Purgatorio: Canto 22

1
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Già era l'angel dietro a noi rimaso,
l'angel che n'avea vòlti al sesto giro,
avendomi dal viso un colpo raso;
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e quei c'hanno a giustizia lor disiro
detto n'avea beati, e le sue voci
con 'sitiunt,' sanz'altro, ciò forniro.
7
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E io più lieve che per l'altre foci
m'andava, sì che sanz'alcun labore
seguiva in sù li spiriti veloci;
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quando Virgilio incominciò: “Amore,
acceso di virtù, sempre altro accese,
pur che la fiamma sua paresse fore;
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onde da l'ora che tra noi discese
nel limbo de lo 'nferno Giovenale,
che la tua affezion mi fé palese,
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mia benvoglienza inverso te fu quale
più strinse mai di non vista persona,
sì ch'or mi parran corte queste scale.
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Ma dimmi, e come amico mi perdona
se troppo sicurtà m'allarga il freno,
e come amico omai meco ragiona:
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come poté trovar dentro al tuo seno
loco avarizia, tra cotanto senno
di quanto per tua cura fosti pieno?”
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Queste parole Stazio mover fenno
un poco a riso pria; poscia rispuose:
“Ogne tuo dir d'amor m'è caro cenno.
28
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Veramente più volte appaion cose
che danno a dubitar falsa matera
per le vere ragion che son nascose.
31
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La tua dimanda tuo creder m'avvera
esser ch'i' fossi avaro in l'altra vita,
forse per quella cerchia dov'io era.
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Or sappi ch'avarizia fu partita
troppo da me, e questa dismisura
migliaia di lunari hanno punita.
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e se non fosse ch'io drizzai mia cura,
quand'io intesi là dove tu chiame,
crucciato quasi a l'umana natura:
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'Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fame
de l'oro, l'appetito de' mortali?',
voltando sentirei le giostre grame.
43
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Allor m'accorsi che troppo aprir l'ali
potean le mani a spendere, e pente'mi
così di quel come de li altri mali.
46
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Quanti risurgeran coi crini scemi
per ignoranza,che di questa pecca
toglie 'l penter vivendo e ne li stremi!
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52
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E sappie che la colpa che rimbecca
per dritta opposizione alcun peccato,
con esso insieme qui suo verde secca;
però, s'io son tra quella gente stato
che piange l'avarizia, per purgarmi,
per lo contrario suo m'è incontrato.”
55
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“Or quando tu cantasti le crude armi
de la doppia trestizia di Giocasta,”
disse 'l cantor de' buccolici carmi,
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“per quello che Clïò teco lì tasta,
non par che ti facesse ancor fedele
la fede, sanza qual ben far non basta.
61
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Se così è, qual sole o quai candele
ti stenebraron sì, che tu drizzasti
poscia di retro al pescator le vele?”
64
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Ed elli a lui: “Tu prima m'invïasti
verso Parnaso a ber ne le sue grotte,
e prima appresso Dio m'alluminasti.
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Facesti come quei che va di notte,
che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova,
ma dopo sé fa le persone dotte,
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quando dicesti: 'Secol si rinova;
torna giustizia e primo tempo umano,
e progenïe scende da ciel nova.'
73
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Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano:
ma perché veggi mei ciò ch'io disegno,
a colorare stenderò la mano.
76
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Già era 'l mondo tutto quanto pregno
de la vera credenza, seminata
per li messaggi de l'etterno regno;
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e la parola tua sopra toccata
si consonava a' nuovi predicanti;
ond'io a visitarli presi usata.
82
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Vennermi poi parendo tanto santi,
che, quando Domizian li perseguette,
sanza mio lagrimar non fur lor pianti;
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e mentre che di là per me si stette,
io li sovvenni, e i lor dritti costumi
fer dispregiare a me tutte altre sette.
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E pria ch'io conducessi i greci a' fiumi
di Tebe poetando, ebb' io battesmo;
ma per paura chiuso cristian fu'mi,
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lungamente mostrando paganesmo;
e questa tepidezza il quarto cerchio
cerchiar mi fé più che 'l quarto centesmo.
94
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Tu dunque, che levato hai il coperchio
che m'ascondeva quanto bene io dico,
mentre che del salire avem soverchio,
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dimmi dov' è Terrenzio nostro antico,
Cecilio e Plauto e Varro, se lo sai:
dimmi se son dannati, e in qual vico.”
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“Costoro e Persio e io e altri assai,”
rispuose il duca mio, “siam con quel Greco
che le Muse lattar più ch'altri mai,
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nel primo cinghio del carcere cieco;
spesse fïate ragioniam del monte
che sempre ha le nutrice nostre seco.
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Euripide v'è nosco e Antifonte,
Simonide, Agatone e altri piùe
Greci che già di lauro ornar la fronte.
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Quivi si veggion de le genti tue
Antigone, Deïfile e Argia,
e Ismene sì trista come fue.
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Védeisi quella che mostrò Langia;
èvvi la figlia di Tiresia, e Teti,
e con le suore sue Deïdamia.”
115
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Tacevansi ambedue già li poeti,
di novo attenti a riguardar dintorno,
liberi da saliri e da pareti;
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e già le quattro ancelle eran del giorno
rimase a dietro, e la quinta era al temo,
drizzando pur in sù l'ardente corno,
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quando il mio duca: “Io credo ch'a lo stremo
le destre spalle volger ne convegna,
girando il monte come far solemo.”
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Così l'usanza fu lì nostra insegna,
e prendemmo la via con men sospetto
per l'assentir di quell' anima degna.
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Elli givan dinanzi, e io soletto
di retro, e ascoltava i lor sermoni,
ch'a poetar mi davano intelletto.
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Ma tosto ruppe le dolci ragioni
un alber che trovammo in mezza strada,
con pomi a odorar soavi e buoni;
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e come abete in alto si digrada
di ramo in ramo, cosi quello in giuso,
cred' io, perché persona sù non vada.
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Dal lato onde 'l cammin nostro era chiuso,
cadea de l'alta roccia un liquor chiaro
e si spandeva per le foglie suso.
139
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Li due poeti a l'alber s'appressaro;
e una voce per entro le fronde
gridò: “Di questo cibo avrete caro.”
142
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Poi disse: “Più pensava Maria onde
fosser le nozze orrevoli e intere,
ch'a la sua bocca, ch'or per voi risponde.
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E le Romane antiche, per lor bere,
contente furon d'acqua; e Danïello
dispregiò cibo e acquistò savere.
148
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Lo secol primo, quant' oro fu bello,
fé savorose con fame le ghiande,
e nettare con sete ogne ruscello.
151
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Mele e locuste furon le vivande
che nodriro il Batista nel diserto;
per ch'elli è glorïoso e tanto grande
quanto per lo Vangelio v'è aperto.”
1
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Already was the Angel left behind us,
  The Angel who to the sixth round had turned us,
  Having erased one mark from off my face;

