 Accordingly, read in light of the Convivio and the Monarchia, when Marco asserts in 16.91–96 that either a guide or reins are necessary to turn human appetite away from base pleasures so that the human being may be genuinely happy, we may understand Dante to be endorsing the view that the best case scenario for the cultivation of justice involves a unification of the political authority of the emperor, whose laws operate as “reins” on human desire, with the authority of the intrinsic “guidance” that philosophy provides in its concerns with matters of ethics.