Giving a thing, an animal or an abstract idea actions, feelings or speech proper to a person.
In Paradise
she, deprived of her first husband, for a thousand and a hundred years and more remained despised and obscure, uninvited, until this one
Poverty is treated as a woman: a widow of a "first husband", "despised and obscure", who waited "uninvited". Giving her the story of a person allows the canto to narrate the life of Francis as a marriage.
Cantos IX to XII: Venus and the Sun, Thomas Aquinas, speaking of Poverty before Francis
Florence, within the ancient wall, from which it still takes the hours of terce and nones, was at peace, sober and modest
Cantos XIII to XVI: The Sun and Mars, Cacciaguida, to Dante, describing the city of his time
all your things have their death, as you do; but this is hidden in some that last long, and lives are short. And as the turning of the sky of the moon covers and uncovers the shores without pause, so does Fortune with Florence
Cantos XIII to XVI: The Sun and Mars, Cacciaguida, to Dante, speaking of families and cities
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