4
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And those who have in justice their desire
  Had said to us, "Beati," in their voices,
  With "sitio," and without more ended it.

7
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And I, more light than through the other passes,
  Went onward so, that without any labour
  I followed upward the swift-footed spirits;

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When thus Virgilius began: "The love
  Kindled by virtue aye another kindles,
  Provided outwardly its flame appear.

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Hence from the hour that Juvenal descended
  Among us into the infernal Limbo,
  Who made apparent to me thy affection,

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My kindliness towards thee was as great
  As ever bound one to an unseen person,
  So that these stairs will now seem short to me.

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But tell me, and forgive me as a friend,
  If too great confidence let loose the rein,
  And as a friend now hold discourse with me;

22
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How was it possible within thy breast
  For avarice to find place, 'mid so much wisdom
  As thou wast filled with by thy diligence?"

25
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These words excited Statius at first
  Somewhat to laughter; afterward he answered:
  "Each word of thine is love's dear sign to me.

28
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Verily oftentimes do things appear
  Which give fallacious matter to our doubts,
  Instead of the true causes which are hidden!

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Thy question shows me thy belief to be
  That I was niggard in the other life,
  It may be from the circle where I was;

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Therefore know thou, that avarice was removed
  Too far from me; and this extravagance
  Thousands of lunar periods have punished.

37
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And were it not that I my thoughts uplifted,
  When I the passage heard where thou exclaimest,
  As if indignant, unto human nature,

40
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'To what impellest thou not, O cursed hunger
  Of gold, the appetite of mortal men?'
  Revolving I should feel the dismal joustings.

43
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Then I perceived the hands could spread too wide
  Their wings in spending, and repented me
  As well of that as of my other sins;

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How many with shorn hair shall rise again
  Because of ignorance, which from this sin
  Cuts off repentance living and in death!

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And know that the transgression which rebuts
  By direct opposition any sin
  Together with it here its verdure dries.

52
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Therefore if I have been among that folk
  Which mourns its avarice, to purify me,
  For its opposite has this befallen me."

55
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"Now when thou sangest the relentless weapons
  Of the twofold affliction of Jocasta,"
  The singer of the Songs Bucolic said,

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"From that which Clio there with thee preludes,
  It does not seem that yet had made thee faithful
  That faith without which no good works suffice.

61
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If this be so, what candles or what sun
  Scattered thy darkness so that thou didst trim
  Thy sails behind the Fisherman thereafter?"

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And he to him: "Thou first directedst me
  Towards Parnassus, in its grots to drink,
  And first concerning God didst me enlighten.

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Thou didst as he who walketh in the night,
  Who bears his light behind, which helps him not,
  But wary makes the persons after him,

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When thou didst say: 'The age renews itself,
  Justice returns, and man's primeval time,
  And a new progeny descends from heaven.'

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Through thee I Poet was, through thee a Christian;
  But that thou better see what I design,
  To colour it will I extend my hand.

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Already was the world in every part
  Pregnant with the true creed, disseminated
  By messengers of the eternal kingdom;

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And thy assertion, spoken of above,
  With the new preachers was in unison;
  Whence I to visit them the custom took.

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Then they became so holy in my sight,
  That, when Domitian persecuted them,
  Not without tears of mine were their laments;

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And all the while that I on earth remained,
  Them I befriended, and their upright customs
  Made me disparage all the other sects.

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And ere I led the Greeks unto the rivers
  Of Thebes, in poetry, I was baptized,
  But out of fear was covertly a Christian,

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For a long time professing paganism;
  And this lukewarmness caused me the fourth circle
  To circuit round more than four centuries.

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Thou, therefore, who hast raised the covering
  That hid from me whatever good I speak of,
  While in ascending we have time to spare,

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Tell me, in what place is our friend Terentius,
  Caecilius, Plautus, Varro, if thou knowest;
  Tell me if they are damned, and in what alley."

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"These, Persius and myself, and others many,"
  Replied my Leader, "with that Grecian are
  Whom more than all the rest the Muses suckled,

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In the first circle of the prison blind;
  Ofttimes we of the mountain hold discourse
  Which has our nurses ever with itself.

