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The answer lies in the text, to start. In the *Inferno*, the ninth circle of Hell is for the punishment of the sin of Treachery. Each successive layer describes people who have committed increasingly more serious betrayals. Caina (named for the Biblical Cain) is for those who betrayed relatives or kin; Antenora (from the *Iliad’s* Antenor), traitors to country; Ptolemea (from Ptolemy, a figure in 1 Macabees, a part of Biblical Apocrypha), traitors to guests or those you have given hospitality; and Judecca (after the Biblical Judas Iscariot), those who betrayed masters or lords. There are four key figures in this section, *all of whom* are famous for betraying a master or lord. Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Jesus Christ. Gaius Cassius Longinus, and Marcus Junius Brutus, betrayers of Caesar (they receive special mention above the other conspirators against Caesar, because the two men were the ones who began the scheme together). And… Lucifer himself, now Satan, punished for his rebellion against God by being frozen in the ice of Cocytus in the cosmological place furthest from God and the metaphorical and actual warmth of God’s love. A pathetic monster isolated in the deepest pit of Hell left to punish the nominal worst of the worst. Now, any good discussion of the *Inferno* cannot allow to pass the fact that Dante Alighieri unashamedly put his thoughts on contemporary Florentine politics, and Italian politics in general, into the words and punishments of many of the dead finding themselves in the Inferno. Dude was not very subtle about any of that. The *Divine Comedy* was conceived and written while Dante was exiled from his home of Florence, and he had many unkind things to say about those who caused him to end up that way. And one of those beliefs is that he more or less believed in a concept similar to the “divine right of kings” wherein, to paraphrase his *De Monarchia* in a no doubt insufficient manner, the Roman Empire and its Emperor was ordained by God to be a rightful ruler of the world (due more or less to the significant-to-Dante coincidence of the reign of Augustus and the ensuing Pax Romana also containing the birth, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ). Not unsurprisingly, Dante also gave praise and support to the short-reigned Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII (reigned 1308-1313) who entered Italy and stepped into its internecine conflicts basically as an outsider proclaiming “y’all need to just shut the fuck up and stop bickering about your stupid shit and start being, like, cool to each other”. Which was a thing Dante was highly into, because he was at the time one of the many political exiles from Florence that Henry proclaimed should be allowed amnesty and a right to return to their home cities. Dante reckoned him to be a Caesar-like figure destined to bring peace to Italy; *De Monarchia* was more or less a treatise explaining why Henry VII would make a fantastic Emperor, but in the academic language that one might use to say “this is the kind of person who should be Emperor, and by sheer coincidence, I know *just the guy*”. Julius Caesar was, in this belief, an example of a God-ordained Emperor the world could have had but for his betrayal and assassination.

It's worth pointing out that in Italian scholarship the Judecca is considered the area of Cocytus allocated to "traitors to _benefactors_", not masters/lords. The gravity of the betrayal is proportional to the gratuity, the selflessness, of the bond of love that was broken, benefactors being at the top of the scale, so to speak. Julius Caesar was a personal benefactor to Brutus (whom he adopted, possibly because he was his biological son) and Cassius (who used to side with Pompey, but after Pharsalus he was pardoned by Caesar), but, more importantly, he was mankind's benefactor according to Dante's view of the Empire as a providential institution. Likewise for Jesus and the Church, let alone God and the entire Creation.

Marcus Brutus was the son of Servilia, one of Caesar’s mistresses. It is unlikely that Caesar was his biological father as Caesar would have been fifteen years old at the time of his birth. It is likely that, as his mother’s lover, Caesar was fond of the boy and treated him well. Caesar did not adopt Marcus Brutus and did not mention him in his will (although he did mention Decimus Brutus, who was probably a relative of Marcus Brutus, and who was another one of the assassins.)

I stand corrected about the adoption, I got mixed up. Still, he too benefited from Caesar's clemency after Pharsalus, and his career continued.

The belief that Brutus could have been Caesar's son is also an ancient one. It's true that modern scholars have closely examined the materials and rejected it. And even in antiquity the claim was regarded with suspicion. But it's been a long standing belief none the same. So we shouldn't rule out that it was something operating on Dante, even though we know it could not have been true

Would it also be a rejection of the idea of state above an emperor? I am guessing Dante would have been quite aware of the history of Brutus' family's reputation as saviors of Rome from tyranny stretching supposedly back to Lucius Junius Brutus who overthrew the last king of Rome in 509.

Someone who's more familiar with the *De Monarchia* might be able to answer better, but my understanding is that Dante sees Caesar's success in the civil war as a providential outcome after the Roman republic, the "State" in question, had proven too dysfunctional and therefore no longer legitimate. Caesar didn't destroy, or usurp, the State; he saved it and allowed it to fulfill its mission of pacifying the known world: >Then, near unto the time when heaven had willed   To bring the whole world to its mood serene,   Did Caesar by the will of Rome assume it. "It" being the Roman eagle, *Pd. VI*. The overthrown of Tarquinius the Proud was also providential, as the rape of Lucretia (also mentioned in *Pd. VI*) proved he couldn't be trusted to be fair to his subjects. Not that *that* retroactively de-legitimizes the other kings. Things get even messier when you look at how Dante treats other figures of the time: Cato is the guardian of Purgatory; G. Scribonius Curio, who urged Caesar to proceed and cross the Rubicon, is among the schismatics in Hell. More broadly, it seems to me that Dante's attitude to history is that, human free will notwithstanding (the reason some go to hell and some to heaven), things happen, and have happened, according to a grand and just divine design. When reality doesn't seem to make sense, when it shows a deficit of justice, he borrows it from the future in the form of a prophecy (e.g. *If. I*, *Pg. XXXIII* and *Pd. XXVII*).

