Dante, in the course of celebrating his noble birthright, uses the occasion to condemn any such self-aggrandizing sentiments. The appeal of noble bloodlines is so great, the poet explains, that he took pride in his ancestry even now in the heavens, where he assuredly should have known better. For a meditation on the problematical nature of Dante's ideas about nobility, see Nino Borsellino (“Sotto il segno di Marte: la cronaca del padre antico ([Par. XVI],” L'Alighieri 5 [1995]: 39-41).

Boethius (Cons. III.6[pr]) proclaims the emptiness of a noble name in a passage also probably echoed by Dante in Convivio (IV.xx.5). See also Monarchia (II.iii.4), words that sound much like Francesco da Buti's gloss to these verses, citing Boethius in distinguishing nobility of soul from “corporeal” nobility (i.e., that established by bloodline).

Where at the close of Canto XIV Dante claims that he was not wrong in not praising Beatrice there, here he states that it was wrong indeed to feel himself glorified in his ancestry.

This apostrophe of nobility of blood employs a metaphor, in which the mantle (or cloak) of nobility of blood grows shorter each generation that fails to ornament its reputation by earning further genuine honors (as did Cacciaguida, dying a martyr's death on crusade).

Dante, finally knowing who it is whom he addresses, used the honorific voi to hail his ancestor, the “You” that was first given to Julius Caesar, according to Lucan (Phars. V.383-386), but is now little used by the contemporary Romans, descended into a state approaching barbarism in Dante's eyes (see Dve I.xi.2). (Perhaps the first to observe the Lucanian source was Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, comm. to this tercet; Pietro2, comm. to vv. 1-15; Pietro3, comm. to vv. 10-15].) Lucan, prompted by his hatred of Julius (and of Nero, for whom Julius occasionally stands in), has invented this particular in his True History of Authoritarian Language, a fabrication that eventually came to light. According to him, since Julius, assuming his role as dictator, also assumed the many roles of those Romans who had previously held positions of responsibility in republican Rome, he needed to be addressed in a way that represented the plurality of his roles. Gabriele (comm. to verse 10) was perhaps the first to express some doubt about Lucan's observation; Lombardi spiked it through the heart (comm. to vv. 10-15). The “honorific You” actually came into use, explains Scartazzini (comm. to verse 10), only in the third century.

This tercet returns to a scene that had been focal to the pivotal moment in the adulterous passion between Francesca and Paolo in Inferno V, the kiss exchanged by Lancelot and Guinevere in the twelfth-century Old French prose romance Lancelot du lac. See Toynbee, “Galeotto” (Concise Dante Dictionary). Umberto Carpi (La nobiltà di Dante [Florence: Polistampa, 2004], vol. I, pp. 24-25 and 256) refines the general appreciation of the reference, pointing out (and crediting Pietro Beltrami for the observation leading to his insight) that Guinevere's handmaid did not cough when the queen and Lancelot kissed, but before that, when she revealed to her admirer that she was aware of his name and of his lofty lineage. Her words cause the lady-in-waiting to cough as a way of informing Lancelot that she finally knows his identity and nobility of blood. Thus Beatrice, hearing Dante's response to his own genealogical distinction, the voi with which he addresses his ancestor, smiles in knowing response to that. That she does so as a warning against such pride seems clear, even if some commentators insist on a friendlier, less critical attitude at this height in the heavens.

The poet again contorts the order of events for his narrative purposes; the words that the protagonist speaks precede, naturally, Beatrice's reaction to them (vv. 13-15). Indeed, we may realize that the preceding terzina (vv. 10-12) also reflects what he has said just now.

These three parallel uses of the honorific voi for Cacciaguida, emotive anaphora (see Francesca's Amor... Amor... Amor in Inf. V.100-106), offer an outpouring of ancestral affection, but more than tinged with vainglory, the sin we saw corrected on the terrace of Pride in Purgatory.

This program (of honorific address uttered by the protagonist) began in Inferno X, with Farinata and Cavalcante. It had one more appearance in the first cantica, with Brunetto Latini. In Purgatorio, Currado Malaspina, Pope Adrian V, Guinizzelli, and Beatrice all received the respectful voi in salutation. In this concluding canticle, Beatrice receives it three times (Par. IV.122-134), and Cacciaguida also three times, all in this tercet, in a final “explosion” that lays it to rest. (See the notes to Inf. X.49-51 and to Purg. XIX.131; also to Par. XXXI.79-90.)

