It is to be noted, too, that the language and demeanour of the sinners themselves have in many cases changed. Above Malebolge, at all events till the usurers are reached, a certain dignity of speech and action is the rule. Now we find flippant expressions and vulgar gestures. Nothing is omitted which can give a notion, not merely of the sinfulness, but of the sordidness of dishonesty. Curiously enough, the one denizen of this region who is thoroughly dignified and even pathetic, is the pagan Ulysses; and to him Dante does not himself speak, leaving the pagan Virgil to hold all communication with him. Besides Ulysses, Guy of Montfeltro and Ugolino are presented in such a way as to enlist, in some degree, the sympathy of the reader; and it may further be noted that in each case a representative of the family in the next generation is placed in Purgatory; as though Dante, while bound to condemn the elder men, had held the houses in such esteem that he wished to balance the condemnation by assigning a better fate to their successors.
The opening of Canto xxxiii. brings us to the famous episode of Count Ugolino, which shares with the earlier one of Francesca da Rimini the widest renown of any passage in the whole poem. It is curious, by the way, that the structure of the two shows many marked parallelisms; only the tender pity which characterises Dante’s treatment of the former is wholly lacking in the latter. There is no need to dwell on so well-known a story; but it may be noted that Ugolino, though a Guelf leader, and condemned here no doubt for his intrigues with the Ghibeline Archbishop Roger, came of a Ghibeline family, and thus forms only a partial exception to the rule stated above. The only genuine Guelf who is named in this division is Tesauro de’ Beccheria, the Abbot of Vallombrosa.
This will perhaps be the best point at which to say a few words on a subject about which much misconception has prevailed. It has often been supposed that Dante was just a Ghibeline partisan, and distributed his characters in the next world according to political sympathies. The truth is, that under no circumstances, so far as we can see, does he assign to any one his place on political grounds--that is, merely for having belonged to one or other of the great parties which then divided Italy. He himself, as we know, belonged to neither. His political ideal was a united world submitting to the general direction of the Emperor in temporal matters, of the Pope in spiritual. On the other hand, he would have had national forms of government retained. Brought up as he had been, the citizen and afterwards the official of a Guelf republic, there is no reason to suppose that a republican form of government was in any way distasteful to him, provided that it was honestly administered. It was not until the more powerful faction in the Guelf party called in the aid of an external power, unconnected with Italy, and hostile, or, as he would doubtless hold, rebellious, to the Empire, that he, along with the more “constitutional” branch of the Guelfs, threw in his lot with the long-banished Ghibelines. But neither then nor at any time did he belong to the Ghibeline party. So far from it, that he takes that party (in _Par._, vi. 105) as the example of those who follow the imperial standard in the wrong way, and make it a symbol of iniquity. The greatest and most heroic figure in the whole history of the Ghibelines, the man whose love for the rebellious city was as great as Dante’s own, who when he had by his prowess in arms recovered it for the Empire, stood resolutely between it and the destruction which in the opinion of his comrades it had merited, is condemned to share with a Pope and an Emperor the penalty of speculative heterodoxy. On the other hand, we find Charles of Anjou, the foreign intruder, the bitter foe of the Empire and pitiless exterminator of the imperial race, a man in whom later historians, free from personal or patriotic bias, have seen hardly any virtue to redeem the sombre cruelty of his career, placed, not indeed in Paradise, but in Purgatory, and waiting in sure and certain hope of ultimate salvation, as one who in spite of many faults had led a pure and ascetic life in a profligate and self-indulgent age. It would be interesting to know, if Dante had met Charles somewhat later, in which of the Purgatorial circles he would have placed him. He seems to evade the difficulty of classifying him by finding him where he does.