Mike Disa

Dante: Why, God? Why are you doing this?

Virgil: It is not the Lord that brought you to this fate, Dante.

Dante: What are you, shade or living man?

Virgil: Not man, though once I was. I lived under Augustus in the time of the false and lying gods.

Dante: Are you not Virgil, glory of the poets, he who wrote the Aeneid, the treasure of Rome?

Virgil: Why do you seek such woe, Dante?

Dante: I seek only my beloved Beatrice and nothing more, but I cannot open these accursed gates!

Virgil: Have you lost all faith in God, O man? Has the way been so obscured?

Dante: Tell me of your life on Earth, great poet. I know your deeds, but not the man you were.

Virgil: Publius Vergilius Maro was my name. I was the son of a commoner. And though I died more than a dozen years before the birth of Christ, I foretold his coming in my works.