I meant no insult with the part regarding 'broadswords'; I was just pointing out an incorrect term.

I know one thing that goes into this is my view of the Romans as well-which is very unconventional. I view Rome as an [i]extremely[/i] negative element in history, all empires besides. The Romans also were no 'victims'; they played the same game of raids and conquest and antagonized those same 'barbarians' more than once.

Not exactly. Yes, he did put in a lot of [i]local[/i] Italian Christian folklore (Italy was really four areas just referred to as one; it was not a unified nation like England and France); he also invented a lot of stuff. And I am referring to [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordOfDante]the trope Word of Dante[/url] when I say that he presented-and had his works taken as-canon. The main was an ousted politician and his works were [i]extremely[/i] political, besides that half of his specifically named subjects in Hell were people that had slighted him or that he didn't like. The Church-including the Roman Catholic of which he was member-also doesn't recognize his material as canonically correct, even though it altered the public perception of it to think that it was. In short, his work had a similar effect on the public's idea of the world and religion as a modern viking movie will give on vikings-and people who are into the actual history get the short end of the stick because 'everybody knows vikings wear horns on their helmets' and so on, besides that that influences how people perceive their descendants and the state of the world.
Beyond that, I just don't like Dante's work even as art. I find his rendition of Hell rather lacking in horror besides absurd and outright canonically incorrect (demons themselves were mentioned as chained and imprisoned in the actual Bible, besides that it was referenced as a place of howling wind, emptiness and dark at least as much as fire. It was depicted more like Tartarus with demons as prisoners as well more than a volcanic wasteland of proportional punishments). Bluntly, I find Dante's version of Hell to be [i]lacking[/i] and far [i]less[/i] horrific than I think the canon material implies.

Now, I prefer to get back on topic now. I imagine this tone will be a off-putting to others who may glance over this, besides.