A few words on the mythological and classical allusions in the _Commedia_ may be useful to those who are not familiar with Greek and Latin literature. The subject is a very wide one, and Dante’s treatment of heathen mythology is very curious. It is especially noticeable in the _Purgatory_, where every sin and its contrary virtue are illustrated by a pair of examples from Scripture history on the one hand, and Greek or Roman history or legend (for both seem alike to him) on the other. Sloth, for instance, is exemplified by the Israelites who “thought scorn” of the promised land, and the slothful followers of Æneas, who hung back from the conquest of Italy; while Mary going into the hill country with haste, and Cæsar dashing into Spain are the chosen models of prompt response to the call of duty. So, again, at the very outset of the poem, we find St. Paul and Æneas quoted as the two instances of living men who have been permitted to see the future world; and Dante professes his own unworthiness to be put on a level with them, apparently without a hint that he holds the _Æneid_ any lower as an authority than the Epistle to the Corinthians. In a practically pagan humanist of the days of Leo X. this would hardly surprise us; but it is, at first sight, not a little astonishing in the case of a poet to whom the Christian Church and Christian revelation were vital truths. It is, however, clear that to the mediæval mind the Bible, though no doubt the highest authority, was in matters of morality, and to some extent even of theology, only “first among its peers.” Aquinas quotes Aristotle, the Scriptures, and the Fathers almost indiscriminately in support of his positions. Dante, approaching the subject from a political as well as a moral point, takes for his guide and philosopher the poet Virgil, who, as the Middle Ages deemed, had both foretold the glories of the Church, and sung of the first origin of the Empire. It must never be forgotten that, to Dante, Church and Empire were merely two aspects of one Divine institution. Brutus and Cassius are hardly less guilty than Judas; and that simply from the official point of view, for there is no attempt to sanctify, much less to deify, Cæsar as an individual. None the less is the work that he did holy, and this holiness communicates itself, as readers of the _De Monarchia_ will remember, to the whole of the long course of workings by which Divine Providence prepared the way for it. The finger of God is no less plainly to be seen in the victory of Æneas over Turnus or of the Romans over the Samnites than in the passage of the Israelites across the Red Sea, or the repulse of the Assyrians. Roman history is no less sacred than Hebrew. This being so, we shall not be surprised to find that a certain authority attaches to the literature of either one of the chosen peoples. Did they conflict, doubtless the poet, as an orthodox Catholic, would admit that Virgil must give way to Isaiah; but he would