between them, and they spring from a single source, namely from our habit of good choice' (tr. Lansing). It is possible that Dante was planning to build the unwritten final eleven chapters of Convivio on the base of Aristotle's eleven moral virtues (see Hollander [Dante: A Life in Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)], p. 49), but such a plan obviously was not used for the Commedia.

The commentators were late to imagine that Statius's remark was meant to indicate a general law. A first tentative movement in this direction occurs only with Lombardi (comm. to vv. 49-50). And it was only in the twentieth century that more definitive judgments began to be expressed, first by Torraca (comm to these lines) and then most blatantly by Steiner (comm. to verse 51). Eventually a sort of compromise position is adopted, one that regards the remark as indicating a general disposition that is not, however, found exemplified in the other terraces, but only here: Grabher (comm. to vv. 49-54), followed, in their remarks about this passage, by Momigliano, Porena, Chimenz, Fallani, Giacalone (who hedges his bet by also allowing the older reading), Singleton, Pasquini, Chiavacci Leonardi (Purgatorio, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1994]), p. 647. The weakness of this position is obvious, since it makes Dante present a general law that has only this one specific application. It is difficult to accept the view that these lines authorize the understanding that on all terraces sins and their opposites are repented. Teodolinda Barolini (“Medieval Multiculturalism and Dante's Theology of Hell,” in The Craft and the Fury: Essays in Memory of Glauco Cambon, ed. J. Francese [n.p.: Bordighera Press (= Italiana 9 [2000])], pp. 86-87, 101-2) and the few commentators who preceded her in this reading take the adjective alcun as indeterminate, meaning 'any' in the most general sense, and qui as relating to all of the terraces of purgatory. However, if 'here' indicates this terrace alone, then 'any' refers to some sin that is directly opposite to avarice, i.e., prodigality, as Bosco/Reggio remind us that such determinate forms of alcun do (e.g., Purg. IV.80 and Par. IX.122). It therefore seems sensible to conclude that Dante employed Aristotle's golden mean only for the paired sins of avarice and prodigality, both in Inferno and here in the second cantica. For evidence that he was thinking very precisely along these lines when he presented the sin punished as avarice or prodigality, see Inferno VIII.48, where he refers to 'avarizia' as having 'il suo soperchio'; if avarice may be 'excessive,' it is then at least implicitly true that there is a 'golden mean' of avarice. And this seems clearly to be the case both here on the fifth terrace and back in the fourth circle.

We can begin to understand that Dante has constructed this terrace in a way that is much different from that in which he structured the Circle of Avarice and Prodigality in Inferno. There the two sins are treated, at least approximately, as equals, each of them sharing literally half the realm. Here it would seem (one cannot be certain) that there is no set place for the penitent prodigal nor any exemplary figures that refer directly to their sin. In fact, this is the Terrace of Avarice on which prodigals seem to be gathered, too. Since the only one we know of – and he refers to no others in his condition – is Statius, we have no way of knowing or guessing how many others there are like him, or even whether there are any others at all.

Virgil is referred to as the author of the Eclogues, the fourth of which will shortly come into prominent play in Statius's narrative of his conversion (vv. 70-73). His question reveals that Dante treats him as having read – and with some care – Statius's Thebaid, a work written roughly one hundred and ten years after his death. (We have observed a similar bit of business in Inf. XXXI.115-124, where Virgil borrows from the texts of Lucan as he attempts to flatter Antaeus [see Hollander (“Dante's Antaeus [Inferno 31.97-132],” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America [May 2000])]). Do we imagine, as more than one discussant has, that Virgil had read Lucan (or Statius) in Limbo? Or do we realize that Dante is a poet and takes liberties when he wishes to?

The sons of Jocasta (by her son Oedipus) are Eteocles and Polynices. Their fraternal rivalry results in the civil war in Thebes that is the main subject of Statius's only completed epic.

Statius twice invokes Clio, as the muse of history, in the Thebaid (I.41; X.630). Virgil's question suggests that the text of the epic, while historically valid, does not seem to him to yield any hint of Statius's Christian faith. But see the note to vv. 64-73. Lombardi (comm. to this verse) was perhaps the first commentator to suggest the (debated but viable) idea that tastare here means 'pluck the strings of the lyre' in accompaniment of the poet's song.

