The angel has already turned them toward the sixth circle and razed one more gash from Dante's brow. Souls whose wishes tend to justice shout Blessed, and end with I thirst. Dante is lighter than on the earlier straits. He follows the swift-footed shades without the sense of toil. Virgil says a pure flame of virtue warms another bosom once the light is manifest. Since Juvenal, down in the deep, told of Statius's affection, Virgil's good will has been as strong as love for one not seen. These stairs will now seem short. Then, as a friend, he asks how covetous desire found a place in a bosom stored with so much wisdom.
Statius is first moved to laughter. Things often minister false matter to our doubts when their true causes are removed from sight. The question proves Virgil took the terrace for greed. Statius was too wide of avarice. Thousands of moons have waxed and waned for that excess. If he had not noted Virgil's own outcry against the cursed thirst of gold, he would have met the voluble rock. Hands may haste to lavishment with too ample a wing. Opposite faults waste their green rankness on one common heap. Then Virgil asks what sun or candle pierced the dark so that Statius hoisted sail after the fisherman. Statius answers that Virgil first led him into the Parnassian grots and first opened his eyes to God: as one who, journeying through darkness, hears a light behind that profits not himself but makes his followers wise. Poet and Christian both were owed to those lines of a renovated world. Messengers from heaven then chimed with that word. Statius mixed his tears with the persecuted under Domitian, was baptised before he led the Greeks to Thebes, and stayed a secret Christian through fear. Five centuries and more he paced the fourth circle for that lukewarmness.
He asks after Terence, Plautus, Varro. Virgil places them with Persius and himself, and with Homer, in the first ward of darkness, and names Statius's own train: Antigone, Ismene, Deidamia, Tiresias's daughter. The fifth handmaid of the day is at the chariot-beam when they bend the right shoulder around the mount. Dante walks behind, taking mysterious lessons of sweet poesy, until a tree stops them. It spreads downward as a fir spreads up, so none may climb. Crystal falls through the sprays. A voice from the leaves: ye shall be chary of me. Mary took more thought for the nuptial feast than for herself. Roman women were satisfied with water. Daniel fed on pulse and gained wisdom. Hunger once made acorns tasteful. The Baptist reached his glory on honey and locusts.
Coming Up in Chapter 57
Dante will fix on a green leaf like a man who throws his days after the diminutive, until Virgil says their time asks thriftier using. Then a crowd will come so lean the bones stare through the skin, and a voice Dante knows will ask what grace has been vouchsafed.
