As has been said, Dante must clearly have been out of Florence when this document was launched. Leonardi Bruni says he was at Rome on an embassy when the Whites left Florence, and that he hastened to join his party at Siena; but for the reasons already given, this story of the embassy cannot be accepted. Some have suggested that as at Florence the old style prevailed, under which March 26th was New Year’s Day, the two sentences really belong to what we should now call 1303, when Dante had undoubtedly been in exile for some months, and this is corroborated by Benvenuto’s statement, “bannitus fuit anno MCCCIII.”--“bannitus” meaning, no doubt, “placed under ban,” as distinct from voluntary exile. But it appears that Cante de’ Gabrielli went out of office in June, 1302. So, unless we can suppose this last date to be wrong--and there is some little ground for suspecting it--we must assume that, though a Florentine official, he did not use Florentine style, and that Dante, with some few others of the leading White Guelfs, was compelled to fly sooner than the bulk of his party. He may very well have been regarded as a specially dangerous opponent. That there was any foundation for the charge of corruption it is impossible to believe. Dante’s faults were many, but they did not lie in that direction; and the honest Villani, though he appears to have sided with the Black party, and indeed held office himself as Prior only a few years later, seems to have introduced the words which we have italicised in the passage given above, with the express intention of indicating this. On the other hand, it may be noted that the charge was ingeniously devised. Dante is known to have been in debt, for some of his notes-of-hand exist, belonging to the years preceding 1300; while in the course of 1301 he was engaged in superintending the performance of certain public works in the city. Thus it would be matter of common knowledge both that he was short of money and that he had recently been in a position offering good opportunities for peculation, a fact of which his unscrupulous adversaries would naturally avail themselves. We may perhaps see, in the large space which he devotes, in the _Hell_, to the crime of _baratteria_, evidence of a wish to express his especial detestation of it.