ion to call the attention of physicians
to the honor implied by Dante's fraternal relation to us. His
membership in the Guild of the Apothecaries, however, did not call for
any special knowledge of science on his part. He had nothing to do
with the sale of drugs, much less with the science of medicine.
Originally the Italian apothecaries, as the Greek origin of the word
indicates, were shop-keepers selling all sorts of things--edible,
adorning, or useful for personal service. They sold drugs also, and as
some of these were imported from the East, they commonly added to
their stock certain other Eastern specialties--perfumes, gems and the
like. In this way they soon became wealthy, as a rule, and indeed the
name of the rich Florentine family who came eventually to rule their
native city--the Medici--is said to be derived from similar
connections. It was the sons of these men who became the upper middle
classes in Florence. Perhaps one should say they became the upper
classes, for Florence had no nobility, in the proper sense of the
word, and men made their own positions. Their {342} descendants became
the men of culture, until finally the Florentine Guild of the
Apothecaries represented the most intelligent class of the population
of the city. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, then,
most of the artists, the literary men, the architects, the sculptors,
were members of the guild. Dante's occupation when he was a peaceful
citizen of Florence was, according to tradition, that of architect,
and one building designed by him is supposed to be still in existence
in Florence.

Dante should represent for us, then, what an architect in Florence at
the end of the thirteenth century knew about natural science, as the
result of his school and university training. In our time, architects
are likely to know more about certain forms of physical science than
most other people, and due allowance would have to be made for this in
Dante's case. It will be found, though, as we discuss his erudition,
that the sciences in which he was particularly interested--astronomy
and various phases of biology with physical geography--were not those
which appeal especially to an architect, and certainly have no
relation to his occupation. His knowledge of flowers might be thought
to be due to his wish to use floral forms for structural decorative
purposes, but Dante is rather weak for a poet in the matter of the
description of flowers, and i