Dr. Jonathan Juilfs

in the Aeneid being put forward as the father of none other than Augustus.

We have Junius introduced to us the passage of the Picarda, which ends with the idea of peace.

Well, Pax is another idea that the Romans are deeply interested in, Pax Romana.

But that peace was a false peace.

That was a martial peace.

And here we are in the circle of Mars.

Like all of these things are kind of coalescing around one another.

And Mars, of course, was the great patron of ancient Rome.

What we get here is Dante wrestling with his own origins, with his own identity.

And so this line about blood, and then a little bit later on, the image will shift.

I'll pick it up around 46 and thereabouts.

Dante Pilgrim briefly says, blessed be, or sorry, this is,

Start at 43.

When the arc of his burning affect had so spent itself that his speech descended toward the target of our intellect, the first thing understood by me was, blessed be you, trine and one, who are so courteous to my seed.

And here we get another of the metaphors for family lines and genealogies.

Seed.

The Italian over there, well, semen.

And the idea here that

Through our family lines, there is blessing, and we know this from the pages of Scripture, but we also know there's curse.

And I hear the words of Joshua very famously, right?