Note 21 — JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON (continued 3)

Cum avo patreque meo vixit. The reader is left to conjecture how intimate Dante and Petracco may have been when they lived together in Florence. Petrarch, in a reference to his father in Sen., x., 2, would lead us to infer that he was born about 1252, twelve or thirteen years before Dante. There seems to be no means of deciding whether that statement or the one given in this letter, which makes Dante the older, is nearer the truth.