Intanto voce fu per me udita:
  "Onorate l'altissimo poeta;
l'ombra sua torna, ch'era dipartita."

This tercet begins simply but, it turns out, more problematically than the poet probably intended. It seems clear that the interpretive difficulty arose because the protagonist has not yet been recorded as having encountered the four classical poets, later characterized as la bella scola (v. 94): Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan (vv. 88-90). Whose is the voice that the protagonist hears? A few commentators choose simply to avoid this question, while the scattered results among those commentators who do respond are surprisingly varied and unpredictable. [1] According to various glossators, the following two verses are spoken by (1) an unidentified individual speaker among these four later-named poets: Guido da Pisa (1327-28), the Ottimo (1333), Codice Cassinese (1350-75), Maramauro (1369-73), Boccaccio (1373-75), Guiniforto delli Bargigi (1440), Vellutello (1544), Gelli (1541-63), Grandgent (1909-13), Pasquini/Quaglio (1982), Chiavacci Leonardi (1991); (2) all four of these poets speaking in unison: Jacopo della Lana (1324-28), Poletto (1894), Grabher (1934-36), Trucchi (1936) & Provenzal (1946 [both citing Poletto]); (3) either Ovid or Horace: Benvenuto da Imola (1375-80); (4) Aristotle: Francesco da Buti (1385-95); (5) all those gathered in this luminous place in Limbo: Castelvetro (1570); (6) a herald, specially placed in this part of Limbo: Berthier (1892-97); (7) Fame personified: Steiner (1921); (8) Homer: Torraca (1905), who remarks: "se, come pare, la voce fu quella di Omero, con assai delicato pensiero il poeta sovrano [IV.88] chiamò Virgilio altissimo poeta"; Casini/Barbi (1921) cite an essay [1901] by D'Ovidio as the source for their choice of Homer;[2] Del Lungo (1926, comm. vv. 91-93); Scartazzini/Vandelli (1929); Trucchi (1936) and Provenzal (1946 [both citing "Scartazzini," where they had better credited Vandelli]); Porena (1946-48), Sapegno (1955-57), Chimenz (1962), Fallani (1965), Padoan (1967), Mazzoni (1965), Giacalone (1968), Bosco/Reggio (1979), Hollander (2000),[3] Fosca (2003). As we have seen, the most reasonable hypothesis (that the unidentified voice was Homer's) had to wait nearly six centuries to be given expression.[4] While one must admit that it is not possible to be absolutely certain that Dante here intended his readers to understand that this voce is indeed that of Homer, his other twenty-one uses of the singular noun poeta are perhaps indicative of his desire to single out Homer among the four masters of poetry whom he has just encountered in Limbo. That word is used seventeen times (between Inf. IV.14 and Purg. XIX.82) to refer to Virgil and only once to refer to each of the others who are so designated in the Commedia: Homer (Inf. IV.88), Statius (Purg. XXII.73), any poet worthy of laureation (Par. I.29), Dante (Par. XXV.8).[5] In itself, this is hardly convincing evidence; nonetheless, it may help buttress the argument of those of us who believe Dante was referring to the voice of the poeta sovrano. Any other solution seems anti-climactic.

Whether or not Dante wants us to hear the voice of Homer as uttering the next two verses, his intent in the first of them (onorate l'altissimo poeta) has escaped no one, a glorification of the greatest Latin poet, his own maestro ed autore (Inf. I.85). The second, verse 81, "l'ombra sua torna, ch'era dipartita," however, has not received the sort of intelligent response that one might very well expect. Hardly any commentator wastes his breath on this verse, treating it as mere filling after the great outburst that precedes it. No later commentator says much more than does Guido da Pisa (1327-28): "ecce sua umbra, idest anima, que a nobis recesserat, ad nos redit" (behold [Virgil's] shade, that is, his soul, which, having departed from us, now returns).[6] However, most responses, down through the centuries, to verse 81 only state the obvious and nothing more: Virgil had left Limbo in order to come to Dante's aid.[7]

