Endnotes

ENDNOTES

[1] Refer to the Translator’s Note.

[2] The poetry of death: literally “dead poetry,” probably referring to the Inferno, which treats of the damned, who suffer eternal death.

[3] Callíope: (four syllables) the muse of epic poetry, who changed the daughters of Pierus to magpies for proudly challenging the Muses to a choral contest, in which they suffered defeat (cf. vv. 10–12).

[4] The lovely planet: Venus, the planet of love, is rising an hour before dawn (cf. v. 20) on Easter in the constellation of Pisces (cf. v. 21), with the sun following in Aries.

[5] Turning to the right: the direction appropriate to Purgatory as the left was to Hell.

[6] The other pole: the south pole. Four stars: the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) naturally possessed by the first of men (Adam and Eve, v. 24) before the Fall but later only acquired by practice or infused by grace (cf. vv. 26–27).

[7] The other pole: the north pole, where the Wain or Ursa Major is below the horizon (v. 30).

[8] A soul of yore: Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis or Cato the Younger (95–46 BC), a Stoic, tribune of the plebs, leader of the aristocratic party, and opponent of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. He committed suicide rather than submit to Caesar after the defeat of Metellus Scipio at Thapsus in Africa. Although Cato is a pagan, a suicide, and an enemy of Caesar, as a lover of freedom he guards those who are freeing themselves from sin in Purgatory.

[9] The blinded stream: probably Lethe, the river of the forgetfulness of sin, descending from Purgatory into Hell and along which Virgil and Dante escaped.

[10] Plumes of noble white: his beard.

[11] Where all the guilty lay: Hell with all its sinners.

[12] The spirit race that purifies itself: the souls in Purgatory.

[13] Liberty: from the effects of original and personal sin (just as Cato sought political freedom).

[14] Utica: a city in Northern Africa, near the mouth of the Bagradas (modern Medjerda) River, thirty miles northwest of Carthage (modern Tunis). Cato committed suicide there.

[15] Marcia: daughter of Lucius Marcius Philippus, and Cato’s second wife, once ceded to his friend Hortensius, but received again after the latter’s death.

[16] Your seven kingdoms: the seven terraces of Purgatory.

[17] Below: in Limbo.

[18] The other world: the world of the living, in the hemisphere of land.

[19] The evil river: the Acheron, dividing the Vestibule from Limbo.

[20] This law: perhaps the “law” in Luke’s Gospel that the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. When from there I fled: from Limbo, where Cato had dwelt since his suicide in 46 BC until Christ’s harrowing of Hell.

[21] Heaven’s lady: Beatrice.

[22] Stain: the grime left by Hell’s “gross air” and smoke.

[23] The first high minister of Heaven’s race: the angel guarding the gate of Purgatory.

[24] Morning breeze: the Italian can also mean “morning hour.”

[25] In a shady part: the Italian could also mean “in the breeze.”

[26] Vv. 130–132 recall the ill-starred voyage of Ulysses.

[27] Another: Cato, expressing the will of God.

[28] In vv. 1–9, the sun, which is in Aries, has set at Gibraltar in the West, beneath the horizon of Jerusalem (cf. vv. 1–3), where it is 6:00 p.m. The night, which revolves opposite to the sun (cf. v. 4), has come forth from the Ganges, the eastern horizon (cf. v. 5). It is in the sign of Libra, the Scales (v. 5), which fall from her hand (v. 6) when the nights “top” or are longer than the days (cf. v. 6), which happens in the autumn equinox, when the sun enters that sign. We are, however, in the spring equinox, and it is now 6:00 a.m. in Purgatory where Aurora, the dawn, is turning the sky first white, then red, then gold (cf. vv. 7–9).

[29] For Dante, Mars was enveloped in self-igniting vapors, which caused it to glow a fiery red.

[30] A light: an angel.

[31] Such officials: the white-robed angelic guardians of the terraces of Purgatory.

[32] Between such distant bournes: between Ostia (cf. v. 101) and Purgatory.

[33] That psalm: Ps 113, “When Israel came forth from Egypt,” commemorates the Exodus, which recalls Passover for the Jew, and Easter for the Christian.