Virgil would like to know what sun (God?) or what candles (human sources of enlightenment?) enlightened Statius, removing him from the darkness of paganism in Domitian's Rome so that he could 'set sail,' following the Church's instruction. (For the differing status of the two sources of light see Christopher Kleinhenz, “The Celebration of Poetry: A Reading of Purgatory XXII,” Dante Studies 106 [1988], p. 28). St. Peter, the rock on which Jesus built that church, is portrayed as a 'fisher of souls' in Mark 1:17.

The Castalian spring, source of poetic inspiration in classical myth, had its own source among the caves of Mt. Parnassus.

Statius's response surprises Virgil and continues to surprise nearly everyone. It was Virgil whose example made him want to be a poet and Virgil who brought him to love the true God. The culminating verse of his answer begins by restating the first part of the equation, to which no one can object, and then the second ('per te cristiano'). There is no external authority, competent or otherwise, who would have brought Dante to believe such a thing.

However, if Dante believed, or had decided to believe, that Statius was a Christian, when did he think he first converted? Virgil's own remark about his not finding any evidence in the text of the Thebaid that supports a Statian conversion to Christianity is perhaps a clue to what we should do in examining that text. That is, the 'dating' of such a conversion might have seemed ascertainable from Statius's texts themselves. Scevola Mariotti (“Il cristianesimo di Stazio in Dante secondo il Poliziano,” in Letteratura e critica: Studi in onore di Natalino Sapegno, ed. Walther Binni et al., vol. II [Rome: Bulzoni, 1975], pp. 149-61) discussed Poliziano's view that a passage in the Thebaid (IV.514-518, naming the mysterious 'high lord of the triple world' [Demogorgon?]) seemed to authorize understanding of a Christian intent on the part of its author. Mariotti's argument did not convince Hollander (“Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,” in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980]), pp. 206-7, who argued instead that a passage early on in the work (Thebaid II.358-362) revealed, unmistakably, a reference to the key prophetic text in Virgil's fourth Eclogue. (He might have argued that there is an even more precise reference at V.461, the phrase 'iam nova progenies' [and now a new race] that matches exactly Virgil's key phrase in the Eclogue [IV.7].) Thus, if for Dante the phrase in Virgil that converted Statius is that one, it only makes sense that, finding it in the text of Statius's epic, he could argue that, by the time he was writing its second book (or at least its fifth), Statius was already a closet Christian. For a discussion see also Chiamenti (Dante Alighieri traduttore [Florence: Le Lettere, 1995]), pp. 205-8. Dante's precision is careful: Statius, by the time he was writing his seventh book (in verses 88-89 he is made to say, 'I was baptized before, in my verses, / I had led the Greeks to the rivers of Thebes,' a text that Padoan [“Il Canto XXI del Purgatorio,” in Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV (Florence: Le Monnier, 1970)], p. 349, is puzzled by but retreats from), in fact verse 424 of that book, he had been baptized. Further, it seems certain that Dante, as many another, thought of Domitian as a persecutor of Christians. Since the epic begins with typically servile praise of the emperor by the poet, Dante might have surmised that Statius had begun writing the epic as a pagan, but got the light from reading (or remembering) Virgil's prophetic Eclogue before he had finished his second book. Sometime between his first (and after his second?) citation of the prophecy and the seventh book he finally converted openly (vv. 88-91). Hollander (“Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,” in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980]), p. 206n., also suggests the possible relevance of the 'secret Christianity' of the rhetor Victorinus described by St. Augustine in his Confessions (VIII.2). Olga Grlic (“Dante's Statius and Augustine: Intertextuality in Conversionary Narrative,” Medievalia et Humanistica 21 [1995], pp. 73-84) argues for the wider pertinence of Augustine's own conversion to that of Statius. And Augustine may have played a role in the development of the haunting image of Virgil's lighting the way for those to follow but not for himself (vv.67-69). Moore (Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante [Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 (1896)]), p. 293, cites Augustine, Confessions IV.xvi, p. 88: 'I had my back to the light and my face was turned towards the things which it illumined, so that my eyes, by which I saw the things which stood in the light, were themselves in darkness' (tr. Pine-Coffin). (Moore gives credit to Scartazzini for the citation, but does not say in which work, if apparently not in the commentary of 1900.) The resemblance is striking, if not quite overwhelming. It is at the close of this passage that Moore admits that he had not yet gotten round to a careful study of Dante's acquaintance with Augustine, a lacuna that he left unfilled. While there has been recent work on the subject that is of some importance, the sort of careful monograph that would lay out the territory clearly and carefully is surely a serious lack in Dante studies. (See the note to Par. XXXII.34-36.)

