ingrata tulit tristem Florentia fructum,
Exilium, vati patria cruda suo.
Quem pia Guidonis gremio Ravenna Novelli
Gaudet honorati continuisse ducis.
Mille trecentenis ter septem Numinis annis,
Ad sua septembris idibus astra redit.'"[1]

[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 de