In order to consider the temporal reference concealed in the first verse of the poem, we might study the following passage:

Di questa luculenta e cara gioia
   del nostro cielo che più m’è propinqua,
   grande fama rimase; e pria che moia,
 questo centesimo anno ancor s’incinqua.  (Par. 9.37-40)

Almost all discussants support the understanding that Folco’s fame will last roughly five hundred years. In a significant variation, Vellutello had objected to this widely shared interpretation of s’incinqua, arguing that the word actually suggests that the century’s number shall be “fived,” as in the year 1500. Such downward adjustment serves a Folco-denying purpose. Even this weak idea attracted several followers, including Pompeo Venturi, although few have embraced this solution of the riddle, which was castigated  by no less august an authority than Scartazzini, who did, however, allow himself to embrace the more usual solution: 1800.

The first reference to a better treatment appears in one of Scartazzini’s glosses -- if presented as nothing other than risible.  A new gloss has been offered, he says, by Gregoretti (La “Commedia” di Dante Allighieri, interpretata da Francesco Gregoretti [Venice: Naratovich, 1856]), whose formulation he attacks, citing it as follows: “‘Questo anno 1300, questo tredicesimo secolo s’incinquerà, diventerà cinque volte maggiore, arriverà l’anno 6500’ (!).” The parenthetical derogatory exclamation point is Scartazzini’s, who suffers neither fools nor, on this rare occasion, his better, gladly. However, perhaps Baldassare Lombardi (1791), had already solved the problem (although none -- and certainly not Scartazzini -- seems to realize that). About Dante’s coinage, incinquarsi, he makes the following observation: “Incinquare al senso di quintuplicare prendelo dal Poeta nostro anche il Davanzati, ed adopralo nella traduzione degli Annali di Tacito [...]: e nelle Postille [...]  del verbo medesimo riparlando, Omero, dice, Dante, e tutti i grandi formano nomi delle cose. Quintiliano, e tutti i Gramatici l’approvano, quando calzino.” It is noteworthy that so convincing a resolution has hardly ever been cited; there exists a glancing notice in Scartazzini and a single more accurate one in Campi (if Andreoli also seems to have paid a stealthy visit). The rest is silence (but see Porena’s denial: “è far dire a Cunizza una cosa stranissima e ingiustificabile.” Such behavior may remind us of the precariousness of even solutions that are indeed, in Lombardi’s word, calzanti.

This better understanding explains that one is required, not to add five centuries to 1300 to reach 1800, but to multiply 1300 times 5 to reach 6500. More recently, Rodolfo Benini (Dante tra gli splendori dei suoi enigmi risolti [Rome: Sampaolesi, 1952 {1919}]) and Silvio Pasquazi (“Il Canto IX,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81 [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 269-91) argue that this is a propitious number because 6500 years have already passed since Adam and Eve were formed (see Par. 26.118-120, where 6498 years have passed between then and “now”), thus making a  total of nearly exactly 13,000 years (for Dante, since 6498 years have passed, the current year is the 6499th). The number 13,000 is the number, according to one medieval tradition, of the “Great Year” (see the last paragraph of my current note to Inf. 1.1 for its discussion of Filippo Villani’s discussion of the relevance here of a 13,000-year magnus annus), one considerably shorter than Plato’s 36,000-year cycle, obliquely but clearly referred to in Convivio (II.v.6). (This would not be the first time we observe Dante aborting a Convivial notion in the Commedia.)

The generally accepted interpretation, that Dante foresees five more centuries of fame for Folco, might have raised more questions than it has, and for the following reason: If 1800 is the date to which Dante wished to refer, no one has made even a guess as to why Dante should have found this number propitious. And Dante generally seems to have a reason for his numerical choices (e.g., the 515 of Purg. 33 or the “nine Worthies” of Par. 18). On the other hand, we sense that the lack of such corroborating evidence results in the assurance of those who argue that Dante’s 500 is only a “round number” (comparable to, one assumes, the “più di cento spirti” in the angel’s aliscafo [Purg. 2.45] and to the “cinquemilia anni e più” that Adam awaited Christ’s redemption [Purg. 33.62]) -- see Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi’s observation: “L’uso del numero cinque (e non cento o mille come altrove)” tends to make the number seem not approximate but precise -- and to have been chosen with precise purpose. It was in her extended gloss that the better reading finally received a proper treatment. She suggests the interpretation, “si ripeteranno altre cinque volte 1300 anni, ne passeranno cioè altri 6500,” going on to make the following crucial point: This is “un’allusione precisa al compiersi del ‘grande anno’, o ‘anno cosmico’, che dovrebbe avvenire a 13.000 anni dalla creazione (esattamente 12.954) secondo l’opinione accolta da Servio (In Aen. III 954 [sic]); 6500 anni sono infatti già passati, [...] e altri 6500 ne devono dunque passare.” Precisely. In their commentaries, both to Inf. 1.1 and Par. 9.40, Riccardo Merlante and Stefano Prandi (Brescia: La Scuola, 2005) refer to the 13,000-year Grande Anno as pertinent to Dante’s historiography, if without mentioning precursors.

It was while reading the penultimate page of Antonio Soro’s recent article (“La Sophia-Sapienza nei panni di Sapia Salvani nel Purgatorio dantesco,” online at http://www.cesnur.org/2009/soro.pdf) that I found the remark regarding the 6500-year period from 1300 to Judgment which made me realize the need for a re-evaluation of the traditional understandings of, not only this passage in Paradiso 9, but also the poem’s  first verse: “un semiperiodo di 6500 anni, corrispondente al tempo che intercorre tra la caduta di Adamo ed Eva e l’anno giubilare del 1300; anno, quest’ultimo, equidistante dalla creazione dell’uomo e dal Giudizio finale (che giunge quando il 1300 «s’incinqua», cioé quando si ripete cinque volte).” Paradiso 26.118-123 has made it clear that, for Dante, nearly 6500 years have passed since God created the universe and time began (4302 + 930 + 1266 [for this last, see Inf., XXI, 112-114]). And if the current year is considered to have begun on 25 March (the Florentine new year), this new year’s “number” is 6499, i.e., the action of the poem may be conceived as beginning with the 6500th year of human life on earth.[1] To understand Par. 9.40 as indicating the rest of the 13,000-year cycle completes what we learn from Adam in Par. 26. Read in this light, the poem’s first verse takes on a fuller meaning, representing the midpoint in the arc of all human time, “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.” In such a view, that verse refers to two distinct life-spans at once, the poet’s and humanity’s.