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Euripides is with us, Antiphon,
  Simonides, Agatho, and many other
  Greeks who of old their brows with laurel decked.

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There some of thine own people may be seen,
  Antigone, Deiphile and Argia,
  And there Ismene mournful as of old.

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There she is seen who pointed out Langia;
  There is Tiresias' daughter, and there Thetis,
  And there Deidamia with her sisters."

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Silent already were the poets both,
  Attent once more in looking round about,
  From the ascent and from the walls released;

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And four handmaidens of the day already
  Were left behind, and at the pole the fifth
  Was pointing upward still its burning horn,

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What time my Guide: "I think that tow'rds the edge
  Our dexter shoulders it behoves us turn,
  Circling the mount as we are wont to do."

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Thus in that region custom was our ensign;
  And we resumed our way with less suspicion
  For the assenting of that worthy soul

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They in advance went on, and I alone
  Behind them, and I listened to their speech,
  Which gave me lessons in the art of song.

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But soon their sweet discourses interrupted
  A tree which midway in the road we found,
  With apples sweet and grateful to the smell.

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And even as a fir-tree tapers upward
  From bough to bough, so downwardly did that;
  I think in order that no one might climb it.

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On that side where our pathway was enclosed
  Fell from the lofty rock a limpid water,
  And spread itself abroad upon the leaves.

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The Poets twain unto the tree drew near,
  And from among the foliage a voice
  Cried: "Of this food ye shall have scarcity."

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Then said: "More thoughtful Mary was of making
  The marriage feast complete and honourable,
  Than of her mouth which now for you responds;

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And for their drink the ancient Roman women
  With water were content; and Daniel
  Disparaged food, and understanding won.

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The primal age was beautiful as gold;
  Acorns it made with hunger savorous,
  And nectar every rivulet with thirst.

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Honey and locusts were the aliments
  That fed the Baptist in the wilderness;
  Whence he is glorious, and so magnified
As by the Evangel is revealed to you."

Robert Hollander (English, 2000-2007)
1 - 6

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.

7 - 9

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.

10 - 18

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.'

19 - 24

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.

25 - 26

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.

28 - 35

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.

36 - 36

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.

38 - 38

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.'

40 - 41

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.

46 - 46

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.

47 - 47

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.

49 - 51

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.

52 - 54

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.

55 - 63

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?

55 - 56

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.

58 - 58

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.

61 - 63

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.

64 - 73

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).

65 - 65

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

70 - 72

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.'

74 - 75

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.

76 - 81

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.

82 - 87

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.

88 - 89

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.

90 - 90

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.

92 - 93

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.

94 - 95

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.

96 - 96

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.

97 - 108

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.

109 - 114

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).

118 - 120

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.

121 - 123

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.

127 - 129

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.

130 - 135

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.

136 - 138

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.

140 - 141

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.

142 - 154

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.

142 - 144

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.

145 - 147

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.

148 - 154

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.'

Purgatorio: Canto 22

1
2
3

Già era l'angel dietro a noi rimaso,
l'angel che n'avea vòlti al sesto giro,
avendomi dal viso un colpo raso;
4
5
6

e quei c'hanno a giustizia lor disiro
detto n'avea beati, e le sue voci
con 'sitiunt,' sanz'altro, ciò forniro.
7
8
9

E io più lieve che per l'altre foci
m'andava, sì che sanz'alcun labore
seguiva in sù li spiriti veloci;
10
11
12

quando Virgilio incominciò: “Amore,
acceso di virtù, sempre altro accese,
pur che la fiamma sua paresse fore;
13
14
15

onde da l'ora che tra noi discese
nel limbo de lo 'nferno Giovenale,
che la tua affezion mi fé palese,
16
17
18

mia benvoglienza inverso te fu quale
più strinse mai di non vista persona,
sì ch'or mi parran corte queste scale.
19
20
21

Ma dimmi, e come amico mi perdona
se troppo sicurtà m'allarga il freno,
e come amico omai meco ragiona:
22
23
24

come poté trovar dentro al tuo seno
loco avarizia, tra cotanto senno
di quanto per tua cura fosti pieno?”
25
26
27

Queste parole Stazio mover fenno
un poco a riso pria; poscia rispuose:
“Ogne tuo dir d'amor m'è caro cenno.
28
29
30

Veramente più volte appaion cose
che danno a dubitar falsa matera
per le vere ragion che son nascose.
31
32
33

La tua dimanda tuo creder m'avvera
esser ch'i' fossi avaro in l'altra vita,
forse per quella cerchia dov'io era.
34
35
36

Or sappi ch'avarizia fu partita
troppo da me, e questa dismisura
migliaia di lunari hanno punita.
37
38
39

e se non fosse ch'io drizzai mia cura,
quand'io intesi là dove tu chiame,
crucciato quasi a l'umana natura:
40
41
42

'Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fame
de l'oro, l'appetito de' mortali?',
voltando sentirei le giostre grame.
43
44
45

Allor m'accorsi che troppo aprir l'ali
potean le mani a spendere, e pente'mi
così di quel come de li altri mali.
46
47
48

Quanti risurgeran coi crini scemi
per ignoranza,che di questa pecca
toglie 'l penter vivendo e ne li stremi!
49
50
51
52
53
54

E sappie che la colpa che rimbecca
per dritta opposizione alcun peccato,
con esso insieme qui suo verde secca;
però, s'io son tra quella gente stato
che piange l'avarizia, per purgarmi,
per lo contrario suo m'è incontrato.”
55
56
57

