BIRTH AND FAMILY.--Dante Alighieri, in its Latin form Alagherii, was born at Florence in 1265, probably in the latter part of May, some nine months before the battle of Benevento. His father, Alighiero di Bellincione di Alighiero, came of an ancient and honourable family of that section of the city named from the Porta San Piero. Although Guelfs, the Alighieri were probably of the same stock as the Elisei, decadent nobles of supposed Roman descent, who took the Ghibelline side in the days of Frederick II., when the city was first involved in these factions after the murder of young Buondelmonte in her “last peace” in 1215 (_Par._ xvi. 136-147). Among the warriors of the Cross, in the Heaven of Mars, Dante meets his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida. Born probably in 1091, Cacciaguida married a wife from the valley of the Po, a member of one or other of the families afterwards known as the Aldighieri or Alighieri at Ferrara, Parma, and Bologna, was knighted by Conrad III., and died in battle against the infidels in the disastrous second crusade (_Par._ xv. 137-148). None of Cacciaguida’s descendants had attained to any distinction in the Republic. Brunetto di Bellincione, Dante’s uncle, probably fought for the Guelfs at Montaperti in 1260, where he may have been one of those in charge of the _carroccio_, the battle-car which accompanied the army. Besides Cacciaguida and his son Alaghiero, or Alighiero, the first to bear the name, who is said by his father to be still in the purgatorial terrace of the proud (_Par._ xv. 91-96), the only other member of the family introduced into the _Divina Commedia_ is Geri del Bello, a grandson of the elder Alighiero and cousin of Dante’s father, a sower of discord and a murderer (_Inf._ xxix. 13-36), whose violent and well-deserved death had not yet been avenged.