Classical Poets (Homer, Ovid, Lucan, Horace): Circle 1, Inferno 4   Among the magnanimous shades in Limbo is a distinguished group of four classical poets--Homer (8th century B.C.E.), Horace (65-8 B.C.E.), Ovid (43 B.C.E. - 17 C.E.), and Lucan (39-65 C.E.)--who welcome back their colleague Virgil and honor Dante as one of their own (Inf. 4.100-2). The leader of this group is Homer, author of epic poems treating the war between the Greeks and Trojans (Iliad) and Ulysses' adventurous return voyage (Odyssey). Although Dante had no direct familiarity with Homer's poetry (it wasn't translated and Dante didn't read Greek), he knew of Homer's unsurpassed achievement from references in works by Latin writers he admired. Dante knew works of the other three poets--each wrote in Latin--very well, particularly Ovid's Metamorphoses (mythological tales of transformations, often based on relations between gods and mortals) and Lucan's Pharsalia (treating the Roman civil war between Caesar and Pompey); Horace was best known as the author of satires and an influential poem about the making of poetry (Ars poetica). The vast majority of characters and allusions from classical mythology appearing in the Divine Comedy derive from the works of these writers, primarily those of Ovid and Lucan in addition to Virgil.