One retires from teaching with a sense of appreciation of the newly found free time for one's own work, and surely (with only a little bit of luck) also with a sense of loss of the stimulation that one has enjoyed from interaction with gifted younger scholars. I have always tried to give credit to students by whom I have been enlightened in particular instances. In what follows I am endorsing the response to this tercet by a Princeton undergraduate in her final semester, Elizabeth Statmore, during a graduate seminar in February of 1982 on Inferno.[8] While no one can argue convincingly that the reverential and enthusiastic response of the creator of Western epic to his returning colleague in the poetry of arms and men is to be taken as anything less than fully meant, allowing, even insisting, on the highest rank among poets for Virgil, it is his next remark that requires closer scrutiny. Homer's resonant response to Virgil's return, "onorate l'altissimo poeta," a perfect hendecasyllable, is so obviously only meant to praise that we have mainly failed to see the tension present in the following verse: "L'ombra sua torna, ch'era dipartita."[9] Is not the reader invited to conclude that Virgil's companions in Limbo considered that he, too, had been harrowed from hell in order to be removed to heaven along with the other saved souls? Now, however, they realize the truth: Here he is, back among them where he, too, will spend eternity.

[2] Mazzoni (1965) gives the bibliographical particulars for this reprinted contribution: "Il saluto dei poeti del Limbo al reduce Virgilio," in D'Ovidio's Studii sulla Divina Commedia, Parte II, Caserta, [Casa editrice moderna], 1931, p. 350 (Opere, vol. I): "non può essere che Omero, il poeta sovrano, che appunto apre la marcia ed ha perfino l'insegna del suo grado."

[3] "Of course there has been debate over the speaker of the following two lines. Since Dante does not say, specifically, that Homer speaks them, we cannot be certain that it was he who spoke. Dante steps back and lets us make the ascription. Who else would have spoken? Horace? Perhaps. Certainly not Ovid, not exactly Virgil's greatest supporter. And even less Lucan, whose work rather pointedly attacks what Virgil champions. But the scene makes its inner logic clear: the leader of the group is Homer, who 'comes as lord before the three' (Inf. IV.87). He speaks first, and Virgil responds. They share the greatest poetic honor, even in Dante's Homerless experience of literary history."

[4] It seems clear that only the first and the last of these interpretations deserves serious consideration (none of the other six seems worthy of even brief study). The first is as obviously "correct" as it is banal: That the voice is not identified only adds to the importance of what it says and who says it, leaving with the reader the responsibility for identifying it with Homer.

[5] It happens that the plural form of the word, poeti, occurs five times: Inf. I.82 & XXIX.83; Purg. XXII.115 & 139; XXVIII.146. The two Infernal presences of this form of the word refer to poeti in general, if almost certainly to "regular" poets (see Dve I.i.2), that is, the renowned classical poets, including at least the five we have met in Limbo; the last three refer to Virgil and Statius, thus again underlining their extraordinary status.

[6] One amusing variation is found in the metaphorical interpretation of the Anonimo selmiano: "E puossi dire che tutti gli fanno onore, parlando come poeta, e puossi dire, che partita era la sua ombra de la memoria de le genti, e ora per questo libro vi torna."

[7] In this group one finds the author of the commentary found in the Codice cassinese (1350-75), Maramauro (1369-73), Boccaccio (1373-75), Benvenuto (1375-80), the Anonimo fiorentino (1400), Johannis de Serravalle (1416-17), Guiniforto delli Bargigi (1440), Vellutello (1544), Gelli (1541-63), Lombardi (1791-92), Scartazzini (1872-82), Campi (1888-93), Poletto (1894), Casini/Barbi (1921), Steiner (1921), Pietrobono (1946), Mattalia (1960), Mazzoni (1965), Padoan (1967), and Bosco/Reggio (1979).

[8] For an earlier acknowledgment of her contribution, see R. Hollander, "A Note on Dante's Missing Musaeus (Inferno IV.140-141)," Quaderni d'italianistica 5 (1984): 219.

[9] Exceptions among the commentators are found in Hollander (2000, comm. vv. 80-81) and Fosca (2003, comm. v. 81). See the words of the former: "What did Homer and Virgil's other companions think when Beatrice came to Limbo to draw Virgil up to the world of the living? They have witnessed this sort of event before, at least once (the harrowing), and perhaps at least once more (Trajan's latter-day resurrection)."