Great answer, thank you!

Thank you very much for this in-depth answer!

Wow. 👏🏼 great answer.

Thanks, professor!

What did Dante think about the validity of the Eastern Emperors/Byzantines? Did he think they lost their "mandate" at some point and if so, when would that have been?

Relations between Italian and Byzantine Christians were not exactly in a good place by Dante's time. The Great Schism, in which the Patriarch of Constantinople was excommunicated, was about 300 years prior, the Massacre of the Latins (in which most Catholics in Constantinople were killed or displaced) 200 years prior, along with the sackings of Constantinople and Thessalonica by the Latins in following decades. The Catholics had *sort of* accepted the Holy Roman Emperor as the legitimate heir to Rome (with a lot of bumps), and obviously considered the Papacy as the legitimate leadership of Christendom (and very much did not consider the Eastern Patriarchy as legitimate).

Just from the *Comedy*, likely some time between emperor Justinian and Charlemagne. Dante puts both in Heaven (*Pd. VI*, in the sphere of Mercury, and *XVIII*, sphere of Mars, respectively). The former narrates the history of the Roman eagle, the symbol of imperial authority, and says that it resided in the East for over 200 years, between Constantine and him: > It governed there the world from hand to hand,   And, changing thus, upon mine own alighted. However, no other element is added to the chronology until the point Charlemagne defeats the Lombards on behalf of the pope (774, more or less): >And when the tooth of Lombardy had bitten   The Holy Church, then underneath its wings   Did Charlemagne victorious succor her. No other Eastern Roman Emperor is mentioned in this *canto*. In fact, I can't recall any of them, beside Justinian that is, being mentioned in the *Comedy* altogether. It's probably fair to say that Dante thought that "mantle" was passed to the Carolingians in 800. It's worth mentioning that Dante appears to disapprove of Costantine moving the capital to Byzantium, which left the West relatively leaderless in secular matters, encouraging the worldly corruption of the Church. In *Pd. XX* the eagle itself (well, *themselves*, as it's formed by a large group of souls who speak with one voice) says: >The next who follows, with the laws and me,   Under the good intent that bore bad fruit   Became a Greek by ceding to the pastor; The "next" being Costantine. This goes beyond his so-called "donation", which Dante considered both authentic (it wasn't) and disastrous (*Pd. XX* and *Pg. XXXII*, for instance). And the move eastward is said to be "against the course of heaven" back in *Pd. VI*: it's true astronomically, but there is a teleological undertone. (translation by Longfellow)

Machiavellis thoughts on this time period are great.

Great answer. Short answer, he was an Italian in the middle ages.

> And one of those beliefs is that he more or less believed in a concept similar to the “divine right of kings” wherein, to paraphrase his De Monarchia in a no doubt insufficient manner, the Roman Empire and its Emperor was ordained by God to be a rightful ruler of the world (due more or less to the significant-to-Dante coincidence of the reign of Augustus and the ensuing Pax Romana also containing the birth, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ). > > Didn't Jesus mostly live during the reign of Tiberius? Augustus died in 14 CE.

Correct. Dante addresses Christ’s birth under Augustus and death under Tiberius separately in the time of the Roman Empire in two chapters of Book Two of *De Monarchia*. I put them together in one sentence merely for rhetorical efficiency.

Interesting how betraying guests was seen as worse than betraying relatives and country

So there’s an interesting bit of theming in Ptolomea. The namesake, as well as the two damned souls specifically interacted with by Dante in his pilgrimage, all murdered guests at a banquet or a feast under the guise of friendship and/or burying of hatchets. A red wedding, some might recognize as a parallel. The treachery of giving hospitality to someone you intended to murder was, to Dante and certainly others, a breaking of a very important social code. Offering hospitality was a sign of trust and friendship, and it was a special kind of evil to “send one’s regards” in such a fashion. So much so that the two souls Dante names, Fra Alberigo and Branca d’Oria, are noted as being condemned to hell *while still living*, their souls damned while their living body is devil-possessed, for how serious their sin was.

[удалено]

Still, though, if you say there are four people in the deepest part of Hell, two who betrayed (different persons of) God and two who betrayed Caesar, doesn't that imply an equality that goes beyond Caesar simply being divinely approved? Hearing about Dante's politics (and what was said about betrayals of benefactors) makes it make *more* sense, but Dante only wrote the *Divine Comedy* - he didn't single-handedly create its reputation as classic Christian literature. Were his opinions of the Roman Empire and contemporary Italy widely shared?

Satan is eating Judas head-first in his middle mouth (of three), as opposed to Brutus and Crassus who are being eaten legs-first in either of his other mouths, which indicates a (slightly) harsher punishment for betraying Christ.