Commentary Inf XXVI 90-93

Ulysses' speech begins, like classical epic, in medias res (in the midst of the action, i.e., not at its beginning). Dante would seem to be portraying him as the author of his own self-celebrating song, a 'mini-epic,' as it were. He makes it sound as though staying with Circe, the enchantress, were less culpable than it probably was, in Dante's eyes. His next gesture is to boast that he had come to Gaeta before Aenas did, which city Aeneas names after his dead nurse, who died and was buried there (Aen. VII.2). (Castelvetro, always one to find fault with Dante, complains that it is not verisimilar for Ulysses to know these things from the Aeneid -- DDP Castelvetro.Inf.XXVI.91-93). Thus does Ulysses put himself forward as a rivalrous competitor of Virgil's hero.