This old man, as soon appears, is the younger Cato, and the
office here given to him of warden of the souls in the outer
region of Purgatory was suggested by the position assigned to him
by Virgil in the Aeneid, viii. 670. "Secretosque pios, his dantem
jura Catonem."

It has been objected to Virgil's thus putting him in Elysium,
that as a suicide his place was in the Mourning Fields. A similar
objection may be made to Dante's separating him from the other
suicides in the seventh circle of Hell (Canto XIII.). "But," says
Conington, "Virgil did not aim at perfect consistency. It was
enough for him that Cato was one who from his character in life
might be justly conceived of as lawgiver to the dead." So Dante,
using Cato as an allegoric figure, regards him as one who, before
the coming of Christ, practised the virtues which are required to
liberate the soul from sin, and who, as be says in the De
Monarchia (ii. 5), "that he might kindle the love of liberty in
the world, showed how precious it was, by preferring death with
liberty to life without it." This liberty is the type of that
spiritual freedom which Dante is seeking, and which, being the
perfect conformity of the human will to the will of God, is the
aim and fruition of nil redeemed souls.

In the region of Purgatory outside the gate, the souls have not
yet attained this freedom; they are on the way to it, and Cato is
allegorically fit to warn and spur them on.


"Who are ye that counter to the blind stream have fled from the