by Dante
25–27. Belisarius (ca. 500–565), Justinian’s greatest general, is portrayed by Dante in unproblematic and glowing terms, either despite what the poet knew of his eventual difficulties with his emperor or in ignorance of them. If Dante did know the extravagant and unverified tale (but he may not have, we must remember) that Justinian finally had all his possessions stripped from Belisarius and also had him blinded, we would sense even more strongly how willing Dante was to let the ideality of the situation trump its actuality. For here is a realm that a Dante can love, its supreme leader completely dedicated to the practical intellectual concerns of governance, the law, while his “right hand,” loyal and true, takes care of problems with the Vandals in Africa and the Goths in Italy. In any case, this pair of heroic figures offers Dante an emblem of the successful collaboration between representatives of the active and of the contemplative life (here in the form of the lower part of Boethius’s familiar binome, practical [rather than theoretical] thought; see Cons. Phil. I.1[pr.]).
This is, according to the Grande Dizionario, one of the very few times in the history of the Italian language that the verb commendare is used to signify “affidare” (entrust)—the only other example put forward comes from Castiglione two centuries later. In Dante the word more usually signifies “praise, celebrate.” [return to English / Italian]
30. Narrowing the principal activity of his own life on behalf of Rome triggers in Justinian the need to “add” something more, a “digression” of sorts (vv. 34–111), which naturally enough has begun (vv. 31–33) by touching on the criminally irresponsible struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines in Dante’s Italy. It will, also naturally enough, conclude with the same concern (vv. 97–111). Thus ancient history has a most modern relevance and is framed by that topic. [return to English / Italian]
31–33. The outcome of the struggle of the Eagle, a great Hegelian bird moving through history to make manifest the Spirit, is hardly a cause for optimism, at least not at the moment in which Dante is writing. The “covers” of Justinian’s historical essay both depict the disastrous present day in Italy. The ensuing narrative of the Eagle’s flight through time and space is put to the service of showing that it has become the corrupt emblem of a corrupt party (the Ghibellines of 1300), opposed by equally corrupt Guelphs.
Justinian speaks ironically (employing the trope antiphrasis, saying the opposite of what is meant). [return to English / Italian]
34–96. The core of the canto, offering what is perhaps the poem’s crucial political self-definition, presenting an absolutely unorthodox “history of the Caesars,” that is, one principally shaped by a Christian point of view, is divided into sixteen segments:
(1) death of Pallas (35–36)
(2) Ascanius founds Alba Longa (37–38)
(3) Horatians’ victory over the Curiatii (39)
(4) kings: rape of the Sabines (Romulus) (40)
(5) kings: rape of Lucretia (the Tarquins) (41–42)
(6) republic: vs. Gauls of Brennus (43–44)
(7) republic: vs. Tarentini of Pyrrhus (44–45)
(8) republic: Torquatus and Cincinnatus (46)
(9) republic: Decii and Fabii (47–48)
(10) republic: defeat of Hannibal (49–51)
(11) republic: Scipio and Pompey (vs. Catiline) (52–54)
(12) empire: Julius Caesar (55–72)
(13) empire: Augustus Caesar (73–84)
(14) empire: Tiberius Caesar (85–90)
(15) empire: Titus (91–93)
(16) empire: Charlemagne (94–96) [return to English / Italian]
34. The Eagle is marked by virtù (usually “power” but, at times, as here, “virtue”), precisely what the opposing Italian political parties lack. The ensuing list of virtuous founding presences harps upon the moral virtues that separated Romans from their enemies. See Convivio IV.iv.11 for an earlier expression of Dante’s firm belief in the moral superiority of the Romans: “Therefore, since this office [rulership] could not be attained without the greatest virtue, and since its exercise required the greatest and most humane kindness, this was the people best disposed to receive it” (tr. R. Lansing). [return to English / Italian]
35–36. Roman imperial virtue begins with the death of Pallas, son of Evander. Despite the special protection of Aeneas, Pallas is killed in battle by Turnus (Aen. X.479–489). Thus the founding event of the empire is presented here as the death of Pallas, an event that seems to have the status of sacrifice. For a discussion in this vein, see Rachel Jacoff (Jaco.1985.1). The death of Cato has a similar resonance; he died for liberty, as Virgil tells Dante (Purg. I.71–72; and see the note to vv. 71–74). Pallas dies in order to give virtue a homeland in Italy where, for a time at least, it prospered. “His death led to that of Turnus, because Aeneas would have spared the latter’s life, had he not seen the belt of Pallas, which [Turnus] was wearing (Aen. XII.940–950). By Turnus’ death Aeneas became possessed of Lavinia, and of the Kingdom of Latinus. Thus the death of Pallas ultimately caused the eagle to obtain the sovereignty” (Tozer’s commentary to vv. 35–36).