The protagonist addresses seven beings as “father” in the poem: first of all Virgil, a total of seven times (between Purg. IV.44 and XXIII.13); then God (in the guise of Apollo) in Paradiso I.28; Cacciaguida (here and in Par. XVII.106); St. Benedict (Par. XXII.58); St. Peter (Par. XXIV.62 and XXIV.124); Adam (Par. XXVI.92); and finally St. Bernard (Par. XXXII.100). Dante the poet refers to five others as being his “fathers”: Brunetto Latini (Inf. XV.83); Cato (Purg. I.33); Guido Guinizzelli (Purg. XXVI.97); St. Francis (Par. XI.85); and the Sun (Par. XXII.116). For a study of the “program” of Dante's fathers in the poem, see Frank Ordiway (Dante, Chaucer, and the Poetics of the Past [unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1990]).

For baldezza (here translated “bold assurance”), see Aldo Vallone (“'Baldanza' - 'baldezza' dai Siciliani a Dante,” in Atti del Convegno di studi su Dante e la Magna Curia [Palermo: Luxograph, 1967], pp. 315-32).

These “rivers” are, resolved from metaphor, the sources of the protagonist's pleasure in the knowledge of his lineage and in his election to join Cacciaguida among the saved souls here and, eventually, in the Empyrean.

The protagonist wants to know (1) the root of his roots, as it were; (2) about the times in Florence when Cacciaguida was a youth; (3) the number of inhabitants in the city in those days; and (4) the best people in the city then. His first question is reminiscent of Farinata's to him (Inf. X.42), “Chi fuor li maggior tui?” (Who were your ancestors?).

This simile, at least from the time of Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 28-33), has been recognized as Ovidian in provenance, reflecting the similar comparison (Metam. VII.79-81) describing Medea's renewed infatuation with Jason. It seems odd that, for a description of Cacciaguida's rekindled affection for his great-great-grandson, Dante should resort to Ovid's description of Medea's reignited passion for the handsome youth who will, as she almost fully realizes, betray her. (Dante had previously visited a part of this long passage dedicated to Medea and Jason [VII.1-403] in Par. II.16-18. For the “rewriting” of Ovid involved in that tercet, see the note to Par. II.17-18.)

What language does Cacciaguida speak? Breaking ranks with the vast majority of modern commentators who believe that it is twelfth-century Florentine, Porena (comm. to Par. XVI.154) suggests that it is Latin. This solution had already been proposed by Daniello (comm. to this verse). It was held in favor until Poletto, some 330 years later, perhaps rightly sensing that Dante never would have used the terms “dolce” or “soave” to describe Latin as contrasted with the vernacular, cited Beatrice's use of Florentine vernacular, as referred to at Inferno II.57, as part of his understanding that the text refers to the Italian spoken in Cacciaguida's time. Grabher (comm. to vv. 28-33) is firm in denying Daniello's hypothesis; he favors a reference to Cacciaguida's use of the Florentine vernacular. (Grabher also denigrates a second theory, which had occasionally been been pressed into service after Vellutello introduced it [comm. to vv. 28-33], that Cacciaguida spoke in “the tongues of angels.”) He, like Poletto, is sure that it is best to understand that Dante is concerned here with the transitory nature of any stage in a vernacular tongue's development, as reflected in Convivio I.v.9, a concern that led to his promise, in the next sentence, to take up that matter in De vulgari eloquentia (which he did: see Dve I.ix.6). André Pézard (“Les trois langues de Cacciaguida,” Revue des études italiennes 16 [1967]: 217-38), for all intents and purposes, resolved the issue in favor of the Florentine vernacular of the twelfth century.

The Annunciation, occurring on March 25 of the first year of Christian history, marked by the words “Ave Maria” in Gabriel's Latin, coincides with the date of the new year as measured by Florentines in Dante's age. It is probably not an accident that we are supposed to understand that the poem itself begins on that date in 1300. See the note to Inferno I.1. That Cacciaguida includes a noticeably Latin word among his other words probably seals the case against his being presented as having spoken in Latin. See the note to verse 33.

