After his discourse in praise of the founder of the rival order, immediately followed by its counterpart--an eloquent summary of the career of St. Dominic, put into the mouth of the Franciscan Bonaventura--St. Thomas speaks again (Canto xiii.), in order to explain an apparent over-estimate of Solomon’s greatness among mankind which an expression used by him in naming the spirits present with him might have seemed to imply. As happens more than once in this division of the poem, a piece of what at first sight looks rather like logical quibbling is made the introduction to some profound teaching in reference to the workings of the human mind--teaching which is at least as needful in the present day as it ever was in Dante’s own time. Solomon himself then speaks, answering a question put by Beatrice on Dante’s behalf as to the nature of the glorified body; and then Dante, having looked upon the countenance of Beatrice, and being by this means (as in every other case) raised “to a higher salvation,” finds by the ruddy light which surrounds him that he has entered the sphere of Mars. A new feature appears here. In each of the three planets exterior (according to the astronomy of that age) to the Sun, we find some special image displayed. In the case of Mars, it is a vast crucifix, composed of spirits, who are darting in all directions within the figure, like motes in a sunbeam. One of them glides from the arm to the foot of the cross, and makes himself known to Dante as his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, probably (though this is not certain) of the family of the Elisei.[36] He had been, like all the other spirits, as it would seem, of this sphere, a soldier, and had died in battle as a Crusader. The latter half of this, the fifteenth canto, together with the two following, form what is probably the best-known and most frequently quoted portion of the _Paradise_. First we have a beautiful picture of the simple and kindly life of old Florence, before party-spirit and luxury had entered and corrupted its citizens. The picture is, of course, one of those which people in every age have drawn of earlier times, supposed to have been free from the corruptions which each man’s experience teaches him are rife in his own day; but none the less it is of value as showing Dante’s ideal of social life.