“Or quando tu cantasti le crude armi
de la doppia trestizia di Giocasta,”
disse 'l cantor de' buccolici carmi,
58
59
60

“per quello che Clïò teco lì tasta,
non par che ti facesse ancor fedele
la fede, sanza qual ben far non basta.
61
62
63

Se così è, qual sole o quai candele
ti stenebraron sì, che tu drizzasti
poscia di retro al pescator le vele?”
64
65
66

Ed elli a lui: “Tu prima m'invïasti
verso Parnaso a ber ne le sue grotte,
e prima appresso Dio m'alluminasti.
67
68
69

Facesti come quei che va di notte,
che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova,
ma dopo sé fa le persone dotte,
70
71
72

quando dicesti: 'Secol si rinova;
torna giustizia e primo tempo umano,
e progenïe scende da ciel nova.'
73
74
75

Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano:
ma perché veggi mei ciò ch'io disegno,
a colorare stenderò la mano.
76
77
78

Già era 'l mondo tutto quanto pregno
de la vera credenza, seminata
per li messaggi de l'etterno regno;
79
80
81

e la parola tua sopra toccata
si consonava a' nuovi predicanti;
ond'io a visitarli presi usata.
82
83
84

Vennermi poi parendo tanto santi,
che, quando Domizian li perseguette,
sanza mio lagrimar non fur lor pianti;
85
86
87

e mentre che di là per me si stette,
io li sovvenni, e i lor dritti costumi
fer dispregiare a me tutte altre sette.
88
89
90

E pria ch'io conducessi i greci a' fiumi
di Tebe poetando, ebb' io battesmo;
ma per paura chiuso cristian fu'mi,
91
92
93

lungamente mostrando paganesmo;
e questa tepidezza il quarto cerchio
cerchiar mi fé più che 'l quarto centesmo.
94
95
96

Tu dunque, che levato hai il coperchio
che m'ascondeva quanto bene io dico,
mentre che del salire avem soverchio,
97
98
99

dimmi dov' è Terrenzio nostro antico,
Cecilio e Plauto e Varro, se lo sai:
dimmi se son dannati, e in qual vico.”
100
101
102

“Costoro e Persio e io e altri assai,”
rispuose il duca mio, “siam con quel Greco
che le Muse lattar più ch'altri mai,
103
104
105

nel primo cinghio del carcere cieco;
spesse fïate ragioniam del monte
che sempre ha le nutrice nostre seco.
106
107
108

Euripide v'è nosco e Antifonte,
Simonide, Agatone e altri piùe
Greci che già di lauro ornar la fronte.
109
110
111

Quivi si veggion de le genti tue
Antigone, Deïfile e Argia,
e Ismene sì trista come fue.
112
113
114

Védeisi quella che mostrò Langia;
èvvi la figlia di Tiresia, e Teti,
e con le suore sue Deïdamia.”
115
116
117

Tacevansi ambedue già li poeti,
di novo attenti a riguardar dintorno,
liberi da saliri e da pareti;
118
119
120

e già le quattro ancelle eran del giorno
rimase a dietro, e la quinta era al temo,
drizzando pur in sù l'ardente corno,
121
122
123

quando il mio duca: “Io credo ch'a lo stremo
le destre spalle volger ne convegna,
girando il monte come far solemo.”
124
125
126

Così l'usanza fu lì nostra insegna,
e prendemmo la via con men sospetto
per l'assentir di quell' anima degna.
127
128
129

Elli givan dinanzi, e io soletto
di retro, e ascoltava i lor sermoni,
ch'a poetar mi davano intelletto.
130
131
132

Ma tosto ruppe le dolci ragioni
un alber che trovammo in mezza strada,
con pomi a odorar soavi e buoni;
133
134
135

e come abete in alto si digrada
di ramo in ramo, cosi quello in giuso,
cred' io, perché persona sù non vada.
136
137
138

Dal lato onde 'l cammin nostro era chiuso,
cadea de l'alta roccia un liquor chiaro
e si spandeva per le foglie suso.
139
140
141

Li due poeti a l'alber s'appressaro;
e una voce per entro le fronde
gridò: “Di questo cibo avrete caro.”
142
143
144

Poi disse: “Più pensava Maria onde
fosser le nozze orrevoli e intere,
ch'a la sua bocca, ch'or per voi risponde.
145
146
147

E le Romane antiche, per lor bere,
contente furon d'acqua; e Danïello
dispregiò cibo e acquistò savere.
148
149
150

Lo secol primo, quant' oro fu bello,
fé savorose con fame le ghiande,
e nettare con sete ogne ruscello.
151
152
153
154

Mele e locuste furon le vivande
che nodriro il Batista nel diserto;
per ch'elli è glorïoso e tanto grande
quanto per lo Vangelio v'è aperto.”
1
2
3

Already was the Angel left behind us,
  The Angel who to the sixth round had turned us,
  Having erased one mark from off my face;

4
5
6

And those who have in justice their desire
  Had said to us, "Beati," in their voices,
  With "sitio," and without more ended it.

7
8
9

And I, more light than through the other passes,
  Went onward so, that without any labour
  I followed upward the swift-footed spirits;

10
11
12

When thus Virgilius began: "The love
  Kindled by virtue aye another kindles,
  Provided outwardly its flame appear.

13
14
15

Hence from the hour that Juvenal descended
  Among us into the infernal Limbo,
  Who made apparent to me thy affection,

16
17
18

My kindliness towards thee was as great
  As ever bound one to an unseen person,
  So that these stairs will now seem short to me.

