How The Divine Comedy drew on The Works of Cicero
A documented line of influence: Dante Alighieri demonstrably engaged Marcus Tullius Cicero’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Works of Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero · c. 50 BCE
Ancient RomeThe influenced
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri · 1320
MedievalRelevance
8/10
On The Divine Comedy’s page
- When Virgil explains the structure of Hell in Inferno Canto 11, he's reciting Cicero
- The violence-versus-fraud division that organizes the lower circles comes straight from De Officiis I.xiii.41 — "injustice by force or by fraud, fraud the more hateful"
- Dante steeped himself in Cicero — De Amicitia, De Officiis, the Somnium Scipionis — and his moral system is Roman Stoicism turned Christian; reading Cicero first shows you the scaffolding under the poetry
On The Works of Cicero’s page
- Dante's whole map of Hell rests on one Ciceronian distinction
- De Officiis splits injustice into force and fraud — "fraud the more hateful" — and Dante builds the lower circles of the Inferno on exactly that hierarchy (Canto 11)
- Cicero is the moral philosopher behind the architecture: Dante read him alongside Boethius after Beatrice's death and quotes him at length in the Convivio