On the continuing complexity of the problem of Statius's supposed Christianity see, among many others, Giorgio Brugnoli (“Statius Christianus,” Italianistica 17 [1988], pp. 9-15); Riccardo Scrivano (“Stazio personaggio, poeta e cristiano,” Quaderni d'italianistica 13 [1992], pp. 175-97); and Andreas Heil (Alma Aeneis: Studien zur Vergil- und Statiusrezeption Dante Alighieris, Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der Ruprecht-Karl-Universität Heidelberg, 2001 [Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002], pp. 52-101). For the narrower discussion of the dependence of Dante's view on putative existing medieval sources for such a belief, see Padoan (“Il mito di Teseo e il cristianesimo di Stazio,” Lettere Italiane 11 [1959], pp. 432-57), Ronconi's rejoinder (“L'incontro di Stazio e Virgilio,” Cultura e scuola 13-14 [1965], pp. 566-71)änd Padoan's continuing insistence (“Il Canto XXI del Purgatorio,” in Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1970], pp. 327-54). It seems clear that Ronconi's view, that the conversion of Statius is entirely Dante's invention, is the only likely solution to an intriguing problem. For Dante's impact on those Spanish writers who also (from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries) considered Statius a Christian, see Hilaire Kallendorf and Craig Kallendorf (“Conversations with the Dead: Quevedo and Statius, Annotation and Imitation,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 63 [2000], pp. 131-68).

In classical myth the Castalian spring, flowing in the grottoes of Parnassus, is the source of poetic inspiration in those who drank from it.

Dante's translation of the crucial lines of the fourth Eclogue (5-7) deforms them just enough to show how a Christian might have found a better meaning in them than did Virgil himself:

magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
iam nova progenies caelo demittetur alto.

(The great line of the centuries begins anew;
now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns;
now new progeny descends from heaven on high.)

From Monarchia I.xi.1 we know that Dante believed that Virgil's Virgo was not a woman named Mary but Astraea, or Justice. Still, primal justice was the condition of humankind in the prelapsarian Eden, that 'first age of man' (primo tempo umano), which is open to a wider interpretation than Virgil's 'Saturnia regna.' Statius's version of Virgil had to rearrange very little (and that seems to be Dante's hard-edged intention) to make the prophecy a Christian one. Dante's identical rhymes (ri-nova, ciel nova) add a repeated word that has a deeply Christian ring to it, 'new,' thus pointing to the concept that almost emerges from Virgil's text. He came very close, but he failed. However, in Pertile's view (“Il nobile castello, il paradiso terrestre e l'umanesimo dantesco,” Filologia e critica 5 [1980]), p. 26: 'The character of Statius was created by Dante in the exclusive service of the greater glory of Virgil.'

The phrasing is self-conscious in the extreme. Dante, having invented a Christian Statius, now hints that it is a fabrication of his own by putting the language of portraiture (and not of history) into the mouth of his creation. See Hollander (“Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,” in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980]), p. 206.

Soon Virgil's words seemed so to confirm the message of the preachers who followed Christ's apostles that Statius began to frequent these Christians.

Statius's epic is dedicated (fulsomely) to the emperor. Thus Dante, believing that Domitian persecuted Christians and that Statius was a Christian, had to resolve that problem by imagining a conversion that only bloomed after he had begun writing the Thebaid. 'Domitian (Titus Flavius Domitianus Augustus), Roman Emperor, younger son of Vespasian and successor of his brother, Titus; he was born at Rome A.D. 51, became Emperor in 81, and was murdered in 96. Among the many crimes traditionally imputed to him was a relentless persecution of the Christians, which is mentioned by Orosius (Hist. VII.x.1), who was doubtless Dante's authority' (Toynbee, “Domiziano” [Concise Dante Dictionary]). Orosius, however, puts this persecution late in Domitian's reign, while Dante would seem to have believed that it occurred earlier, i.e., at the very least before Statius had reached the seventh book of his epic. While later historians question either the severity or the very existence of Domitian's persecution of Christians (and Jews [see the Ottimo (comm. to verse 83)]), Dante's early commentators, who may reflect traditions known also to him, insist that Domitian was only the second emperor (after Nero) to persecute Christians. The Anonimo Fiorentino (comm. to vv. 74-89) states that Domitian's persecutions began in the fourth year of his reign (81-96) and that in 89, when they reached their height, they had made martyrs of such notable Christians as St. Clement. If Dante was aware of the traditional timetable for the composition of the Thebaid, 80-92, his life of Statius, supplied in these verses, would match up well with those particulars.

