He lived during the latter half of the 1st century CE, in the earliest days of Christianity. Like Virgil, whom he admires, Statius wrote in multiple genres, including epic poetry. In Dante's Purgatory he is a penitent soul in the last stages of his ascent to paradise. Heaven is available to him, and not to Virgil and Cato, because he—unlike they—lived after the establishment of Christianity. Dante insinuates that Statius secretly converted to Christianity, making him among the earliest Romans to do so.