Bologna, invited him, in a Latin ode, to come to
Bologna, praising him for his Comedy, but, at the
same time, blaming him for having written it in the
vulgar tongue. He then exhorted him to win the
laurel by writing Latin poems. Dante replied in
a Latin eclogue, without entering into any literary
discussion, courteously praised him for his poetical
studies, adding that he disdained to accept the poetic
crown at Bologna, because that city was opposed to
the empire, and that his sole desire was to bind his
head with his country's laurel, when he should have
published, in its completeness, The Comedy, ¹ of which
he promised to send him soon ten cantos.

Giovanni replied in another eclogue, urging Dante
to set his mind at rest and to cherish the hope of
returning to his country, and inviting him to come to
Bologna, where the scholars were eagerly waiting for
him, and where he would meet, among other persons,
the poet Albertino Mussato. Dante replied in a sec-
ond eclogue, saying that he disdained to go to Bologna,
all the more that he feared Robert, King of Naples.

These two eclogues are of great value both because they
show us the genial side of Dante's nature and because they
help us fix the dates of the completion of the Inferno and
Purgatorio. In the first eclogue (lines 48-51) Dante pro-
mises that " when the bodies that flow round the world, and

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