Baptism, we remember from the last time we heard the word in the poem (Inf. IV.35), was precisely what Virgil and his fellow pagans in Limbo lacked. Statius indicates that by the time he was writing the seventh book of his epic, when the exiled Theban forces, returning, prepared their assault on the city, he had been baptized.

Dante's secret-Christian topos has its roots in John's gospel (John 19:38-39) in the figures of Joseph of Arimathea (Singleton [comm. to this verse]) and Nicodemus (Benvenuto [comm. to Inf. XXI.47-49]), both of whom come only secretly to Christ's tomb.

Statius's four hundred years and more on the terrace of Sloth are the fitting result of his tardiness in making an open declaration of the faith to which he had, mirabile dictu, been led by Virgil's Eclogue. For slothful behavior as being slowness to love correctly see Purgatorio XVII.130 and XVIII.8, and see Carroll's remarks, quoted in the note to Purgatorio XVIII.103.

Statius's remark inevitably reminds Virgil that, even though he is surely the greater poet, he has lost the most important contest in life. Diana Modesto (“Virgil, Man or shade: The 'Mancato abbraccio' of Purgatorio XXI, 132,” Spunti e ricerche 11 [1995]), p.11, compares his role to that of Brunetto in Inferno XV.123-124, who seems to be a winner but who has, in fact, lost everything.

This 'throwaway line,' insisting on the plethora of time available for Statian discourse, again reminds the reader of the unusual nature of the entire Statius episode, displacing 'normal' events and procedures in order to give maximum importance to this remarkable invention on Dante's part.

Virgil now adds nine classical poets to the named population of Limbo (five poets and thirty-five others). Added to the 'school' of Homer ('that Greek / the Muses suckled more than any other') are five Latins: Terence, Caecilius Statius (of whom no texts survive), and Plautus (all wrote in the second century B.C.); Dante's knowledge of their works was mainly nonexistent, with the barely possible exception of Terence (see the notes to Inf. IV.88-90 and XVIII.133-135); Varro is either Publius Terentius Varro or Lucius Varius Rufus, both Roman poets of the first century B.C. Dante's source for these names is debated, with Horace (Ars poetica 54-55) the leading candidate. On the three Latin comic poets see Baranski (“Dante e la tradizione comica latina,” in Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica, ed. A. A. Iannucci [Ravenna: Longo, 1993], pp. 225-45), who also suggests (p. 233) that Varro is associated with tragedy and Persius with satire, thus rounding out the three major Latin styles.

The names of the four Greeks whom Virgil goes on to mention, derived from the writings of Aristotle, St. Thomas, and perhaps still others, were nearly all that Dante knew of them, three tragedians of the fifth century B.C., Euripides, Antiphon, and Agathon, and one lyric poet, Simonides.

Their conversation, Virgil reports, is of Mt. Parnassus, home of the Muses, the mountain that Statius (verse 65) says Virgil first led him toward in making him desire to be a poet. They and Virgil learn too late about this better Christian mountain.

Their laureated condition may make us think back to the little mystery represented by Statius's being crowned by myrtle, not by laurel. See Purgatorio XXI.90 and note.

Virgil adds eight more souls to Limbo, now not those of poets, but of virtuous women. All of them are to be found in Statius's two epics (the last two in the Achilleid) and all are also to be understood, as they were by Giovanni Boccaccio, as exemplifying filial piety (see Hollander [Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” (Florence: Olschki, 1983)], pp. 208-12). 'She that revealed Langia' is Hypsipyle (see Inf. XVIII.92 and Purg. XXVI.95). 'La figlia di Tiresia' is, almost all now agree, Manto, thus causing a terrible problem for Dante's interpreters, the sole 'bilocation' in his poem (for her first appearance see Inf. XX.52-102). Did he, like Homer, 'nod'? Are we faced with an error of transcription? Or did he intentionally refer here to Statius's Manto, while Virgil's identical character is put in hell? For the second view, see the work of Kay and Hollander referred to in the note to Inferno XX.52-56. Perhaps the most recent attempt to argue for a textual variant that would save Dante from so 'impossible' a mistake, based, like all others before it, on wishful thinking, is that of Cono Mangieri (“«...la figlia di Tiresia»? [Purg. XXII 113],” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 49 [1994], pp. 5-10).

