del Riccio, Antonio Petreo and Donato Giannotti,[1] and which the last named reproduced in his "Dialogues on the Diane Comedy."[2] The friends expressed astonishment that Dante should have placed Brutus and Cassius in the last degree of Hell and Cæsar above. Michael Angelo questioned on the point, spoke in favour of tyrannicide:
"If you had attentively read the first cantos," he said, "you would have seen that Dante knew the nature of tyrants only too well, and what punishments they deserved to receive from God and man. He places them among those who have been 'violent against their neighbour,' and punishes them in the seventh circle by plunging them into boiling blood . . . Since Dante recognised that, it is impossible to admit that he did not recognise that Cæsar was the tyrant of his country and that Brutus and Cassius did right to massacre him. For he who kills a tyrant, kills not a man but a beast with human face. All tyrants are devoid of the love which every one ought to naturally feel for his neighbour. They are deprived of human inclinations; they are no longer, therefore, men but brutes. That they possess no love for their neighbour is evident, otherwise they would not have taken what belonged to others, and would not have become tyrants by trampling others
- ↑ It was for Donato Giannotti that Michael Angelo made the bust of Brutus. A few years before the Dialogue, in 1536, Alessandro de' Medici had been assassinated by Lorenzino, who was hailed as another Brutus.
- ↑ "De' giorni che Dante consumo nel cercare l'lnferno e 'I Purgatorio." The question discussed by the friends concerned the number of days Dante spent in Hell. Was it from Friday to Saturday evening, or from Thursday evening to Sunday morning? They had recourse to Michael Angelo, who knew Dante's work better than any one.
