Note 3 — CANTO XIX.
Charles Eliot Norton translation
The hour when this dream comes to Dante is “post mediam noctem … cum somnia vera,”—the hour in which it was commonly believed that dreams have a true meaning. The woman seen by Dante is the deceitful Siren, who symbolizes the temptation to those sins of sense from which the spirits are purified in the three upper rounds of Purgatory.