Its strategy is similar to that of a wise soldier who...

Its strategy is similar to that of a wise soldier who attacks a castle on one side in order to draw off the defences from another." See also Convivio, IV, viii, p. 141, note 14 in Ryan's edition: "if, when discussing something, the trained speaker knows that there is someone hostile in his audience, he has to be very careful in what he says." [^12]: The figures in Limbo are "great-hearted souls" ("spiriti magni")--iv, 119. See Rizzo, p. 122, and John D.

Sinclair, trans.,Dante's Inferno (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 69: "Dante's description of them is a reminiscence of Aquinas's account of Aristotle's 'magnanimous'--great-souled--man." [^13]: Cf. Dante's description in theConvivio, III , xiv (p.

114 in Ryan): "Through these three virtues men rise to philosophize in that heavenly Athens towards which, through the dawning of eternal truth, the Stoics, the Peripatetics and the Epicureans hasten together, united in the harmony of a single will." Though adjacent to hell, Dante's Limbo more closely resembles this "heavenly Athens." [^14]:Apology , 41a­41c. Quoted in the translation of Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West,Four Texts on Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp.

95­96. [^15]: See, for example, Convivio, III , v, for knowledge of theTimaeus . [^16]: Quoted in the text of J. B. Steane, ed.,Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays (Harmonsdworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1969),Doctor Faustus , I.v.141­142. [^17]: In his very detailed discussion, Iannucci keeps forgetting that Muslims appear in Dante's Limbo. At one point ("LET," p. 77), he defines the inhabitants as "born too early or too far away" to become Christians. On p.

84, he writes: "To be sure, Dante's Limbo contains A. D. men as well, who for spatial rather than temporal reasons lived in ignorance of Christ." On p. 107, Iannucci writes: "Dante's Limbo, therefore, is a summa of B.C. history." In such statements as these, Iannucci thus provides a good measure of how odd the presence of Muslims in Dante's Limbo is; he cannot accommodate them in his attempts to formulate Dante's principles of inclusion.

[^18]: For Dante's positive evaluation of Saladin, seeConvivio , IV, xi (p. 150 in Ryan). See also Asín Palacios, p. 262. [^19]: For biographical details, see Dominique Urvoy,Ibn Rushd (Averroes) , trans. Olivia Stewart (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 29­38.