Of the death of Pallas, Dante (Monarchia II.ix.14) has this to say: “In this combat [with Turnus] the clemency of the victor Aeneas was so great that, had he not caught sight of the belt which Turnus had taken from Pallas when he killed him, the victor would have granted life as well as peace to the vanquished, as our poet’s closing lines testify” (tr. P. Shaw). [return to English / Italian]
37–39. Dante refers to Alba Longa, “the most ancient town in Latium, built according to tradition by Ascanius, son of Aeneas” (T). The Eagle would remain there some three hundred years until the defeat of the local Curiatii by the Roman Horatii. [return to English / Italian]
40–42. Dante (Conv. IV.v.11) includes three Tarquins among the first seven kings of Rome: “… the seven kings who first governed her—namely Romulus, Numa, Tullus, Ancus, and the Tarquin kings who were the rulers and the tutors, so to speak, of her youth” (tr. R. Lansing). That means Dante counts the sixth king, Tullius Servius, related by marriage but not by birth, as one of the Tarquins, as Toynbee explains (“Tarquinii”).
It is probably significant that the first period of Roman history is marked, at either end, by rape, that of the Sabine women in Romulus’s rule and that of Lucrece by her husband’s cousin, Sextus Tarquinius, son of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, seventh king of Rome. That second act of sexual violence eventually had the result of ending Tarquin rule (510 b.c.). [return to English / Italian]
43–45. Dante records two major military victories of the ensuing republican period. “Brennus, leader of the Senonian Gauls, who in 390 b.c. crossed the Apennines, defeated the Romans at the Allia, and took Rome; after besieging the capitol for six months he quitted the city upon receiving 1,000 pounds of gold as a ransom for the capitol and returned home safe with his booty. According to later tradition (followed by Livy), at the moment when the gold was being weighed and Brennus, declaring the Roman weights to be false, had thrown his sword into the scale, Camillus and a Roman army appeared, fell upon the Gauls, and slaughtered them” (T). “Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, born 318 b.c., died 272 b.c.; he claimed descent from Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles and great-grandson of Aeacus. In 280 Pyrrhus crossed over into Italy at the invitation of the Tarentines to help them in their war against the Romans” (T).
This tercet begins a passage dedicated to the Roman republic (vv. 43–54). For a clear understanding of Dante’s allegiance to republican ideals and principles, see Davis, “Ptolemy of Lucca and the Roman Republic” (1974) and “Roman Patriotism and Republican Propaganda: Ptolemy of Lucca and Pope Nicholas III” (1975), both reprinted in Davi.1984.1, pp. 254–89 and 224–53, respectively; and see Hollander and Rossi (Holl.1986.1) and the note to Paradiso XXVII.61–63. [return to English / Italian]
45. The words principi e collegi refer to other political organisms on the peninsula, whether kingdoms or republics; for collegi with this meaning, Porena (comm. to this verse) cites Monarchia II
.v.7: These bodies “seem in some sense to function as a bond between individuals and the community” (tr. P. Shaw). [return to English / Italian]
46. “Titus Manlius, surnamed Torquatus, from the collar (torques) which he took from a fallen foe; and Quinctius, surnamed Cincinnatus, or the ‘curly-haired’ ” (Longfellow, comm. on this verse). [return to English / Italian]
47. The Decii and the Fabii: “Decii, famous Roman family, three members of which, father, son, and grandson, all bearing the same name, Publius Decius Mus, sacrificed their lives for their country” (T); “the Fabii, ancient patrician family at Rome, which claimed descent from Hercules and the Arcadian Evander. It is celebrated as having furnished a long line of distinguished men” (T). [return to English / Italian]
48. Dante uses a rare (or coins his own new) verb, mirrare, meaning either “to embalm, to preserve with myrrh.” See Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) for an acerbic discussion of the vagaries of the ancient debate over this word. Some early commentators think Dante was only deliberately (because of the exigencies of rhyme) misspelling miro (admire) with a double “rr”; others see that it means “preserve,” as Scartazzini argues it indeed does, if he dislikes any sense of the odoriferous, favored by some but inappropriate, in his view, in Paradise. [return to English / Italian]
