Page:The Earliest Lives of Dante (Smith 1901).djvu/46

Boccaccio's Life of Dante for all that thou wert ungrateful and arrogant toward him, yet ever like a son he held thee in reverence. Never did he wish to deprive thee of the honor that would come to thee through his works, as thou didst deprive him of thy citizenship. Notwithstanding his exile was a long one, he always called himself, and wished to be called, a Florentine. Ever he preferred thee above all others, ever he loved thee.

What, then, wilt thou do? Wilt thou always persist in thine iniquity? Shall there be in thee less of humanity than in barbarians, whom we find not only to have demanded the bodies of their dead, but to have been ready to die manfully in order to recover them? Thou desirest that the world consider thee the granddaughter of famous Troy, and the daughter of Rome. Surely children should resemble their fathers and grandfathers. Priam in his grief not only begged for the body of the dead Hector, but bought it back by the payment of much gold. And the Romans, as some believe, brought the bones of the first Scipio from Liternum, albeit for good reasons he had forbidden it at his death. Though Hector by his prowess was long the defense of the Trojans, and Scipio was the liberator not only of Rome, but of all Italy, and though none can properly credit two like services to Dante, yet is he not to be held in less esteem. There was never yet a time when arms did not give way to learning.

If thou didst not at first, when it would have been most fitting, imitate the deeds and example of these wise cities, amend now and follow them. There was none of the seven that did not build a true or a false tomb for Homer. And who doubts that the Mantuans, who continue to honor the fields and the poor cottage at Piettola that belonged to Virgil, would have erected a splendid tomb for him, if Octavian Augustus, who transported his bones from Brindisi to Naples, had not ordered that the spot where he laid them should be their perpetual resting-place? Sulmona wept long merely because a spot in the island of Pontus held her Ovid. Parma, on the other hand, rejoiced in the possession of Cassius. Strive to be, therefore, the guardian of thy Dante.