Davis, Charles T. “Dante, Machiavelli, and Rome.” Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, no. 106 (1988): 43–60.

Excerpt:

Dante has been called the most political of great poets, and it is not only in the Monarchia and his letters but also in the Divine Comedy that he lives up to this epithet. Machiavelli is surely the most political of playwrights, and some critics have tried to prove that even his plays have political dimensions. Both Dante and Machiavelli were great scorners of Florence and great admirers of Rome. Is this enough justification for considering together a pair of Florentines separated by two centuries? I doubt it. Although we all have every reason to be interested in these authors separately, the reader may well wonder why I should be asking that they be considered together. Are not their attitudes toward history, contemporary politics, and many other matters diametrically opposed?

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