Virtually from the opening verses of The Divine Comedy Dante the Author gives direct expression to his position on Classical culture, using Dante the Pilgrim as his mouthpiece to pay tribute to Virgil (Inferno I, v.82-87). His sojourn in Limbo provides the next opportunity for an expression of his admiration for the ancient legacy represented by its most eminent poets and philosophers. However, this "pre-humanist" attitude on his part is attended by another, not so overtly manifested approach to Antiquity. Throughout the entire work Dante the Poet enters on a debate in dialogue with the most outstanding Roman poets, Virgil and above all Ovid. On the one hand he avails himself of their poetry to construct the poetic fabric of The Divine Comedy; while on the other hand he uses motifs, similes and reminiscences from it in an utterly new context to negate the meanings which they carry in the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses. This issue has been the subject of intertextual analysis particularly in the recent, chiefly American, criticism. However, insufficient emphasis has been put on what I consider the essential core of Dante’s debate with Roman epic poetry. In my opinion it is founded on a different relation between God’s world and the world of humans. Dante’s approach is grounded in the bonds of love derived from the culture of Christianity: as we know, in his concept of the other worlds God’s love of the world closely coupled with the Creator’s wisdom make up the essential power driving the universe ever since its creation. This is borne out by many of his narrator’s comments. On the grounds of this hypothesis I conduct a series of intertextual analyses of selected episodes in which Dante creates new Christian myths, applying the new ethics to reinterpret and readjust the old pagan myths, in which the irrational manifested in the negative emotions governing divine and human choices played such a prominent part.