Historical characters you admire

[Thumpalumpacus]

In my case, I admire many. 

1. Dante Alighieri, italian poet. He wrote the greatest book of all time: The Comedy, nowdays called The Divine Comedy. Took him around 20 years. He also made many investigations regarding language in Italy and other countries, and even though many of his research was based on christian beliefs, he made astounding progress all by himself. His life is interesting, too. He was exiled from Florence, and never had the opportunity to go back (except for once which he denied, since he had to accept public humilliation). He had to abandon his family and almost roam streets begging for food. And finally, he created the myth of Beatriz, who according to historians, was a real woman, and her name was Bice di Folco Portinari.

I've been reading a short history of Dante and the times he lived in, which came bolted onto the front of a copy of Inferno. Talks a lot about the political strife as well as the poetic trends of the time and the influencers of Dante, very interesting to learn about the context under which the Comedy was written. Makes it out as much more than the 'I'm going to put specific living people I don't like in Hell and the non-Christians I do like in a special nice Hell' self-insert fanfiction that I tend to think of it as.

Boorstein, in The Creators, gives over a chapter to Dante's circumstances as he was writing The Comedy. Seems clear to me that his vision of Hell was not nearly so revengeful, personally, as some critics say.