Cacciaguida passes from the right arm of the Cross to greet his descendant, like Anchises to Aeneas in Elysium. In his long discourse with the poet (_Par._ xv. and xvi.) we dimly discern a splendidly ideal picture of a free Italian commune of the twelfth century, before what Dante regards as the corrupting influence of wealth and illegitimate extension of its boundaries had fallen upon it, and before the hostility of the Church to the Empire, with the resulting confusion of persons in the city, had involved the Florentines in the feuds of Guelfs and Ghibellines. Then, having bitterly lamented the decay of the old Florentine families and the corruption of their successors, Cacciaguida co-operates with the Virtues by inspiring Dante with endurance and fortitude to suffer unjust exile and perform his life’s work (_Par._ xvii.). In the famous and most noble lines, to which reference has already been made in touching upon this epoch of Dante’s life, Cacciaguida foretells the poet’s banishment, the calumnies of his enemies, his sufferings in exile, his forming a party to himself, the future greatness of Can Grande, Dante’s own certainty of eternal fame. And let him be no timid friend to truth, but make manifest his whole vision, and especially assail corruption in highest places (_cf. Mon._ iii. 1). It is Dante’s apologia for his own life, first as citizen, then as poet. The keynote of the closing years of his life is struck at the opening of Canto xviii.: “And that Lady who was leading me to God said: ‘Change thy thought; think that I am near to Him who unburdens every wrong.’” Gazing upon her, his affection “was free from every other desire.” Then, with a charge of celestial chivalry across the sky, this vision of warriors closes; Joshua and Judas Maccabaeus, Charlemagne and Orlando, William of Orange still with Renoardo, Godfrey de Bouillon and Robert Guiscard, flash through the Cross, and are rejoined by Cacciaguida in their motion and their song.