“'This fire (Mars) came 580 times to its Lion, to be rekindled under its paw.' Between the Conception – the beginning of the year 1 – and the birth of Cacciaguida, Mars returned 580 times to the constellation of Leo, which, being of like disposition to Mars, reinforces the influence of that planet. As Mars completes its revolution in 687 days, we shall get the year of Cacciaguida's birth by multiplying 687 by 580 and dividing by 365: 1091. He was therefore 56 when he followed the crusade, having lived from 1091 to 1147. Cf. Moore (Studies in Dante, Third Series: Miscellaneous Essays [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968 {1903}], III, 59-60). G. Federzoni, ”In quale anno nacque Cacciaguida?“ in Fanfulla della Domenica, 22 Nov., 1914 (XXXVI, no. 39), would adopt a reading tre for trenta, as Pietro Alighieri and some others did, giving fiate three syllables as usual, and thus would get a date 1106 instead of 1091” (Grandgent, comm. to vv. 37-39). The variant tre has now mainly been dismissed from the discussion, perhaps as a result of Lombardi's strong opposition (comm. to vv. 34-39), which even countered the opinion put forward by the Accademia della Crusca.

See Guy Raffa (“Enigmatic 56: Cicero's Scipio and Dante's Cacciaguida,” Dante Studies 110 [1992]: 129-31) for Dante's supposed manipulations of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis (II.12), the riddling numerical prophecy of the younger Scipio's defense of the Republic or, perhaps, of his death when he will have attained the age of 56, the age of Cacciaguida at his death.

Here is John Carroll (comm. to vv. 40-45) clearing up this difficult passage: “The use of the word sesto by Cacciaguida is, strictly speaking, an anachronism. It is proper to a later time when the city was much larger, was enclosed in a second line of walls, and was divided into six wards or sestieri. The smaller city of Cacciaguida's day lay within the first wall, and was divided into four wards – quartieri, formed by a line of streets running from the ancient Porta del Duomo on the north to the Ponte Vecchio on the south, and crossed by another line from east to west, running through the Mercato Vecchio, now demolished to make way for the hideous Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. The quartiere in which the house of his ancestors stood was that named after the eastern gate, Porta San Piero. An annual game was run on June 24, the day of the patron saint of the city [John the Baptist], and, as its course was from west to east, this quarter was the last the competitors reached. And what Cacciaguida says is that the house in which he and his forefathers were born stood just at the point where the runners entered this last quarter of the city. This would localize it in the Via degli Speziali which runs off the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele towards the Corso,...”

Elements in this canto, including the reference to the annual palio, the race around the inner routes traversing the city, remind some readers of Brunetto Latini (Inf. XV.121-124). As the civic/political figure closest to the center of Inferno, he seems to have a certain similar placement and function both to Marco Lombardo (Purg. XVI) and to Cacciaguida (Par. XV-XVII). To most, Brunetto seems a failed version of Dante's “father,” at least when he is compared to his actual great-great-grandfather. However, for his convergence with (rather than opposition to) Cacciaguida, see Guy Raffa (Divine Dialectic: Dante's Incarnational Poetry [Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2000], pp. 187-94); in his view Brunetto has the role of figura to Cacciaguida's antitype.

A series of debates has followed this tercet. Nonetheless, the context offered by the opening of the canto, where the protagonist is portrayed as glorying in his ancestry and is cautioned by Beatrice's smile against so doing, perhaps offers us all we need to know to unravel this skein. Cacciaguida will not feed his great-great-grandson's pride by narrating his heroic noble past, which may be traced back to the Romans. This is the sense offered by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 45), who sensibly go on to explain that in fact necessity lies behind the author's reticence: No one knows (or perhaps ever knew) the family history that is supposedly here suppressed in the service of modesty.

Answering the protagonist's third question, Cacciaguida leaves us in a quandary because his response is not clear. The males of “draft age” (as we would say today) in early-twelfth-century Florence were 20% of (a) the entire population in 1300 or (b) the males of draft age in 1300. The Italian would clearly (as our translation suggests) indicate that the first is what is meant. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 48) point out that Villani (Cron. VIII.39) states that in 1300 the population of Florence was greater than 30,000; does that mean that two hundred years earlier those capable of bearing arms numbered 6,000? This seems a high figure, causing some (e.g., Singleton [comm. to verse 48]) to suggest that two hundred years earlier that figure was ca. 2,000. See the note to vv. 67-72.

“Between Mars and the Baptist” is a way of describing the confines of the city in Cacciaguida's day by its northernmost and southernmost monuments within the original walls (the Baptistry and the statue of Mars at the Ponte Vecchio).

These three small towns are today known as Campi Bizenzio (the nearest), Figline, and Certaldo (the farthest away from Florence; Boccaccio was born there in 1313). Readers have assumed that, in his choices, Dante expected local readers in the fourteenth century to recognize certain families that had recently arrived from these towns and associated themselves with nefarious activities.