The personified hours of the day (see the note to Purg. XII.81) are now between ten o'clock and eleven, with the fifth hour, presented as a chariot's yoke, aimed upward in the sky toward the sun.

Virgil's remark reveals how much he (and we) are taken by the story of Statius, so much so that the continued penitential circling seems almost an afterthought. Statius has consented to keep the penitential Dante and his revered guide company. He is free, they are bound.

The two poets (poeti, vv 115, 139) are speaking of making poetry (poetar) while Dante listens; it is a scene reminiscent of that in Inferno IV.103-105, on which occasion Dante does more than only listen to the discussion.

Many early commentators believed that this tree is upside down, with its roots in the air and its tip in or on the ground. It seems better to understand that its 'branches' bend downward (rather than reaching upward, as do those of earthly trees) and are longer the higher they are found on the trunk, so as to prevent anyone from climbing. However that matter may be resolved (and the text would seem to support this second view, as Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 133-134] argues), it seems clear that this tree is portrayed as being a shoot from the Tree of Life (Genesis 2:9). While a good deal of debate surrounds this point, strong arguments for this identification are found in Scartazzini (comm. to verse 131). And see the note to Purgatorio XXIV.115-117.

For the applicability here (even if the tree is compared to a fir, an abete) of the medieval conception of the palm tree as delineated by Gregory the Great (Moralia II.437-438), see Thomas Hill (“Dante's Palm: Purgatorio XXII: 130-135,” Modern Language Notes 82 [1967], pp. 103-5) and a more extensive treatment of the same hypothesis by Lino Pertile (La puttana e il gigante: Dal Cantico dei Cantici al Paradiso Terrestre di Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1998]), pp. 166-78.

This tree is nourished from above, through its leaves, not from below, through its root system. Since it is an evergreen, and indeed a mystical representation of a supernatural tree, it does not require nourishment at all. The water that moistens its branches may thus be symbolic of the water of Life that came to fulfill the function of the Tree of Life in Jesus, who restored to humankind the immortality lost in Eden.

Like the tree, the voice from within it is mysterious as well; it would rather seem to be the 'voice' of the tree itself than anything else. What the voice says at first may seem to be a version of God's prohibition of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to Adam (Genesis 2:17, a passage Mattalia [comm. to verse 141] believes is repeated at Purg. XXIV.115 – but see the note to that passage). However, it seems far more likely that this voice speaks of the result of Original Sin, humankind's loss of eternal life, symbolized here in the unavailability of the fruit (described in verse 132) of this tree, the Tree of Life.

The rest of the canto is dedicated to the exemplars of Temperance, the virtue opposed to Gluttony, thirteen verses spoken by, as far as we can tell, the tree itself.

Mary is presented as wanting to be sure others are fed properly at the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee (the same biblical scene [John 2:1-7] that furnished, in Purg. XIII.29, her charitable answer to Envy); she was not herself interested in eating, and her mouth is rather presented as being preserved for her later task, as intercessor, of intervening for sinners with her prayers.

Roman matrons of the old days, probably in his mind those associated with republican Rome, before the excesses that characterized the reign of the Caesars, are paired with Daniel who, in Daniel 1:8, is presented as being uninterested in the food of the king's table or in wine. This is the first time that Dante uses a group as exemplary, a choice that he will make again in the next pairing.

The inhabitants of the golden age of Saturn are described by Ovid (Metam. I.103-106), in which men, before tillage, happily consumed berries and acorns. Once again a classical group is paired with a Hebrew individual, John the Baptist, similarly temperate. Shoaf (“'Auri sacra fames' and the Age of Gold [Purg. XXII, 40-41 and 148-150],” Dante Studies 96 [1978], p. 197, refers to 'the hunger of Temperance' in another context, but the phrase is apt here.

It is possible that Daniello (comm. to vv. 153-154) was the first to cite, in support of John's 'greatness,' the apt passage in Matthew 11:11 (some others will later also cite the nearly identical one in Luke 7:28): 'Among those who are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist.' It is striking that no commentator gathered in the DDP who cites this passage ever goes on to cite its concluding sentence, which fits the context here so very well, where Virgil has served as prophet of Christ for Statius but not for himself (for Virgil's role in the poem as reflecting that of John the Baptist, see the note to Inf. I.122): 'But he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.'