Commentary Inf VIII 25-30

For the relation of this moment, so clearly modelled on Aeneas's stepping into Charon's skiff in Aen. VI.413-414 (' ...accipit alveo / ingentem Aenean. gemuit sub pondere... ') to Dante's version of that scene at the close of Inferno III, see C.Inf.III.136. We might speculate on Dante's reasons for 'postponing' the Virgilian scene (from the crossing into hell to an entrance farther along) and altering its agent (from the all-too-familiar Charon to the relatively unknown Phlegyas). He may well have felt that for his protagonist to step into Charon's skiff would have caused his readers to wince at his slavish redoing of the classical scene, yet at the same time have wanted to offer us the retrospective knowledge that that was exactly what had happened between the margins of Cantos III and IV. This would not be the first nor the last time that he had made us his collaborators in the production of his fiction.