19
20
21

But tell me, and forgive me as a friend,
  If too great confidence let loose the rein,
  And as a friend now hold discourse with me;

22
23
24

How was it possible within thy breast
  For avarice to find place, 'mid so much wisdom
  As thou wast filled with by thy diligence?"

25
26
27

These words excited Statius at first
  Somewhat to laughter; afterward he answered:
  "Each word of thine is love's dear sign to me.

28
29
30

Verily oftentimes do things appear
  Which give fallacious matter to our doubts,
  Instead of the true causes which are hidden!

31
32
33

Thy question shows me thy belief to be
  That I was niggard in the other life,
  It may be from the circle where I was;

34
35
36

Therefore know thou, that avarice was removed
  Too far from me; and this extravagance
  Thousands of lunar periods have punished.

37
38
39

And were it not that I my thoughts uplifted,
  When I the passage heard where thou exclaimest,
  As if indignant, unto human nature,

40
41
42

'To what impellest thou not, O cursed hunger
  Of gold, the appetite of mortal men?'
  Revolving I should feel the dismal joustings.

43
44
45

Then I perceived the hands could spread too wide
  Their wings in spending, and repented me
  As well of that as of my other sins;

46
47
48

How many with shorn hair shall rise again
  Because of ignorance, which from this sin
  Cuts off repentance living and in death!

49
50
51

And know that the transgression which rebuts
  By direct opposition any sin
  Together with it here its verdure dries.

52
53
54

Therefore if I have been among that folk
  Which mourns its avarice, to purify me,
  For its opposite has this befallen me."

55
56
57

"Now when thou sangest the relentless weapons
  Of the twofold affliction of Jocasta,"
  The singer of the Songs Bucolic said,

58
59
60

"From that which Clio there with thee preludes,
  It does not seem that yet had made thee faithful
  That faith without which no good works suffice.

61
62
63

If this be so, what candles or what sun
  Scattered thy darkness so that thou didst trim
  Thy sails behind the Fisherman thereafter?"

64
65
66

And he to him: "Thou first directedst me
  Towards Parnassus, in its grots to drink,
  And first concerning God didst me enlighten.

67
68
69

Thou didst as he who walketh in the night,
  Who bears his light behind, which helps him not,
  But wary makes the persons after him,

70
71
72

When thou didst say: 'The age renews itself,
  Justice returns, and man's primeval time,
  And a new progeny descends from heaven.'

73
74
75

Through thee I Poet was, through thee a Christian;
  But that thou better see what I design,
  To colour it will I extend my hand.

76
77
78

Already was the world in every part
  Pregnant with the true creed, disseminated
  By messengers of the eternal kingdom;

79
80
81

And thy assertion, spoken of above,
  With the new preachers was in unison;
  Whence I to visit them the custom took.

82
83
84

Then they became so holy in my sight,
  That, when Domitian persecuted them,
  Not without tears of mine were their laments;

85
86
87

And all the while that I on earth remained,
  Them I befriended, and their upright customs
  Made me disparage all the other sects.

88
89
90

And ere I led the Greeks unto the rivers
  Of Thebes, in poetry, I was baptized,
  But out of fear was covertly a Christian,

91
92
93

For a long time professing paganism;
  And this lukewarmness caused me the fourth circle
  To circuit round more than four centuries.

94
95
96

Thou, therefore, who hast raised the covering
  That hid from me whatever good I speak of,
  While in ascending we have time to spare,

97
98
99

Tell me, in what place is our friend Terentius,
  Caecilius, Plautus, Varro, if thou knowest;
  Tell me if they are damned, and in what alley."

100
101
102

"These, Persius and myself, and others many,"
  Replied my Leader, "with that Grecian are
  Whom more than all the rest the Muses suckled,

103
104
105

In the first circle of the prison blind;
  Ofttimes we of the mountain hold discourse
  Which has our nurses ever with itself.

106
107
108

Euripides is with us, Antiphon,
  Simonides, Agatho, and many other
  Greeks who of old their brows with laurel decked.

109
110
111

There some of thine own people may be seen,
  Antigone, Deiphile and Argia,
  And there Ismene mournful as of old.

112
113
114

There she is seen who pointed out Langia;
  There is Tiresias' daughter, and there Thetis,
  And there Deidamia with her sisters."

115
116
117

Silent already were the poets both,
  Attent once more in looking round about,
  From the ascent and from the walls released;

118
119
120

And four handmaidens of the day already
  Were left behind, and at the pole the fifth
  Was pointing upward still its burning horn,

121
122
123

What time my Guide: "I think that tow'rds the edge
  Our dexter shoulders it behoves us turn,
  Circling the mount as we are wont to do."

124
125
126

Thus in that region custom was our ensign;
  And we resumed our way with less suspicion
  For the assenting of that worthy soul

127
128
129

They in advance went on, and I alone
  Behind them, and I listened to their speech,
  Which gave me lessons in the art of song.

130
131
132

But soon their sweet discourses interrupted
  A tree which midway in the road we found,
  With apples sweet and grateful to the smell.

133
134
135

And even as a fir-tree tapers upward
  From bough to bough, so downwardly did that;
  I think in order that no one might climb it.

136
137
138

On that side where our pathway was enclosed
  Fell from the lofty rock a limpid water,
  And spread itself abroad upon the leaves.

139
140
141

The Poets twain unto the tree drew near,
  And from among the foliage a voice
  Cried: "Of this food ye shall have scarcity."

