 Taken to an extreme, this comment suggests that the basis of his authority to evaluate the quality of diverse vernaculars is his “exile.” Read in this way, Dante’s unjust exile from the imperfect community of Florence perhaps suggests a reversal of Adam’s exile from Eden (or of the hubris that resulted in Nimrod’s linguistic isolation illustrated in Inferno 31)—an interpretation that is also justified by the very fact that in this same section Dante proceeds from this comment on his own suitability to judge Italian vernaculars immediately to a discussion of the forma locutionis of Adamic language.