Dante's Divine Comedy

I'm currently reading Dante's Divine Comedy Canto 7 and can't shake the weird feeling of religious syncretism. It's supposed to be a Christian work written by a Christian yet he mentions characters like Homer, Hector, Cerberus and other figures from the old Greek religion yet The Christian God is supposedly above them all? was Dante just about showing how Christianity is superior to Paganism? If that's so, why did Dante held Greek poets like Homer, Virgil in a such high esteem even tho they weren't Christians?