Cacciaguida is referring to the “unmixed” (i.e., Roman and pure) blood of the original inhabitants, pure in even the least artisan and not yet diluted by the bad bloodlines of those descended from the Fiesolans – or from those even worse.

Cacciaguida is of the opinion that the quality of urban life would have been much improved had these new folk kept outside the boundaries north (Trespiano) and south (Galluzzo). However, they instead entered the city, bringing with them the “stench” of men like Baldo d'Aguglione and Fazio da Signa, both of whom, renegade White Guelphs, were involved in the “exile question” during Dante's attempts to return to Florence and both of whom were also opposed to the city's welcoming Henry VII. In short, each was a personal and political enemy of Dante.

See Tozer's paraphrase of this passage (comm. to verse 58): “If the clergy had not set themselves in opposition to the Imperial power, there would not have been those feuds between the small Italian towns, which ruined them, and caused their inhabitants to take refuge in Florence, where they became traders.” For a more developed consideration, also in English, of the political situation referred to in these lines, see Carroll's commentary to them.

There soon results a linguistic “family resemblance” between the emperor and Dante (see Par. XVII.47), to both of whom the city behaves like a cruel stepmother (noverca).

Ever since Grandgent (comm. to verse 61, referring to two contemporary Italian sources), there has been a tradition among commentators to assign an identity to this exiled family from Semifonte (a town conquered and “colonized” by Florence in 1202), that of Lippo Velluti. One of the things that makes this hypothesis especially attractive is that Lippo was instrumental in sending Giano della Bella (see vv. 131-132), author of the Ordinamenti di Giustizia (1293), into exile. Dante, like Giano, was a prior of Florence and shared with him a noble bloodline (at least Dante may have sensed a similarity in this regard) as well as a deep distrust of the great noble houses, which abused their powers easily and often. Giano's Ordinamenti placed severe limits on their ability to do so. While neither Lippo nor Giano is mentioned by name, their antagonistic relationship may help unriddle the references in this passage as well as in the later one.

Continuing in the same vein, Cacciaguida argues that the Conti Guidi, the Cerchi, and the Buondelmonti (about whom we shall hear more at the end of this canto) all would have been better off had they not become Florentine citizens, staying in their original homes outside the city.

The mixing of peoples, like overeating, ruins a city, with the result that it becomes too large and too cumbersome. Its resulting unwieldiness is compared to that of a bull or of a superfluity of swords in the hand of a swordsman. This last is perhaps meant to mirror the 500% growth in Florence's population referred to in verse 48 (if it was to so great an increase that Dante was there referring [see the note to vv. 46-48]).

Two Roman cities, Luni (near Carrara) and Urbisaglia (near Macerata), had fallen into ruins well before Dante's time and remained in that condition. Two others, Chiusi (near Siena) and Senigallia (near Ancona), seemed to be suffering a similar fate. If cities show such mortal tendencies, reflects Cacciaguida, how much more subject to mortality are mere families? This unhappy thought leads toward the death-list of the great Florentine families that will occupy much of the rest of the canto.

Introduced by a simile (as the Moon causes tidal change that variously inundates and lays bare litoral planes, so the goddess Fortune does with Florence), Cacciaguida's task will be the recording of the great families who are dying out and whose remembrance is also growing faint. His purpose is to rescue their fame from “the dark backward and abysm of time.”

The catalogue of once-great families of Florence includes the following, arranged here in groups of five [with those referred to by periphrasis in square brackets] and numbering forty: Ughi, Catellini, Filippi, Greci, Ormanni; Alberichi, dell'Arca, della Sannella, Soldanieri, Ardinghi; Bostichi, Ravignani (the noble and ancient family of Bellincion Berti [Par. XV.112], mentioned with the later-arriving Conti Guidi and with those who took their name from the first Bellincione), della Pressa, Galigaio, [Pigli] (“the stripe of fur”); Sacchetti, Giuochi, Fifanti, Barucci, Galli; [Chiaramontesi] (“those who blush because of the bushel”), [Donati] (“from which the Calfucci sprang”), Sizii, Arrigucci, [Uberti] (“those now undone by pride”); [Lamberti] (“balls of gold”), [Visdomini] (“the fathers”), [Tosinghi] (“the fathers”), [Adimari] (“the proud and insolent race”), Caponsacchi; Giudi, Infangati, della Pera (the Peruzzi?), the Baron (Hugh of Brandenburg), Gualterotti; Importuni, [Buondelmonti] (“new neighbors”), [Amidei] (“the house that is the wellspring of your tears”), [Gherardini], [Uccellini] (these last two are referred to as “allies” of the Amidei).

