Ovid

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In Canto IV of the Inferno Dante places Ovid in the noble castle of Limbo, reserved for the great souls of antiquity who lacked the Christian faith. The poet is presented as the third of the school of poets, after Homer and Virgil and before Lucan, who is the last. A critical note specifies that the Latin poets mentioned here – Horace, Ovid, and Lucan – are arranged in chronological order and seem to represent the three principal styles: humble, comic, and tragic, with Ovid associated with the comic style as the author of the Metamorphoses. The same commentary notes that, like Lucan, Ovid also remains a constant poetic model for Dante throughout the entire Comedy. The Dantean reference to the sixth place among poets also echoes a similar Ovidian gesture in the Tristia, in which Ovid places himself fourth among the elegiac poets after Tibullus, Gallus, and Propertius.