Iacopo Rusticucci

[4] Thirteenth-century documents indicate that Rusticucci received payment from the city of Florence for his leadership in a political-military endeavour (involving the strife between Guelphs and the Ghibellines).

Also, and despite not knowing his origins or what became of his estate posthumously, Rusticucci is mentioned in a document which records a list of the destruction inflicted upon Guelph property during Ghibelline domination in Florence.

These men are Rusticucci, Tegghiaio, Arrigo (a Florentine Ghibelline not named again in the Divine Comedy), Farinata degli Uberti, and Mosca dei Lamberti, each of whom Dante seems eager to meet.

Once in front of him, the shades continue to walk in a "wheel" formation, so that they can speak with Dante, maintaining their gaze on him, while also adhering to their punishment — that they should forever be in motion, running beneath a perpetual rain of fire.

It is thought that this blame is based either in the repulsiveness of Rusticucci's wife (posited perhaps most aggressively by Giovanni Boccaccio), which drove him to find sexual pleasure elsewhere,[6] or in her refusal to have sex with him.

[3] It is at this point, after the introductions are made, that Dante is overcome with the urge to embrace these men who represent to him the golden age of Florentine politics and municipality — "had I been sheltered from the fire I would have thrown myself among them, and I believe my teacher would have let me" (XVI.46–48).

In her writing on the circle of sodomy in Inferno, Susan Noakes posits that the answer to this perplexing contradiction exists in the notion that this narrative play is an instance of Dante's critique of his own political beliefs.

Noakes argues that at the time he wrote the Divine Comedy, Dante's views had changed and he had realized that "although the Guelph ideal of civic autonomy [was] attractive on the surface, [it was] ultimately unsatisfying to one who reflects on politics deeply.