Commentary Purg X 121-129

The poet's second apostrophe of the canto (see vv. 106-111 for the first) is not, strictly speaking, an address to the reader but rather a castigation of all those Christians (and thus, one would expect, not all his readers) who have turned away from God.

      One of the most celebrated metaphors of the poem, the 'angelic butterfly' that each of us has as a potential destiny, is what most of us will not become.  Shankland (Shan.1975.1) suggests a relationship between Dante's name and the Latin word aliger (a Virgilian coinage, according to him, as a poetic alternative for alatus), first used at Aeneid I.663 for Cupid, then again at XII.249 for the 'winged flock' of waterfowl sent scrambling by Jove's golden eagle.  Gorni (Gorn.1990.1), pp. 185-86, makes a similar observation, apparently believing that no one had proceeded him in doing so.