(Convivio IV., 28, 61 et seq.; and Inf. XXII., 65). The hill country of Montefeltro lies between Urbino and Monte Coronaro in the Apennines, where is the source of the Tiber. The speaker is the former great Ghibelline leader, Count Guido da Montefeltro, one of the most prominent figures in the highly-complicated history of the Italian States in the time of Dante. He died in 1398, and according to some, was buried at Assisi, where, two years before, he had entered the Franciscan Order. Some have wondered why Dante in his earlier work, the Convivio, had so extolled a man, whom in this passage he depicts in such black colours. Possibly Dante spoke in Guido's praise before he became acquainted with the infamy of his deceitful counsel to the Pope. Let us take this view, and suppose that Dante was not sorry to bring to light one of the dark deeds that would blacken the memory of his old enemy Boniface VIII. He would seem too to relate with a certain amount of complacency the sins of Count Guido, who, while the ostensible head of the Ghibelline party, was constantly vacillating between the Papal Court and the Empire. No one can read this Canto without perceiving that there is wrath in Dante's soul against the man whose deeds were less those of the lion than of the fox.
In Dante's progress through the Inferno, it is noticeable that in any interview with Spirits of antiquity, Virgil is always the spokesman, and in the preceding Canto, when Dante had expressed a wish that he and Virgil should converse with the double-horned flame enclosing the souls of Ulysses and Diomede, Virgil had given an assent, conditional on being himself the one to address them. He now releases Dante from this imposed silence, and urges him to reply to the shade of Guido da Montefeltro. Dante would appear to have foreseen that he was to be the speaker, and is quite ready. He gives a terrible picture of the dissensions in the various great cities of the Romagna, and of the sufferings they are undergoing at the hands of their respective tyrants. The limits of this lecture will
