This canto is devoted to the interview with the poet Statius, whose release from punishment was announced by the earthquake and the outcry at the end of the last canto.
John iv. 14,U 115 : "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst . . . . The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw."
Luke xxiv. 13-15: "And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them."
Among the monks of the Middle Ages there were certain salutations, which had their customary replies or countersigns. Thus one would say, "Peace be with thee!" and the answer would be, "And with thy spirit!" Or, "Praised be the Lord!' and the answer, "World without end!"
The letters upon Dante's forehead.
Lachesis. Of the three Fates, Clotho prepared and held the distaff, Lachesis spun the thread, and Atropos cut it.
"These," says Plato, Republic, X., "are the daughters of Necessity,
Fates, Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos ; who, clothed in white robes, with garlands on their heads, chant to the music of the Sirens ; Lachesis the events of the Past, Clotho those of the Present , Atropos those of the Future."
See Canto XVIII. 46:--
"What reason seeth here,
Myself can tell thee : beyond that await
For Beatrice, since 'tis a work of faith."
So also Cowley, in his poem on the Use of Reason in Divine Matters
"Though Reason cannot through Faith's mysteries see,
It sees that there and such they be ;
Leads to heaven's door, and there does humbly keep,
And there through chinks and keyholes peep ;
Though it, like Moses, by a sad command
Must not come into the Holy Land,
Yet thither it infallibly does guide,
And from afar 'tis all descried."
Nothing unusual ever disturbs the religio loci the sacredness of the mountain.
This happens only when the soul, that came from heaven, is received back into heaven; not from any natural causes affecting earth or air.
The gate of Purgatory, which is also the gate of Heaven.
Iris, one of the Oceanides, the daughter of Thaumas and Electra ; the rainbow.
The soul in Purgatory feels as great a desire to be punished for a sin, as it had to commit it.
The siege of Jerusalem under Titus, surnamed the "Delight of Mankind, " took place in the year 70. Statius, who is here speaking, was born at Naples in the reign of Claudius, and had already become famous "under the name that most endures and honours," that is, as a poet. . His works are the Silvae or miscellaneous poems ; the Thebaid, an epic in twelve books ; and the Achilleid, left unfinished. He wrote also a tragedy, Agave, which is lost.
Juvenal says of him, Satire VII., Dryden's Tr.:--
"All Rome is pleased when Statius will re-
hearse,
And longing crowds expect the promised
verse ;
His lofty numbers with so great a gust
They hear, and swallow with such eager lust ;
But while the common suffrage crowned his
cause,
And broke the benches with their loud ap-
plause,
His Muse had starved, had not a piece unread,
And by a player bought, supplied her bread.
Dante shows his admiration of him by placing him here.
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 21.089
Statius was not born in Toulouse, Dante supposes, but in Naples, as he himself states in his Silvae, which work was not discovered till after Dante's death. The passage occurs in Book III. Eclogue V., To Claudia his Wife, where e describes the beauties of Parthenope,U nd calls her the mother and nurse of both, amborum genetrix altrixque.
Landino thinks that Dante's error may be traced to Placidus Lactantius, a commentator of the Thebaid, who confounded Statius the poet of Naples with Statius the rhetorician of Toulouse.
Would be willing to remain another year in Purgatory.
Petrarca uses the same expression, --the lightning of the angelic smile, il lampeggiar dell' angelico riso.
See Canto XIX. 133.