Commentary Purg XXII 70-72

Dante's translation of the crucial lines of the fourth Eclogue (vv. 5-7) deforms them just enough to show how a Christian might have found a better meaning in them than did Virgil himself:

      magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.

      iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;

      iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto. 

      (The great line of the centuries begins anew;

      now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns;

      now new progeny descends from heaven on high.) 

From Mon.I.xi.1 we know that Dante believed that Virgil's Virgo was not a woman named Mary but Astraea, or Justice.  Still, primal justice was the condition of humankind in the prelapsarian Eden, that 'first age of man' (primo tempo umano), which is open to a wider interpretation than Virgil's 'Saturnia regna.'  Statius's version of Virgil had to rearrange very little (and that seems to be Dante's hard-edged intention) to make the prophecy a Christian one.  Dante's identical rhymes (ri-nova, ciel nova) add a repeated word that has a deeply Christian ring to it, 'new,' thus pointing to the concept that almost emerges from Virgil's text.  He came very close, but he failed.  However, in Pertile's view (Pert.1980.1, p. 26), 'The character of Statius was created by Dante in the exclusive service of the greater glory of Virgil.'