“Il XVI è quasi tutto una cronaca irta di puri nomi, ed è la più lunga e più arida pagina di cronaca di tutto il poema” (Canto XVI is nearly entirely a chronicle bristling with mere names; it is the longest and most arid page of chronicle in the entire poem [Momigliano, comm. to vv. 22-27]). Momigliano's judgment is, if more harsh than most, not atypical. Not only does it miss the aesthetic point of the catalogue of families (which might be compared to Homer's masterful catalogue of ships in Iliad II – if it cannot hope to rival that first and possibly best of literary catalogues), it severely overstates its length: not “quasi tutto una cronaca irta di puri nomi,” but only a little over one-third of the canto, occupying verses 88-139.

For praise of the nostalgic poetic quality of Paradiso XVI, so roundly criticized by so many readers precisely for its unpoetic qualities, see Porena's first endnote in his commentary to this canto (appended to his comm. to verse 154 in the DDP). Porena's view is tantamount to a “complete reevaluation,” according to Febo Allevi (“Canto XVI,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 540).

Carroll: “[These lines] refer to the Cerchi (see note [in Carroll's comm. to vv. 58- 66]). Their houses were above the Porta San Piero, and had been acquired by this wealthy family from the Conti Guidi, who sprang from the ancient house of the Ravignani, the head of which was the Bellincion Berti of Par. XV.112. The fellonia or treason charged against the Cerchi seems to be their failure as leaders of the Whites to defend the city against the Blacks in Nov. 1301. Dino Compagni says 'their hearts failed them through cowardice': the Priors gave them orders to prepare for defense and urged them 'to play the man.' But 'from avarice' they refused to pay the hired troops, made practically no preparations, and so handed over the city to six terrible days of outrage and pillage. The exile of the Whites which followed is the 'lightening of the barque' to which Dante refers in line 96. For a full account of this disastrous struggle between the Bianchi and the Neri, see Dino Compagni's Chronicle, Bk. II, and Villani's, VIII.38-49.”

These six lines have been the cause of a certain confusion and of considerable debate; Carroll's view, however, seems sensible. For an English translation of Dino Compagni's chronicles of Florence in Dante's time, written by one of his contemporaries, see Compagni (Boorstein, Daniel E., tr., Dino Compagni's Chronicle of Florence [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986]).

As knights, members of the Galigaio family had, as their emblem, the gilded hilt and handle of a sword.

The Pigli had a stripe of squirrel-fur on a red field as their insignia.

For Dante's earlier reference to corrupt procedures in Florentine weights and measures, see Purgatorio XII.105 and the last paragraph in the note to XII.100-108.

Carroll: “Those 'undone by their pride' are the Uberti, the great Ghibelline family, banished in 1258, and never allowed to return. Farinata, who saved Florence after Montaperti (1260), belonged to it (Inf. X.22 ff.). The other family, referred to by its coat of arms, the 'balls of gold,' is the Lamberti. To it belonged Mosca, whose famous phrase, Cosa fatta capo ha, sealed Buondelmonte's fate – and his own (Inf. XXVIII.103 ff.).”

Carroll: “The reference is to the Tosinghi and the Visdomini, whom Villani (IV.10) calls 'patrons and defenders of the Bishopric.' During a vacancy, they enjoyed the use of the Bishop's palace until a successor was appointed, and apparently they did not spare the larder.”

Carroll: “A bitter stroke at the Adimari, – dragons to the timid, but to men with teeth or purse, lambs. Dante's bitterness is not unnatural when we remember that, according to early commentators, one of this family, Boccaccino, gained possession of the poet's property, and therefore opposed strenuously his recall from exile. This might account also for his scorn of Filippo Argenti (Inf. VIII.31-64), who belonged to a branch of the Adimari.”

The wife of Ubertino Donati, a member of the twenty-second family referred to in Cacciaguida's social registry of ancient Florence, was a daughter of Bellincion Berti; Ubertino was displeased when Bellincione, his father-in-law, arranged for the marriage of another of his daughters to a member of the Adimari clan, thus making Ubertino their kinsman.

