Commentary Inf XV 118

What is the division that separates these two groups of homosexuals? We should note that Brunetto, accompanying Dante, has gone lower down the sloping sand than he generally does; his group apparently remains higher up. The only clue given us by the text is that his fellows are all men of letters, while the next one will be made up of politicians (but then Brunetto must be considered, at least to some degree, a 'politician' himself). Is that what keeps them separate? It does not seem likely. It would rather seem that the two groups are kept separate by their particular form of sexual deviance, as Boccaccio (DDP Boccaccio.Inf.XV.115-118) appears to suggest. For instance, and as Professor John Gledson suggested when he was a graduate student at Princeton, the first group may all have been pederasts, men who preferred young boys for their sexual encounters; the second may have been sodomites, those who enjoyed such contact with those of their own age. It seems, however, difficult to come to any decision with certainty.