IV
Virgil crosses the threshold into the First Circle, Limbo (which is his home). The only sound in Limbo is eternal sighing. Dante asks if any of the Unbaptized and Virtuous Pagans have been lifted up into Heavn, and he is told that on Jesus' death the fathers of the faith were taken up **CATALOGING**: Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, David, Abraham, Israel (with Rachel), and many others he does not name.
Within Limbo is a well-lit area populated by the Virtuous Pagans whose fame still resounds in the world of the living (lines 76-78). Four shades approach the Poets: Homer (bearing a naked sword), Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. Virgil is of this crew. They welcome Dante in (a "greater honour yet"). They walk together towards the origin of the light--a castle. For more on the castle read about it in The Structure of Hell.
Inside the castle walls Dante sees more shades **CATALOGING**
--Founders of the Trojan line: Electra, Hector, Aeneas (along with lots of other Trojans), Caesar, Camilla, Penthesilea, Latinus and his daughter Lavinia, Brutus (not Caesar's murderer, the one who overthrew Tarquin--see Etruscan-Roman Wars in History), Marcia, Cornelia, Julia, Lucrece, Saladin.
--Philosophers: Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, Thales, Zeno, Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Dioscorides, Tully, Orpheus, Linus, Seneca, Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen, Hippocrates, Avicen, Averroes.
Virgil and Dante continue on, leaving the other poets behind.