We may pause, then, on the context of these lines, wherein Dante’s quest of liberty is associated with Cato’s suicide. For the difficulty and obscurity of the situation which they raise will plunge us at once into the heart of Dante’s Political Theory. * * * * * The opening Canto of the _Purgatorio_ shews us Cato of Utica, the austere republican who killed himself rather than bow to the rising dominance of Julius Caesar,[44] accorded a place of honour as Overseer of the souls in Ante-Purgatory. His loving wife Marcia is in Limbo; his fellow-republicans Brutus and Cassius are, with Judas Iscariot, in the lowest depths of Hell. There is, moreover, a special place in Hell[45] appointed for suicides, in a gruesome wood made fouler by the Harpies. Yet here is Cato honoured, and, further, held up by Virgil as pattern of the patriot who gives life for liberty! It has been a traditional crux to interpreters of the _Divine Comedy_, to explain and justify Cato’s position. To understand the fulness of the difficulty, and at the same time familiarise ourselves with Dante’s theory of the ideal government of the world, we shall need to turn to the treatise in which he holds up for the general admiration of mankind that Empire which to Cato was more hateful than death itself. * * * * * Next to the _Divina Commedia_, the _De Monarchia_—the “_Monarchia_” as it is more neatly styled in Italy—is, in many ways, Dante’s most important work. It lacks the charm as well as the literary importance of the _Vita Nuova_, and the autobiographical interest of that and the _Convivio_, but in it Dante develops his political theory, and by it—through Marsiglio da Padova and his _Defensor Pacis_[46]—he influences all subsequent generations. The “Monarchy” which he expounds therein is not Autocracy as such; it is the traditional suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire, in which, in spite of its actual failure in history, he sees an ideal centre of unity for Christian civilisation, an ideal Court of Appeal for international quarrels, a divinely ordained curb for personal and national greed and self-assertion, and so an unique guarantee of peace for the world.