Commentary Par XV 25-27

All are in agreement about the Virgilian provenance of this simile.  Itself representing paternal affection, it is perhaps the most obvious and filial affection shown by the poet to his poetic father, Virgil, since he left the poem in the earthly paradise (Purg. XXX).  See Aeneid VI.684-686, a description of the shade of Anchises welcoming his living son to the Elysian Fields.  (See C.Purg.II.79-81.)  What exactly we are to make of the reference is a matter of some dispute and more than a little complexity. 

On this passage see Schnapp (Schn.1991.1).  And, for his earlier consideration of it, see Schnapp (Schn.1986.1), pp. 203-15.  He had in that earlier study (p. 69) discussed the cross-pollination of 'the Virgilian thematics of epic sacrifice' and Dante's 'new epic of Christ and of His cross' (see also pp. 143-49, 215-31).

Surprisingly, this may be the first obvious citation of Virgil's text (Aen. VI.684-686) in quite some time, and it is surely the most vibrant one so far in Paradiso.  While there have been several at least generally Virgilian contaminations, this is the first pellucidly precise one since [Par VIII 9].  Before that, the last great Virgilian flowering occurred in Purgatorio XXX ([Purg XXX 21], [Purg XXX48], [Purg XXX 49-51], [Purg XXX 52], [Purg XXX 59-60] -- see Hollander [Holl.1993.1], pp. 317-18).  From the beginning of the Paradiso it may have seemed that Virgil had been left behind as the main classical source in favor of Ovid (see the last paragraph of C.Par.I.68).  For discussion see Hollander (Holl.1983.1), pp. 134-35.

See Brugnoli (Brug.2002.1) for his most recent (and, unhappily, final) insistence that Dante's Virgil needs to be read through the filter of intervening lenses.  In this case Brugnoli is discussing the erroneous translation of Virgil (Aen. VI.664-666) found in Convivio (Conv.II.v.13-14), observed as being possibly caused by the versions found in Servius and Proba's cento.