by Dante
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. [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
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 (1979). 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. 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. [return to English / Italian]
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, although, from vv. 49–51, there seem to be. [return to English / Italian]
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 (Holl.2000.2)].) 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? [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
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 (1791) 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. [return to English / Italian]
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. 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. [return to English / Italian]
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. Mariotti (Mari.1975.1) 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 (Holl.1980.2), 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, Statius was already a closet Christian. For a discussion see also Chiamenti (Chia.1995.1), pp. 205–8.
On the continuing complexity of the problem of Statius’s supposed Christianity see, among many others, Brugnoli (Brug.1988.1), Scrivano (Scri.1992.1), and Heil (Heil.2001.1), 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 (Pado.1959.1), Ronconi’s rejoinder (Ronc.1965.1), and Padoan’s continuing insistence (Pado.1970.1). 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. [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
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 (Holl.1980.2), p. 206. [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
82–87. Statius’s epic is dedicated (fulsomely) to the emperor. Thus Dante, believing that Do
mitian 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” (T). 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 (1333)]), 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 (1400) 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 well with those particulars. [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
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 [1973]) and Nicodemus (Benvenuto [1380]), both of whom come only secretly to Christ’s tomb. [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
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. Modesto (Mode.1995.1), 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. [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
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 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 Bara´nski (Bara.1993.1), 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. [return to English / Italian]
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 [Holl.1983.1], 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. [return to English / Italian]
118–120. The personified hours of the day (see 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. [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
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 [1900] 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 (1900). [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
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 [1960] 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. [return to English / Italian]
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. [return to English / Italian]
142–144. Mary is presented as wanting to be sure others are fed properly at the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee (th
e 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. [return to English / Italian]
145–147. Roman matrons of the old days, probably in Dante’s 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. [return to English / Italian]
148–154. The inhabitants of the golden age of Saturn are described by Ovid (Metam. 1.103–106), 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 (Shoa.1978.1), p. 197, refers to “the hunger of Temperance” in another context, but the phrase is apt here.
It is possible that Daniello (1568) 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.” [return to English / Italian]