142
143
144

Then said: "More thoughtful Mary was of making
  The marriage feast complete and honourable,
  Than of her mouth which now for you responds;

145
146
147

And for their drink the ancient Roman women
  With water were content; and Daniel
  Disparaged food, and understanding won.

148
149
150

The primal age was beautiful as gold;
  Acorns it made with hunger savorous,
  And nectar every rivulet with thirst.

151
152
153
154

Honey and locusts were the aliments
  That fed the Baptist in the wilderness;
  Whence he is glorious, and so magnified
As by the Evangel is revealed to you."

Robert Hollander (English, 2000-2007)
1 - 6

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.

7 - 9

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.

10 - 18

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.'

19 - 24

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.

25 - 26

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.

28 - 35

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.

36 - 36

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.

38 - 38

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.'

40 - 41

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.

46 - 46

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.

47 - 47

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.

49 - 51

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.

52 - 54

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.

55 - 63

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?

55 - 56

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.

58 - 58

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.

61 - 63

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.

64 - 73

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).

65 - 65

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

70 - 72

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.'

74 - 75

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.

76 - 81

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.

82 - 87

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.

88 - 89

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.

90 - 90

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.

92 - 93

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.

94 - 95

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.

96 - 96

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.

97 - 108

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.

109 - 114

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).

118 - 120

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.

121 - 123

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.

127 - 129

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.

130 - 135

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.

136 - 138

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.

140 - 141

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.

142 - 154

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.

142 - 144

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.

145 - 147

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.

148 - 154

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.'

Purgatorio: Canto 22

1
2
3

Già era l'angel dietro a noi rimaso,
l'angel che n'avea vòlti al sesto giro,
avendomi dal viso un colpo raso;
4
5
6

e quei c'hanno a giustizia lor disiro
detto n'avea beati, e le sue voci
con 'sitiunt,' sanz'altro, ciò forniro.
7
8
9

E io più lieve che per l'altre foci
m'andava, sì che sanz'alcun labore
seguiva in sù li spiriti veloci;
10
11
12

quando Virgilio incominciò: “Amore,
acceso di virtù, sempre altro accese,
pur che la fiamma sua paresse fore;
13
14
15

onde da l'ora che tra noi discese
nel limbo de lo 'nferno Giovenale,
che la tua affezion mi fé palese,
16
17
18

mia benvoglienza inverso te fu quale
più strinse mai di non vista persona,
sì ch'or mi parran corte queste scale.
19
20
21

Ma dimmi, e come amico mi perdona
se troppo sicurtà m'allarga il freno,
e come amico omai meco ragiona:
22
23
24

come poté trovar dentro al tuo seno
loco avarizia, tra cotanto senno
di quanto per tua cura fosti pieno?”
25
26
27

Queste parole Stazio mover fenno
un poco a riso pria; poscia rispuose:
“Ogne tuo dir d'amor m'è caro cenno.
28
29
30

Veramente più volte appaion cose
che danno a dubitar falsa matera
per le vere ragion che son nascose.
31
32
33

La tua dimanda tuo creder m'avvera
esser ch'i' fossi avaro in l'altra vita,
forse per quella cerchia dov'io era.
34
35
36

Or sappi ch'avarizia fu partita
troppo da me, e questa dismisura
migliaia di lunari hanno punita.
37
38
39

e se non fosse ch'io drizzai mia cura,
quand'io intesi là dove tu chiame,
crucciato quasi a l'umana natura:
40
41
42

'Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fame
de l'oro, l'appetito de' mortali?',
voltando sentirei le giostre grame.
43
44
45

Allor m'accorsi che troppo aprir l'ali
potean le mani a spendere, e pente'mi
così di quel come de li altri mali.
46
47
48

Quanti risurgeran coi crini scemi
per ignoranza,che di questa pecca
toglie 'l penter vivendo e ne li stremi!
49
50
51
52
53
54

E sappie che la colpa che rimbecca
per dritta opposizione alcun peccato,
con esso insieme qui suo verde secca;
però, s'io son tra quella gente stato
che piange l'avarizia, per purgarmi,
per lo contrario suo m'è incontrato.”
55
56
57

“Or quando tu cantasti le crude armi
de la doppia trestizia di Giocasta,”
disse 'l cantor de' buccolici carmi,
58
59
60

“per quello che Clïò teco lì tasta,
non par che ti facesse ancor fedele
la fede, sanza qual ben far non basta.
61
62
63

Se così è, qual sole o quai candele
ti stenebraron sì, che tu drizzasti
poscia di retro al pescator le vele?”
64
65
66

Ed elli a lui: “Tu prima m'invïasti
verso Parnaso a ber ne le sue grotte,
e prima appresso Dio m'alluminasti.
67
68
69

Facesti come quei che va di notte,
che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova,
ma dopo sé fa le persone dotte,
70
71
72

quando dicesti: 'Secol si rinova;
torna giustizia e primo tempo umano,
e progenïe scende da ciel nova.'
73
74
75

Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano:
ma perché veggi mei ciò ch'io disegno,
a colorare stenderò la mano.
76
77
78

Già era 'l mondo tutto quanto pregno
de la vera credenza, seminata
per li messaggi de l'etterno regno;
79
80
81

e la parola tua sopra toccata
si consonava a' nuovi predicanti;
ond'io a visitarli presi usata.
82
83
84

Vennermi poi parendo tanto santi,
che, quando Domizian li perseguette,
sanza mio lagrimar non fur lor pianti;
85
86
87

e mentre che di là per me si stette,
io li sovvenni, e i lor dritti costumi
fer dispregiare a me tutte altre sette.
88
89
90

