Commentary Purg II 70-74

This second simile of the canto compares Dante's living visage to the olive branch carried by a messenger of peace.  In other words, his very presence in this precinct is an additional assurance to the new souls that God's justice and promise of a kingdom of peace as the final haven for a Christian life was truly offered and truly kept.  They have arrived, even if the way before them is uncertain and difficult, since they still have to perform their ritual cleansing of even the memory of sin.  While the earliest commentators do not cite a Virgilian source for the simile, beginning with Daniello (DDP Daniello.Purg.II.70-71), who was followed by Lombardi (DDP Lombardi.Purg.II.70-71), Portirelli (DDP Portirelli.Purg.II.65-70), Tommaseo (DDP Tommaseo.Purg.II.70-72)), and Scartazzini (DDP Scartazzini.Purg.II.70), later ones point to two possible Virgilian sources: Aeneid VIII.115-116 and XI.100-101.  Andreoli (DDP Andreoli.Purg.II.70) cites only the first of these.  In the second, messengers from the camp of Turnus, holding up olive branches, seek permission of Aeneas to gather the bodies of the dead for burial; in the first it is Aeneas himself, standing upon the puppis (quarterdeck) of his ship, who holds forth the branch of peace to Pallas, son of Evander.  Pallas is amazed (obstipuit -- verse 121) by Aeneas's cordial gesture and accedes to it.  The entire context there seems to fit the details of Dante's scene better, Dante as Aeneas 'invading' the homeland of those with whom he will be allied.  As Hollander has pointed out (Holl.1990.1, p. 37), the ominous undertones present in Virgil's scene (Aeneas will in fact bring not peace but war, one in which Pallas will become the central sacrificial partner) seem necessarily excluded here.