Calliope

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At the opening of the Purgatorio Dante invokes the holy Muses and, with a gradation relative to the Inferno, calls Calliope by name, the muse of epic poetry. The note to the verse indicates that she is celebrated as the greatest among the Muses and that the poet names her explicitly because it was she, according to the myth narrated by Ovid, who defeated the Pierides in singing. The verse urges her to rise («alquanto surga»), with a verb that the note traces back to an Ovidian citation; Buti's gloss clarifies that the «quanto» is measured because in the third cantica the muse will rise completely. The name is invoked so that the canto may have the more-than-human force required by the new subject.