Should I read Virgil first?

[TrickyRick]

I have all three part of the Divine Comedy in the John Cardi translation, and I have started the Inferno a couple of time a few years ago, but I have never finished it. I was wondering, should I read Virgil's Aeneid first?

[JCamilo]

No, it is not necessary at all.

[JBI]

You should have some idea what those classics he refers to are though. I mean half of Inferno is him walking around seeing people.

[TrickyRick]

When I was in elementary school, about 35 years ago, one of my teachers read The Odyssey to us. I was going to read the Illiad and the Odyssey and maybe Virgil's Aeneid, but I just wondered if it would make that much difference if I read them first.

[JCamilo]

When I first read the Comedy, I had no idea at all about Virgil. It is not having not read him, that was the first time I heard about him.
The second time I read him I had the notion he was a roman that liked Homer.
From know on I knew about him but the truth is that since I actually read his 3 most famous book I did not read the Comedy again.
And I adhored the Comedy since first time. Knowing about Virgil more than "He was a roman writer and Dante liked him" is not necessary for the comedy.

[grace86]

Virgil is just a Roman poet. He wrote The Aenied. It is a wonderful epic, but not necessary to understanding Dante's Inferno.

I did happen to read The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer...and they have some relevance to Inferno in that there are appearances by some of the characters.

Dante uses a lot of other characters from other stories, and political/religious leaders of the time that he did not like (he put them in some of the more interesting circles of hell).

You can get through the epic just fine without knowing too much about these other stories.

Have fun reading it, it really is graphic and an engrossing read. I think the Ciardi version was a good one...I didn't read that version, nor did I read Purgatorio or Paradiso.

[aemy]

I agree with Grace. I would get a good annotated edition/translation of Dante (which will help identify characters.)

If you try to read Virgil's epic first, you may never get to The Divine Comedy!

[Behemoth]

I don't think The Divine Comedy requires you to have read Virgil as such, however I found my reading of Dante to be more enjoyable and better informed after my 'epic tradition' course at university. As all of the epic poems, it certainly benefits re-reading to fully understand the references and allusions made, even if they are given in the notes.