Beginning of Essay
Throughout Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the warlike and the social concept behind chivalry is one of intense concern for this author from the Middle Ages. What makes Canto XII so important in terms of understanding Dante's feelings on chivalry and war is that the re ....

Middle of Essay
.... to explain chivalric warfare. Chiron and his men are described as a massive army, the coming of which is described as such, "between it and the base of the embankment / raced files of Centaurs who were armed with arrows, / as, in the world above, they used to hunt." [02]Their numbers are in the "thousands" (XII, 73 ), and it seems appropriate that Dante chooses the centaurs, a mixture of both man and horse, to represent a medieval army, for during chivalric wars of Medieval times "the man on horse, possessing both military and shock action, was clearly in command."[03]Immediately Dante establishes the framework for this canto as Virgil and he are them ....