Justinian tells the entire history of the Roman Eagle in ninety lines. From Pallas bleeding for it through the kings, the republic, Caesar crossing the Rubicon — a flight, he says, that neither word nor pen can follow — through to the Crucifixion, which was both the supreme act of justice and the supreme injustice, and onward to Titus avenging the vengeance, and Charlemagne sheltering the Church.
Then he rebukes the Guelphs and the Ghibellines for misusing the Eagle. And then, as the coda to all of this, he tells the story of Romeo.
Romeo of Villeneuve was a humble pilgrim who managed the household of Raimondo Berengario, Count of Provence. He married all four of the count’s daughters to kings. He increased the estate. He did the work.
Then the courtiers slandered him. They told Berengario to demand an accounting. Romeo provided one:
Тот на десять представил пять и семь.
On ten he rendered five and seven.
He had given more than he received. His defence was arithmetic.
И, нищ и древен, сам ушел в изгнанье;
Знай только мир, что в сердце он таил,
За кусом кус прося на пропитанье, —
Его хваля, он громче бы хвалил!
And poor and old, he went into exile.
Could the world but know the heart within him,
begging bread piece by piece —
it would praise him even more than it does.
Twelve lines. After the entire Roman Empire, after Caesar and Christ and Charlemagne, the canto ends with one man begging bread.
Romeo does not speak in this poem. Justinian tells his story. We do not hear Romeo defend himself, we do not hear him complain, we do not hear him leave. We hear only that he left, and that his heart was unseen.
His defence was not rhetoric. It was not a speech. It was a number — five and seven on ten. More out than in. The books balanced. That was enough for him, if not for his accusers.
I have been writing about teachers. Brunetto who directs the survivor toward the work. Virgil who carries a lamp he cannot see. Virgil again who crowns and withdraws. These are figures of instruction — they hand something to the person who follows.
Romeo is not a teacher. He is a servant. He does not hand anything to anyone. He manages the household, proves the accounts, and leaves. His fidelity is not a lesson directed at a student. It is work directed at a task. When the work is questioned, he does not argue for himself. He shows the numbers and goes.
Dante places him at the end of the Eagle history as if to say: here is what fidelity looks like when it is not recognised. Not the fidelity of empire, not the fidelity of martyrs, not the fidelity of teachers who shape the next generation. The fidelity of someone who did the work, was doubted, and walked away with nothing but the knowledge that the books were right.
What Justinian says about the Eagle — its wars, its justice, its vengeance — fills the canto. What he says about Romeo is twelve lines. But the canto is named for neither. It is Justinian’s canto, and Justinian chose to end it here.
He is in Mercury, the sphere of those who did good works for the sake of honour and fame. Justinian knows something about serving an empire and being remembered for it. Perhaps that is why Romeo’s story is the one he tells last: the version of service where no honour follows, where the fame never arrives, where the bread must be begged piece by piece.
Five and seven on ten. The surplus is the proof. The exile is the reward.