Commentary Inf XXV 44-45

Dante's digital gesture hushes Virgil. When we consider the enormous liberties the poet has just taken with the text of the Aeneid, we may not be surprised, within the fiction, at his rather peremptory treatment of his leader. Sowell (Sowe.1989.1) argues for a pun here on Ovid's name: Dante is 'shushing' Virgil by holding his finger across his mouth to his nose (naso) and Ovid's name is, of course, Publius Ovidius Naso. The hypothesis would be more attractive were not the context of the gesture so clearly Virgilian.