49–51. To refer to the Cathaginians as Arabs is (as Bosco/Reggio [comm. on this tercet] explain) to commit an anachronism, since Arabs populated that part of North Africa only in Dante’s day, not in Roman times. Hannibal (247–183 b.c.) was Rome’s perhaps most glorious and successful antagonist, over a period of some fifteen years defeating them in several major battles, until, at the battle of Zama, in 202 b.c., he was utterly crushed by Scipio (who received his surname, “Africanus,” as a result). [return to English / Italian]
52–53. “Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major, one of the greatest of the Romans, born 234 b.c., died ca. 183; while just a youth he fought against Hannibal at the Battle of the Ticinus (218); he was elected consul 205, and in the next year crossed over into Africa, and at last brought to an end the long struggle between Rome and Hannibal by his decisive victory over the latter at the Battle of Zama, Oct. 19, 202; he returned to Italy in 201, and entered Rome in triumph, receiving the surname of Africanus in commemoration of his brilliant services; he served in the war against Antiochus the Great in 190, and, being afterwards accused of taking bribes from Antiochus, was tried in Rome in 185, on the anniversary of the Battle of Zama; the prosecution was, however, dropped, and Scipio left Rome, to which he never returned; he died not long after, probably in 183” (T). “Pompey the Great, born 106 b.c., died 48 b.c.; in his youth he distinguished himself as a successful general and earned the surname of Magnus on account of his victories in the African campaign; he was consul with Crassus in 70 b.c., and in 59 b.c. joined Julius Caesar and Crassus in the first triumvirate. Caesar’s increasing power made it inevitable that a struggle for supremacy should take place between them sooner or later, and in 49 b.c. the Civil War broke out; in the next year Pompey was completely defeated by Caesar at the Battle of Pharsalia, and fled to Egypt, where he was murdered by order of Ptolemy’s ministers” (T).
Scipio is the Roman hero who is most often referred to by Dante; see Hollander and Rossi (Holl.1986.1), pp. 64–68. [return to English / Italian]
54. The Roman standards seemed bitter to the inhabitants of the ancient hill town of Fiesole, beneath which lies Dante’s Florence, when the army destroyed it in the war against Catiline. According to Giovanni Villani (Cron. 1.36–37), Pompey was among the generals at the siege. [return to English / Italian]
55–72. After seven tercets, each of which is devoted to one event (and sometimes more) in pre-imperial history, Dante will turn to his gallery of Roman emperors, one that will eventually resemble no other such listing ever found. But he deals with the first of them, Julius, here. (Post-Shakespearean readers may need to be reminded that, for Dante and historians in his time, Julius [and not Augustus] was the first emperor.)
Dante’s “life of Caesar” is immediately put (forced?) into a Christian context. It was Julius’s task to set the world in better order so that it would be prepared for the coming of Christ. Next Dante turns to Caesar’s military triumphs in Gaul (vv. 58–60). The six rivers mentioned in these verses may derive from Lucan, Pharsalia I.399–434, as is suggested by Scartazzini (comm. to verse 58).
The next four tercets (vv. 61–72) essentially recount the main Caesarean events of Lucan’s version of the civil wars between Julius and the republicans: (1) his crossing of the Rubicon and march on Rome (Phars. I–III); (2) his attack on the republican forces in Spain (Phars. IV; see Purg. XVIII.101–102); (3) his landing on the Dalmatian coast in pursuit of Pompey (V–VI); (4) the battle of Pharsalus, with the death of Cato and flight of Pompey to Egypt, where he was betrayed and killed by Ptolemy (VII–IX); (5) his tour of some sites of the Trojan War (IX); (6) his deposition of Ptolemy, placing Cleopatra in his stead (X); (7) his defeat of Juba, king of Numidia, one of Pompey’s supporters (not included in the unfinished epic, but since Juba is referred to at some length in Phars. IV.670–824, he was probably scheduled for a final, sad appearance); (8) a return to Spain, where Caesar annihilated the remainder of Pompey’s followers (Lucan looks forward to this last battle, at Munda, in Phars. I.40). While most of these events seem to have sources in Lucan’s text, and follow the order in which they occur in that text, what is utterly lacking is Lucan’s biting sarcasm about Julius so sharply felt in most of these scenes. Indeed, Dante’s own hostility toward Julius seems largely absent from this passage (see Stull and Hollander [Stul.1991.1], pp. 33–43, for discussion of Julius’s ups and [mainly] downs in Dante’s eyes). In these lines, as in his presence as an exemplum of zeal in Purgatorio XVIII.101–102 (and see the note to the passage), only a positive view of Caesar is appropriate, since he is seen here as the first and theologically necessary emperor of Rome. The reference to Troy (vv. 67–68) also seems to have radically different purposes here and in Lucan; here it ties Julius to the Trojan founders of Rome, while there (Pharsalia IX.961–1003) it mocks his pretensions. See Mineo (Mine.1987.1), pp. 121–29, for the problematic nature of Dante’s changing views of Julius. [return to English / Italian]
