Commentary Par VI 139-142

Where the opening verses of the canto imply the presence of Virgil, as author of the Aeneid, the concluding ones summon the image of the exiled and 'mendicant' Dante (cf. [Par XVII 58-60], Cacciaguida's admonition: 'You shall learn how salt is the taste / of another man's bread and how hard it is / to go down and then up another man's stairs').  See Mazzoni (Mazz.1982.1), p. 157; and see Woodhouse (Wood.1997.1) for a treatment in English of Romeo's resemblance to Dante: It is he who, 'by recalling, in his person and in his name, Romeus, pilgrim to Rome, recalls the tragic figure of Dante himself' (p. 7).  His name also binds the two seemingly disparate parts of the canto, ancient and modern.  This is a 'Roman canto,' even when it turns its attention to recent events in Provence; its first part is a sort of vernacular version of a theologized Aeneid; its last, a comic (i.e., happily resolved) version of a lament for a courtier.