Della prima e principale allegoria del poema di Dante. Interpretazioni sette-ottocentesche di Inferno I

This article proposes a political interpretation of the first canto of the Inferno throughout the 18th and the 19th century. In 1820 Giovanni Marchetti composed a Preface to Dante’s Commedia, en¬titled Nuova interpretazione della prima e principale allegoria del poema di Dante. This Preface met with so great success, that Byron defined Marchetti’s conjecture « ingenious and probable ». But Marchetti’s idea wasn’t original. In fact he resumed Gian Giacomo Dionisi’s conjecture. He offered the identification of the “lonza” with Florence’s citizenry, of the lion with France and her king, and of the lupa with the government of Rome.