Three poets now travel together — an extraordinary literary gathering. Virgil asks Statius how avarice (or prodigality) found a place in a soul so full of wisdom. Statius answers that in life he was prodigal — not avaricious. He spent extravagantly, without restraint. But more surprising is his next revelation: he was a Christian. Virgil's Fourth Eclogue — the famous "Messianic Eclogue" that medieval readers interpreted as a prophecy of Christ's coming — opened the door. Reading it, Statius became sympathetic to Christianity; when the persecution of Christians began under Domitian, he converted secretly, living as a hidden Christian for four years before his death. He was baptized but lacked the courage to confess it openly — that cowardice, he says with a rueful smile, kept him in Ante-Purgatory for more than four centuries longer than he needed to be.
Dante's use of Statius here is one of the poem's most audacious inventions. Historically, there is no evidence Statius was a Christian. Dante imagines it whole. The move allows him to show Christianity's truth as anticipated in the greatest pagan poetry and to suggest that classical literature, rightly read, points toward the Gospel. Virgil, who wrote the prophecy without understanding it, is the unwitting instrument of another man's conversion and salvation — the sower who never sees the harvest.
They arrive at the sixth terrace. A tree stands in the path, unusual in shape: its branches grow wider toward the bottom, making it impossible to climb. Water pours downward from higher rocks, soaking the leaves. Voices from within the tree cite examples of temperance: Mary's discreet response at Cana, the Roman women of legend who drank only water, Daniel who refused the king's food, the Golden Age when acorns satisfied and water was nectar, John the Baptist who lived on locusts and honey in the desert.