Commentary Purg XII 127-136

Anyone who has played the version of poker known as 'hatband' will immediately understand this concluding simile, the lighthearted tone of which culminates only logically in Virgil's smile.  Having subdued his pride (and he knows how afflicted he is by this sin -- see [Purg XIII 133-138]), the protagonist feels lighter, better, as though his trip through purgation were half finished already.  And thus this canto ends with a lighter and happier feeling than any that precedes it, offering a sort of foretaste of Edenic innocence.

      What has escaped readers of the simile is, however, exactly what concrete situation the poet had in mind.  Micaela Janan suggested in 1981 in a graduate seminar on Purgatorio at Princeton that the scene is modeled upon one in Statius (Theb. VI.760-791).  In the games (modeled on those in Aeneid V) before the battle for Thebes, Alcidamas nicks the forehead of Capaneus with a blow.  Capaneus hears the onlookers's murmuring, but only realizes when by accident he touches his wound that he is bleeding.  Dante's commentators are maddeningly imprecise in their responses.  However, Portirelli (DDP Portirelli.Purg.XII.127-135) does suggest that what is at stake is an object put on one's head by friends as a joke.  Scartazzini (DDP Scartazzini.Purg.XII.128), following Buti (DDP Buti.Purg.XII.127-136), thinks the object might be a feather.  Porena (DDP Porena.Purg.XII.128-129) repeats these two possible interpretations.  It would seem reasonable to believe that Dante had something specific in mind (e.g., bird droppings), but we have not succeeded in identifying the image in his thought.