The name is absent

78 Dante Sexcentenary Lectures
officer, usually called a podestà, was supposed to hold the
balance evenly and justly between parties, carry out internal
improvements, and lead the united forces of the city to
battle. These officers in practice often did well what was
expected of them; often, however, they abused the oppor-
tunities thus given them and tried to make themselves per-
manent dictators and absolute rulers over the city they were
supposed to be serving.

Such were the general political conditions in the midst
of which Dante’s lot was cast. It now remains to show more
in detail just how he, in the prime of life, was caught in
this maelstrom of contending interests and passions, and
cast out like a piece of wreckage to float hither and thither
for the rest of his life without permanent anchorage or
haven.

Dante, by birth, upbringing, and tradition, belonged to
the noble class, though his family possessed neither great
wealth nor especial distinction. He belonged to the govern-
ing class, and lived in an atmosphere of popular political
activity. To these circumstances may be traced his en-
trance into politics, which eventually brought upon him the
penalty of exile. I think it is worth while pausing to give
full emphasis to this aspect of Dante’s character and life,
for it is one which in most of the treatments of his career
suffers somewhat from underemphasis. Dante was, indeed,
preëminently a poet and a scholar, with the divine sensitive-
ness of the one and the insatiable intellectual curiosity of the
other. But he had a power of intense concentration and
capacity for hard and unremitting labor. He had the
hauteur of the noble and the intellectual aristocrat. Fur-
thermore, he held his own powers in high esteem, and justly
so, and above all he was ambitious. In other words, Dante
not only had the capacities of poet and scholar, he had also

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