What role do (heritage and Italian stately culture) play in the narrative?

In the opening section, which is titled, A Whisper to the Reader, Twain reveals that Hicks is currently living in Florence, Italy; this is the same locale where Twain is himself authoring the story. Specifically, Hicks is working in Macaroni Vermicelli's horse feed shed for exercise and board. The shed, Twain tells us, is just beyond the stone where Dante Alighieri - author of the La Divina Commedia - used to sit six hundred years ago. Twain concludes this brief introduction by noting that as he writes, busts of ancient Italian senators look down upon him, just as they stared down on Dante all those centuries ago. He says that the statues are silently asking him to adopt them into his family, which is he is pleased to do, as his own "remotest ancestors are but spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques."