The first tercet of Inferno 26 launches the canto’s theme of epic quest and journey, by framing Florentine imperial ambitions and expansionism with the metaphor of flying. With them, you can ascend to no high honor.

Of yours - and such, that shame has taken me The first part (“over sea and land you beat your wings”) conjures the metaphor of flying, which will be so important in this canto: Let us consider both parts of that statement. Enjoy your greatness, Florence! You have reached such pinnacles of greatness, says the poet to his natal city, that you beat your wings over sea and land and spill your name throughout Hell. Inferno 26 opens with a scathingly sarcastic apostrophe to Florence. Inferno 26 presents one of the Commedia’s most famous characters: the Greek hero of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus, known to Dante by his Latin name, Ulysses. Dante’s “upside down pedagogy”: the Greek hero Ulysses is a counter-intuitive Dantean signifier for Biblical Adam.in this canto an epic hero is remarkably writ into the vernacular.the transmission of the Ulysses-myth led to a bifurcated critical reception, as explained below.the transmission of the Ulysses-myth: it came to the Middle Ages from Latin writers, mainly from Vergil and Cicero.Dante did not read Greek and did not read Homer‘s Odyssey (the verses in Inferno 26 that sound uncannily like the opening of the Odyssey he learned through Horace’s Ars Poetica).“Ulyssean” lexicon and metaphors are sutured into the DNA of the Commedia: this poem’s foundational metaphor, in which Dante equates flying with the desire to know, is coded in this canto as Ulyssean.Florentine imperial ambitions are castigated by Dante in the opening apostrophe (contrast Guittone d’Arezzo in Ahi, lasso, or è stagion de doler tanto).

Dante's inferno divine comedy