Dante was struck with great sorrow when he heard this, knowing how many good men must be in that place.  He inquired if no one had ever been taken out of it into heaven.  Virgil told him there had, and he named them; to wit, Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, King David, obedient Abraham the patriarch, and Isaac, and Jacob, with their children, and Rachel, for whom Jacob did so much,—­and “many more;” adding, however, that there was no instance of salvation before theirs.

Journeying on through spirits as thick as leaves, Dante perceived a lustre at a little distance, and observing shapes in it evidently of great dignity, inquired who they were that thus lived apart from the rest.  Virgil said that heaven thus favoured them by reason of their renown on earth.  A voice was then heard exclaiming, “Honour and glory to the lofty poet!  Lo, his shade returns.”  Dante then saw four other noble figures coming towards them, of aspect neither sad nor cheerful.

“Observe him with the sword in his hand,” said Virgil, as they were advancing.  “That is Homer, the poets’ sovereign.  Next to him comes Horace the satirist; then Ovid; and the last is Lucan.”

“And thus I beheld,” says Dante, “the bright school of the loftiest of poets, who flies above the rest like an eagle.”

For a while the illustrious spirits talked together, and then turned to the Florentine with a benign salutation, at which his master smiled and “further honour they did me,” adds the father of Italian poetry, “for they admitted me of their tribe; so that to a band of that high account I added a sixth.” [7]

The spirits returned towards the bright light in which they lived, talking with Dante by the way, and brought him to a magnificent castle, girt with seven lofty walls, and further defended with a river, which they all passed as if it had been dry ground.  Seven gates conducted them into a meadow of fresh green, the resort of a race whose eyes moved with a deliberate soberness, and whose whole aspects were of great authority, their voices sweet, and their speech seldom.[8] Dante was taken apart to an elevation in the ground, so that he could behold them all distinctly; and there, on the “enamelled green,” [9] were pointed out to him the great spirits, by the sight of whom he felt exalted in his own esteem.  He saw Electra with many companions, among whom were Hector and AEneas, and Caesar in armour with his hawk’s eyes; and on another side he beheld old King Latinus with his daughter Lavinia, and the Brutus that expelled Tarquin, and Lucretia, and Julia, and Cato’s wife Marcia, and the mother of the Gracchi, and, apart by himself, the Sultan Saladin.  He then raised his eyes a little, and beheld the “master of those who know” [10] (Aristotle), sitting amidst the family of philosophers, and honoured by them all.  Socrates and Plato were at his side.  Among the rest was Democritus, who made the world a chance, and Diogenes, and Heraclitus, &c. and Dioscorides, the good gatherer of simples.  Orpheus also he saw, and Cicero, and the moral Seneca, and Euclid, and Hippocrates, and Avicen, and Averroes, who wrote the great commentary, and others too numerous to mention.  The company of six became diminished to two, and Virgil took him forth on a far different road, leaving that serene air for a stormy one; and so they descended again into darkness.