E pria ch'io conducessi i greci a' fiumi
di Tebe poetando, ebb' io battesmo;
ma per paura chiuso cristian fu'mi,
91
92
93

lungamente mostrando paganesmo;
e questa tepidezza il quarto cerchio
cerchiar mi fé più che 'l quarto centesmo.
94
95
96

Tu dunque, che levato hai il coperchio
che m'ascondeva quanto bene io dico,
mentre che del salire avem soverchio,
97
98
99

dimmi dov' è Terrenzio nostro antico,
Cecilio e Plauto e Varro, se lo sai:
dimmi se son dannati, e in qual vico.”
100
101
102

“Costoro e Persio e io e altri assai,”
rispuose il duca mio, “siam con quel Greco
che le Muse lattar più ch'altri mai,
103
104
105

nel primo cinghio del carcere cieco;
spesse fïate ragioniam del monte
che sempre ha le nutrice nostre seco.
106
107
108

Euripide v'è nosco e Antifonte,
Simonide, Agatone e altri piùe
Greci che già di lauro ornar la fronte.
109
110
111

Quivi si veggion de le genti tue
Antigone, Deïfile e Argia,
e Ismene sì trista come fue.
112
113
114

Védeisi quella che mostrò Langia;
èvvi la figlia di Tiresia, e Teti,
e con le suore sue Deïdamia.”
115
116
117

Tacevansi ambedue già li poeti,
di novo attenti a riguardar dintorno,
liberi da saliri e da pareti;
118
119
120

e già le quattro ancelle eran del giorno
rimase a dietro, e la quinta era al temo,
drizzando pur in sù l'ardente corno,
121
122
123

quando il mio duca: “Io credo ch'a lo stremo
le destre spalle volger ne convegna,
girando il monte come far solemo.”
124
125
126

Così l'usanza fu lì nostra insegna,
e prendemmo la via con men sospetto
per l'assentir di quell' anima degna.
127
128
129

Elli givan dinanzi, e io soletto
di retro, e ascoltava i lor sermoni,
ch'a poetar mi davano intelletto.
130
131
132

Ma tosto ruppe le dolci ragioni
un alber che trovammo in mezza strada,
con pomi a odorar soavi e buoni;
133
134
135

e come abete in alto si digrada
di ramo in ramo, cosi quello in giuso,
cred' io, perché persona sù non vada.
136
137
138

Dal lato onde 'l cammin nostro era chiuso,
cadea de l'alta roccia un liquor chiaro
e si spandeva per le foglie suso.
139
140
141

Li due poeti a l'alber s'appressaro;
e una voce per entro le fronde
gridò: “Di questo cibo avrete caro.”
142
143
144

Poi disse: “Più pensava Maria onde
fosser le nozze orrevoli e intere,
ch'a la sua bocca, ch'or per voi risponde.
145
146
147

E le Romane antiche, per lor bere,
contente furon d'acqua; e Danïello
dispregiò cibo e acquistò savere.
148
149
150

Lo secol primo, quant' oro fu bello,
fé savorose con fame le ghiande,
e nettare con sete ogne ruscello.
151
152
153
154

Mele e locuste furon le vivande
che nodriro il Batista nel diserto;
per ch'elli è glorïoso e tanto grande
quanto per lo Vangelio v'è aperto.”
1
2
3

Already was the Angel left behind us,
  The Angel who to the sixth round had turned us,
  Having erased one mark from off my face;

4
5
6

And those who have in justice their desire
  Had said to us, "Beati," in their voices,
  With "sitio," and without more ended it.

7
8
9

And I, more light than through the other passes,
  Went onward so, that without any labour
  I followed upward the swift-footed spirits;

10
11
12

When thus Virgilius began: "The love
  Kindled by virtue aye another kindles,
  Provided outwardly its flame appear.

13
14
15

Hence from the hour that Juvenal descended
  Among us into the infernal Limbo,
  Who made apparent to me thy affection,

16
17
18

My kindliness towards thee was as great
  As ever bound one to an unseen person,
  So that these stairs will now seem short to me.

19
20
21

But tell me, and forgive me as a friend,
  If too great confidence let loose the rein,
  And as a friend now hold discourse with me;

22
23
24

How was it possible within thy breast
  For avarice to find place, 'mid so much wisdom
  As thou wast filled with by thy diligence?"

25
26
27

These words excited Statius at first
  Somewhat to laughter; afterward he answered:
  "Each word of thine is love's dear sign to me.

28
29
30

Verily oftentimes do things appear
  Which give fallacious matter to our doubts,
  Instead of the true causes which are hidden!

31
32
33

Thy question shows me thy belief to be
  That I was niggard in the other life,
  It may be from the circle where I was;

34
35
36

Therefore know thou, that avarice was removed
  Too far from me; and this extravagance
  Thousands of lunar periods have punished.

37
38
39

And were it not that I my thoughts uplifted,
  When I the passage heard where thou exclaimest,
  As if indignant, unto human nature,

40
41
42

'To what impellest thou not, O cursed hunger
  Of gold, the appetite of mortal men?'
  Revolving I should feel the dismal joustings.

43
44
45

Then I perceived the hands could spread too wide
  Their wings in spending, and repented me
  As well of that as of my other sins;

46
47
48

How many with shorn hair shall rise again
  Because of ignorance, which from this sin
  Cuts off repentance living and in death!

49
50
51

And know that the transgression which rebuts
  By direct opposition any sin
  Together with it here its verdure dries.