Carroll: “That one of the gates of 'the small circuit' – the first city-wall – viz., the Porta Peruzza, was named after the Della Pera family might seem incredible for various reasons that have been suggested: (a) how small the circuit must have been when this was one of the city-gates; or (b) how free of jealousy ancient Florence must have been when one of its gates was named after a private family; or (c) how hard to believe that a family so forgotten now was so ancient that a gate in the earliest circuit of walls was named after it. The drift of the comments on the other families favours the last interpretation.”

Carroll: “'The great baron' was the Marquis Hugh of Brandenburg, viceroy in Tuscany of Otho III. Villani says he knighted five Florentine families, who for love of him bore his arms. One of these, the Della Bella, is here referred to as having surrounded the arms with a border of gold. It was a member of this family, the famous Giano della Bella, who in 1293 proposed the Ordinances of Justice, in order to curb the lawlessness of his own order, the nobles, and it is probably he who is referred to as having 'joined himself with the people.' How the Marquis Hugh was converted, built the Badia, died on S. Thomas' Day, and was buried in the monastery, will be found in Villani, IV.2.”

While both families, the Gualterotti and the Importuni, were Guelph in the views of the local chroniclers (Villani, Compagni, Malispini), according to other documents, as reported by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 133), the Gualterotti were in fact Ghibellines. Bosco/Reggio suggest the contradiction may be explained by the diverse political sympathies found in diverse branches of the family.

This is Cacciaguida's rueful contemplation of the wrack and ruin caused by a single event. Here is Carroll (comm. to Par. XIV.79-87) on this pivotal moment in the history of Florence: “The reference is to the well-known story of the murder of Buondelmonte de' Buondelmonti in 1215 [1216]. This young nobleman was betrothed to a lady of the Amidei family, but forsook her for a daughter of the house of the Donati. The kinsmen of the insulted lady waylaid and slew him at the foot of the statue of Mars, 'that mutilated stone,' as he rode into the city on Easter Day [Villani, Chron. V.38; Dino Compagni, I.2]. Well for the city, says Cacciaguida, if the first time he came to it he had been drowned in the little stream of the Ema which flows through the Valdigreve, a little south of Florence, where his castle lay. The murder was generally regarded as the beginning of the feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines of which Dante himself was a victim; although, as Villani admits, 'long before there were factions among the noble citizens, and the said parties existed by reason of the strifes and questions between the Church and the Empire' [Chronicle V.38].”

The Amidei are portrayed as justly angered by the snub to their name revealed in Buondelmonte's behavior; it is from their rage that originated the current sorrow of the city.

The allies of the Amidei were the Gherardini and Uccellini families.

It is difficult to imagine a more “operatic” or fitting symbol of the end of the era of peace in Florence than Buondelmonte's body, lying where it fell, at the feet of the statue of Mars, on Easter Sunday 1216. Mars as the pagan god of war is in this canto deployed against the Christian militancy that typifies the crusading spirit. See Nino Borsellino (“Sotto il segno di Marte: la cronaca del padre antico [Par. XVI],” L'Alighieri 5 [1995]: 46) on the ambiguity of the sign of Mars in this canto, representing, in different contexts, both Heaven-approved crusading and damnable internecine broils.

For the question of the actual number of noble families in Florence in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, see Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 59-154). Villani (Cron. V.39) accounts for seventy noble families in 1215. (He also reports on the numbers for 1015 [Cron. IV.10-13].) The discrepancies between Dante's figures and Villani's lead Scartazzini to think that Dante is not to be relied on for particulars of this kind. However, in this verse Dante has Cacciaguida say that there were more than these forty famous families that he has mentioned flowering at that time.

This verse will be remembered at Paradiso XXXI.39. See the note to that passage.

Cacciaguida takes pride in the fact that Florence, in his day, never lost a battle. The image of the flag reversed upon its staff is apparently a reference to the following practice: Members of the victorious army would drag the losers' battle-flags upside down over the field of combat.

In 1251 the Guelphs changed the design of the Florentine flag from a white lily on a red field to a red lily on a white field, while the ousted Ghibellines retained the traditional arrangement (according to Villani, Cronica, VI.43). As William Stephany (“A Note on Paradiso XVI, 154,” Dante Studies 91 [1973]: 151) points out, the original flag mirrors Cacciaguida's situation in the fifth heaven, red Mars quartered by a white Greek cross.

Denis Fachard (“Canto XVI,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 231) points out that the first and last lines of this canto, so involved with the concepts of the nobility of bloodlines and the (at times consequent) spilling of human blood, both end with words for blood or bleeding.