[Footnote 1:  The translation is Mr. Wicksteed’s The Early Lives of Dante.  He adds a translation of the verses “Theologic Dante, a stranger to no teaching that philosophy may cherish in her illustrious bosom; glory of the Muses, author most acceptable to the commonalty, lieth here and smiteth either pole with his fame, who assigned their places to the dead, and their jurisdictions to the twin swords, in laic and rhetoric modes.  And lastly, with Pierian pipe he was making the pasture lands resound, black Atropos, alas, broke off the work of joy.  For him ungrateful Florence bore the dismal fruit of exile, harsh fatherland to her own bard.  But Ravenna’s piety rejoices to have gathered him into the bosom of Guido Novello, her illustrious chief.  In one thousand three hundred and three times seven years of the Deity, he went back on September’s Ides to his own stars.”]

So far Boccaccio.  Though his account tells us much it certainly does not permit us to make many definite statements as to Dante’s life in Ravenna.  One of the first things, for instance, that any modern biographer would have noted with accuracy would have been the house in which Dante lived.  Something definite, too, we might have expected as to his friends and correspondents, as to his occupations and habits.  Of all this there is almost nothing.  It will, however, especially be noted that Boccaccio speaks of Dante as “training many scholars in poetry especially in the vernacular.”  What can this mean?

It has been suggested and with some authority that Dante was not entirely dependent upon his host Guido Novello, that he was able to gain a livelihood, at least, by lectures either in his own house or in some public place, and that it is even probable that he occupied an official position in Ravenna of a very honourable sort, that he was, in fact, professor of Rhetoric in that city.  There is no evidence to support such a theory.  It is true that though we know the names of the professors of Grammar or Rhetoric in the very ancient schools of Ravenna, schools which date from the time of Theodosius the Great, we do not find the name of him who filled that chair during the time of Dante’s sojourn in Ravenna.  In 1268 Pasio della Noce was lecturing on Jurisprudence in Ravenna; in 1298 Ugo di Riccio was professor of Civil Law there; in 1304 Leone da Verona is teaching Grammar and Logic in the city.  Then we hear no more till we come to the year 1333, when a certain Giovanni Giacomo del Bando is professor.[1] The mere absence of names—­a silence which does not coincide in any way with Dante’s advent or with Dante’s death—­is, certainly, not enough to allow us to assert the probability of the great poet’s having filled the office of lecturer or professor of Civil Law in the school of Ravenna.  It is true that Saviozzo da Siena tells us: 

  “Qui comincio a leggere Dante in pria
  Retorica vulgare e molti aperti
  Fece di sua Poetica armonia”