Toynbee "Cavalcanti, Cavalcante"

While D. is conversing with the Ghibelline Farinata degli Uberti, the shade of Cavalcante rises up in the same sepulchre alongside of the latter and looks eagerly to see if his son is with D. ([Inf. x. 53-56]); not seeing Guido, he asks where he is and why he is not with D. ([Inf. x. 57-60]); D., divining his identity from 'his words and the manner of his punishment' ([Inf. x. 64-66]), replies that he has not come of himself but is brought by Virgil, 'whom your Guido perchance held in disdain' ([Inf. x. 61-63]); noticing that D. used the past absolute (ebbe a disdegno), C. anxiously asks if his son is dead, and receiving no reply, falls back into the sepulchre and is seen no more ([Inf. x. 67-72]); subsequently D. in compunction prays Farinata to tell him that Guido is still alive, and that his own silence was due to wonderment at C.'s ignorance of his son's fate ([Inf. x. 109-114]) [Cavalcanti, Guido: Farinata].

C. is said to have been an Epicurean and to have disbelieved in the immortality of the soul; Boccaccio says of him:

. . . Fu . . . leggiadro e ricco cavaliere, e seguì l'opinion d'Epicuro, in non credere che l'anima dopo la morte del corpo vivesse, e che il nostro sommo bene fosse ne' diletti carnali; e per questo siccome eretico è dannato.

Benvenuto:

Iste omnino tenuit sectam epicureorum, semper credens, et suadens aliis, quod anima simul moreretur cum corpore; unde saepe habebat in ore istud dictum Salomonis: Unus est interitus hominis et iumentorum, et aequa utriusque conditio.... Iste cum audisset autorem conferentem multa cum Farinata de novitatibus Florentiae. . . .surrexit statim libenter ad videndum autorem, qui ita mordaciter tangebat ghibelinos, quia ipse Cavalcante erat guelphus cum suis . . . .Et sic vide quod autor ponit duos epicureos simul de parte contraria, unum ghibelinum, alterum guelphum.