Editing Divine Comedy (section)

=== Classical ===
Without access to the works of [[Homer]], Dante used Virgil, [[Lucan]], [[Ovid]], and [[Statius]] as the models for the style, history, and mythology of the ''Comedy''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Moore |first=Edward |url=http://archive.org/details/studiesindante0000unse |title=Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante |date=1968 |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=New York |page=4 |orig-date=1896}}</ref> This is most obvious in the case of Virgil, who appears as a mentor character throughout the first two canticles and who has his epic, the ''[[Aeneid]]'', praised with language Dante reserves elsewhere for Scripture.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Jacoff |first1=Rachel |last2=Schnapp |first2=Jeffrey T. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4SLBkMR2-sMC |title=The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's 'Commedia' |date=1991 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=978-0-8047-1860-8 |pages=1–3 |language=en |access-date=15 March 2023 |archive-date=29 November 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221129165445/https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Poetry_of_Allusion/4SLBkMR2-sMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover |url-status=live}}</ref> Ovid is given less explicit praise in the poem, but besides Virgil, Dante uses Ovid as a source more than any other poet, mostly through metaphors and fantastical episodes based on those in the ''[[Metamorphoses]]''.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Van Peteghem |first=Julie |date=19 August 2015 |title=Digital Readers of Allusive Texts: Ovidian Intertextuality in the 'Commedia' and the Digital Concordance on 'Intertextual Dante' |url=https://journals.oregondigital.org/hsda/article/view/5732 |journal=Humanist Studies & the Digital Age |language=en |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=39–59 |doi=10.5399/uo/hsda.4.1.3584 |issn=2158-3846 |access-date=21 March 2024 |archive-date=21 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240321185243/https://journals.oregondigital.org/hsda/article/view/5732 |url-status=live}}</ref> Less influential than either of the two are Statius and Lucan, the latter of whom has only been given proper recognition as a source in the ''Divine Comedy'' in the twentieth century.<ref>Commentary to Paradiso, IV.90 by Robert and Jean Hollander, ''The Inferno: A Verse Translation'' (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), as found on Dante Lab, http://dantelab.dartmouth.edu {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210614052100/http://dantelab.dartmouth.edu/ |date=14 June 2021 }}</ref>

Besides Dante's fellow poets, the classical figure that most influenced the ''Comedy'' is [[Aristotle]]. Dante built up the philosophy of the ''Comedy'' with the works of Aristotle as a foundation, just as the scholastics used Aristotle as the basis for their thinking. Dante knew Aristotle directly from Latin translations of his works and indirectly from quotations in the works of [[Albertus Magnus]].<ref>Lafferty, Roger. "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40165857.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A55f6bfc22f02768d5dcdc92005228933 The Philosophy of Dante] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221129165439/https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40165857.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A55f6bfc22f02768d5dcdc92005228933 |date=29 November 2022 }}", pg. 4</ref> Dante even acknowledges Aristotle's influence explicitly in the poem, specifically when Virgil justifies the Inferno's structure by citing the ''[[Nicomachean Ethics]]''.<ref>''Inferno'', Canto&nbsp;XI, lines 70–115, Mandelbaum translation.</ref> In the same canto, Virgil draws on [[Cicero]]'s ''[[De Officiis]]'' to explain why sins of the intellect are worse than sins of violence, a key point that would be explored from canto XVIII to the end of the ''Inferno''.<ref>Cornell University, [https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/visionsofdante/glossary.php Visions of Dante: Glossary] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221129165441/https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/visionsofdante/glossary.php|date=29 November 2022}}.</ref>