55–57. For Dante’s similar sense of “kairos,” of the “fullness of time,” under Augustus, see Convivio IV.v.4–8, a text that also includes the following details about the birth of Rome: “David was born when Rome was born—that is, when Aeneas came to Italy from Troy, which was the origin of the Roman city, according to written records” (IV.v.6 [tr. R. Lansing]). And see Monarchia I.xvi.2: “That mankind was then [in the reign of Augustus] happy in the calm of universal peace is attested by all historians and by famous poets; even the chronicler of Christ’s gentleness deigned to bear witness to it; and finally Paul called that most happy state ‘the fullness of time’ [plenitudinem temporis]” (tr. P. Shaw). [return to English / Italian]
61–63. Here, once more, Dante’s apparent sentiments are far from Lucanian. This nefarious crime of Julius is treated in this passage as a great and necessary step forward. See, however, Dante’s previous harsh treatment of Curio, who encouraged Julius to cross the Rubicon and march on Rome (Inf. XXVIII.97–99). There the context was the destruction of the republic; here it is the establishment of the empire. [return to English / Italian]
65–66. Pompey, although he managed to avoid death at Caesar’s hand in Greece, was betrayed by his host, the young king, Ptolemy, and killed in Egypt (Phars. VIII). [return to English / Italian]
69. The young king suffers his own misfortune: Julius replaces him on the throne with Cleopatra. [return to English / Italian]
73. The word baiulo here means “standard-bearer.” It refers to Octavian, the second of Dante’s “world-historical” emperors, eventually known as Augustus Caesar. The Ottimo (comm. to vv. 73–81) traces it to the first-conjugation verb baiuolo (carry). [return to English / Italian]
74. See Inferno
XXXIV.64–67 for Dante’s initial portrayal of this pair. Now he adds a detail: They are barking. In the previous passage we are told that Brutus is silent, and Cassius is not described as uttering sounds. Their “next-door neighbor” in Cocytus, however, Bocca, does bark (Inf. XXXII.105 and 108). Has Dante conflated that noise here? If we decide that such a solution seems unlikely, we are faced with another loose end in Paradiso (see the note to Par. III.34). [return to English / Italian]
75. Octavian’s forces defeated Mark Antony at Modena and also sacked the city of Perugia. Tozer points to Lucan (Phars. I.40) for a source: “Though to these be added the famine of Perusia and the horrors of Mutina” (tr. J. D. Duff). [return to English / Italian]
76–78. Antony, who survived defeat in the battles against the imperial army in Italy, did not choose to live much longer, after losing the naval battle near Actium (31 b.c.), and committed suicide. Cleopatra, fleeing before the imperial ensign, held aloft now by Octavian, did not choose to die with her lover; she put herself to death by means of the bite of an asp that she held to her breast (some commentators insist that she in fact employed two venomous snakes to do away with herself). Over the centuries many potential sources have been cited for the mode of her suicide, which occurred only once she perceived that, unlike Julius, Octavian was firm against her charms and intended to take her back to Rome as a captive. [return to English / Italian]
79. For a possible source, see Aeneid VIII.685–688, where Antony is criticized for his deportment with Cleopatra (this scene is one of those portrayed on the shield that Venus presents to Aeneas, Aen. VIII.626–731). As Fairclough points out in his note to this passage, the “ruddy sea” is the Indian Ocean, not the Red Sea. The first commentator to cite this phrase (litore rubro) in the Aeneid (VIII.686) was apparently Scartazzini (comm. to this verse). Most modern commentators also cite it, but, like Scartazzini, without noting that Virgil is not referring to the Red Sea. If he is in fact citing the Aeneid, Dante either makes the same mistake his modern commentators make or else forces the passage out of context, and has Augustus establishing his dominion over that most propitious part of the Mediterranean world, where Christ became flesh, as part of the plenitudo temporis (see the note to vv. 55–57). And see the note to Paradiso VII.6 for a possible resonance of another segment of this Virgilian text. [return to English / Italian]