52
53
54

Therefore if I have been among that folk
  Which mourns its avarice, to purify me,
  For its opposite has this befallen me."

55
56
57

"Now when thou sangest the relentless weapons
  Of the twofold affliction of Jocasta,"
  The singer of the Songs Bucolic said,

58
59
60

"From that which Clio there with thee preludes,
  It does not seem that yet had made thee faithful
  That faith without which no good works suffice.

61
62
63

If this be so, what candles or what sun
  Scattered thy darkness so that thou didst trim
  Thy sails behind the Fisherman thereafter?"

64
65
66

And he to him: "Thou first directedst me
  Towards Parnassus, in its grots to drink,
  And first concerning God didst me enlighten.

67
68
69

Thou didst as he who walketh in the night,
  Who bears his light behind, which helps him not,
  But wary makes the persons after him,

70
71
72

When thou didst say: 'The age renews itself,
  Justice returns, and man's primeval time,
  And a new progeny descends from heaven.'

73
74
75

Through thee I Poet was, through thee a Christian;
  But that thou better see what I design,
  To colour it will I extend my hand.

76
77
78

Already was the world in every part
  Pregnant with the true creed, disseminated
  By messengers of the eternal kingdom;

79
80
81

And thy assertion, spoken of above,
  With the new preachers was in unison;
  Whence I to visit them the custom took.

82
83
84

Then they became so holy in my sight,
  That, when Domitian persecuted them,
  Not without tears of mine were their laments;

85
86
87

And all the while that I on earth remained,
  Them I befriended, and their upright customs
  Made me disparage all the other sects.

88
89
90

And ere I led the Greeks unto the rivers
  Of Thebes, in poetry, I was baptized,
  But out of fear was covertly a Christian,

91
92
93

For a long time professing paganism;
  And this lukewarmness caused me the fourth circle
  To circuit round more than four centuries.

94
95
96

Thou, therefore, who hast raised the covering
  That hid from me whatever good I speak of,
  While in ascending we have time to spare,

97
98
99

Tell me, in what place is our friend Terentius,
  Caecilius, Plautus, Varro, if thou knowest;
  Tell me if they are damned, and in what alley."

100
101
102

"These, Persius and myself, and others many,"
  Replied my Leader, "with that Grecian are
  Whom more than all the rest the Muses suckled,

103
104
105

In the first circle of the prison blind;
  Ofttimes we of the mountain hold discourse
  Which has our nurses ever with itself.

106
107
108

Euripides is with us, Antiphon,
  Simonides, Agatho, and many other
  Greeks who of old their brows with laurel decked.

109
110
111

There some of thine own people may be seen,
  Antigone, Deiphile and Argia,
  And there Ismene mournful as of old.

112
113
114

There she is seen who pointed out Langia;
  There is Tiresias' daughter, and there Thetis,
  And there Deidamia with her sisters."

115
116
117

Silent already were the poets both,
  Attent once more in looking round about,
  From the ascent and from the walls released;

118
119
120

And four handmaidens of the day already
  Were left behind, and at the pole the fifth
  Was pointing upward still its burning horn,

121
122
123

What time my Guide: "I think that tow'rds the edge
  Our dexter shoulders it behoves us turn,
  Circling the mount as we are wont to do."

124
125
126

Thus in that region custom was our ensign;
  And we resumed our way with less suspicion
  For the assenting of that worthy soul

127
128
129

They in advance went on, and I alone
  Behind them, and I listened to their speech,
  Which gave me lessons in the art of song.

130
131
132

But soon their sweet discourses interrupted
  A tree which midway in the road we found,
  With apples sweet and grateful to the smell.

133
134
135

And even as a fir-tree tapers upward
  From bough to bough, so downwardly did that;
  I think in order that no one might climb it.

136
137
138

On that side where our pathway was enclosed
  Fell from the lofty rock a limpid water,
  And spread itself abroad upon the leaves.

139
140
141

The Poets twain unto the tree drew near,
  And from among the foliage a voice
  Cried: "Of this food ye shall have scarcity."

142
143
144

Then said: "More thoughtful Mary was of making
  The marriage feast complete and honourable,
  Than of her mouth which now for you responds;

145
146
147

And for their drink the ancient Roman women
  With water were content; and Daniel
  Disparaged food, and understanding won.

148
149
150

The primal age was beautiful as gold;
  Acorns it made with hunger savorous,
  And nectar every rivulet with thirst.

151
152
153
154

Honey and locusts were the aliments
  That fed the Baptist in the wilderness;
  Whence he is glorious, and so magnified
As by the Evangel is revealed to you."

Robert Hollander (English, 2000-2007)
1 - 6

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.

7 - 9

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.

10 - 18

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.'

19 - 24

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.

25 - 26

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.

28 - 35

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.

36 - 36

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.

38 - 38

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.'

40 - 41

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.

46 - 46

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.

47 - 47

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.

49 - 51

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.

52 - 54

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.

55 - 63

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?

55 - 56

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.

58 - 58

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.

61 - 63

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.

64 - 73

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).

65 - 65

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

70 - 72

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.'

74 - 75

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.

76 - 81

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.

82 - 87

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.

88 - 89

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.

90 - 90

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.

92 - 93

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.

94 - 95

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.

96 - 96

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.

97 - 108

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.

109 - 114

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).

118 - 120

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.

121 - 123

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.

127 - 129

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.

130 - 135

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.

136 - 138

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.

140 - 141

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.

142 - 154

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.

142 - 144

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.

145 - 147

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.

148 - 154

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.'