Page:The Earliest Lives of Dante (Smith 1901).djvu/20

 the director of the rebuilding, allotter of the houses and streets, and giver of wise laws to the new people) was one who came from Rome, a most noble youth of the house of the Frangipani, whom everybody called Eliseo. When he had finished the main work for which he had come, he became, either from love of the city newly laid out by him, or from the pleasantness of the site, to which he perceived perhaps that the skies were in the future to be propitious, or drawn on by whatever other cause, a permanent citizen there. And the family of children and descendants, not small, nor little to be praised, which he left behind him, abandoned the ancient surname of their ancestors, and took in its stead the name of their founder in Florence, and all called themselves the Elisei.

Among the other members of this family, as time went on and son descended from father, there was born and there lived a knight by the name of Cacciaguida, in arms and in judgment excellent and brave. In his youth his elders gave him for a bride a maiden born of the Aldighieri of Ferrara, prized for her beauty and her character, no less than for her noble blood. They lived together many years, and had several children. Whatever the others may have been called, in one of the children it pleased the mother to renew the name of her ancestors—as women often are fond of doing—and so she called him Aldighieri, although the word later, corrupted by the dropping of the 'd,' survived as Alighieri. The excellence of this man caused his descendants to relinquish the title Elisei, and take as their patronymic Alighieri; which name holds to this day. From him were descended many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren; and, during the reign of Emperor Frederick II, an Alighieri was born who was destined, more through his son than of himself, to become famous. His wife in her pregnancy, and near the time of her delivery, saw in a dream what the fruit of her womb was to be; although the matter was not then understood by her nor by any other, and only from that which followed is to-day manifest to all.