In the popular imagination Virgil became a mythical personage and a mighty magician. See the story of Virgilius in Thom’s Early Prose Romances , 11. Dante selects him for his guide, as symbolizing human science or Philosophy. “I say and affirm,” he remarks, Convito , V 16, “that the lady with whom I became enamored after my first love was the most beautiful and modest daughter of the Emperor of the Universe, to whom Pythagoras gave the name of Philosophy.” ↩

Dante seems to have been already conscious of the fame which his Vita Nuova and Canzoni had given him. ↩