[34] As if with the arrows of Apollo, the sun has chased the constellation of Capricorn, the Goat, at a distance of 90° from Aries, past the meridian in mid-sky.

[35] Another way: the passage hollowed out by the stream from Purgatory to the center of Hell.

[36] In Dante’s day, bearers of good news often carried olive branches (vs. 71) just as they did in ancient times to announce peace.

[37] One among them: Casella (cf. v. 91), a Florentine (or Pistoian) musician and friend, who set some of Dante’s poems to music.

[38] Casella died sometime between 1282 and 1300, but the exact date is not known.

[39] Pope Boniface VIII granted a plenary indulgence to those making a pilgrimage to Rome in 1300 and fulfilling certain conditions. The special graces of the Year of Jubilee appear to extend even to the dead.

[40] The entrance to Purgatory is here specified as the mouth of the Tiber River near Ostia, the port nearest Rome, the center of the Church.

[41] The songs of love (v. 107): Provençal and early Italian poetry set to music.

[42] This is the first line of a canzone by Dante. It originally served as allegorical praise of the Boethian Lady Philosophy.

[43] That grave old man: Cato.

[44] Where Reason searches us: the Italian can also mean “towards which Reason goads us,” or even “where Reason (i.e., Divine Justice) punishes us.”

[45] Dante is facing west.

[46] Virgil died at Brindisi (ancient Brundisium), on the Adriatic, in Apulia, in 19 BC. Augustus ordered his remains to be moved to Naples. Italy lies 45° west of, and three hours earlier than, Jerusalem. When it is after sunset in Jerusalem, it is evening in Italy (cf. v. 25).

[47] As the nine concentric spheres (cf. v. 29) are transparent, so spirits too are diaphanous.

[48] Quia: in Scholastic logic, a demonstration quia argues from effects to cause. Virgil is saying to accept the fact without presuming to understand the reason for the fact.

[49] Such men: the virtuous pagans in Limbo.

[50] Turbì(a), in the present Alpes-Maritime in southern France, and Lerici, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of la Spezia, indicate roughly the eastern and western extremities of the coast of Liguria, practically impassable by land in Dante’s day.

[51] Manfred: king of Apulia and Sicily (ca. 1232–1266), natural son of Emperor Frederick II and Bianca Lancia, and grandson of Emperor Henry VI and Constance of Sicily. He was a Ghibelline excommunicated as an enemy of the Church by Alexander IV and Urban IV; defeated and killed by Charles d’Anjou in the Battle of Benevento in 1266; buried on the battlefield at the Valentino bridge over the Calore (cf. v. 128), beneath a mound of stones (cf. v. 129); but disinterred by order of Pope Clement IV (cf. v. 125) and cast out of the territory under the Church’s control.

[52] My fair girl: Constance (d. 1302), named in v. 143, daughter of Manfred and Beatrice of Savoy, and mother of Alfonso (king of Aragon, 1285–1291), James (king of Sicily, 1285–1295, and of Aragon, 1291–1327), and Frederick (king of Sicily, 1296–1337).

[53] What’s true: that Manfred is in Purgatory, not Hell.

[54] My sins were ghastly: Manfred was accused of murdering his father, his brother, and two of his nephews, and was inimical to the Church, for which he was excommunicated.

[55] Cosenza: a town in northern Calabria twelve miles inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its pastor was either Bishop Bartolomeo Pignatelli or his successor, Tommaso d’Agni, who carried out the order to have Manfred’s body disinterred.

[56] That page: probably Holy Scripture as speaking of both God’s mercy and His justice.

[57] The Kingdom: of Naples.

[58] The Verde: a river of southern Italy consisting of the modern Liri and Garigliano Rivers.

[59] With tapers quenched: excommunicates were buried with the mortuary candles extinguished.

[60] The error of a plurality of souls in man was Plato’s.

[61] Fifty full degrees: the sun covers 15° per hour. Fifty degrees thus represents three hours and twenty minutes. It is therefore 9:20 a.m.

[62] Noli (v. 25): a town in Liguria, on the Gulf of Genoa, accessible by land in Dante’s day only by the sheer cliffs behind it. San Leo (v. 25): once a fortress town atop a steep and rugged mountain in the north of the Marches. Bismantova: formerly a small village upon the plateau of a sheer, semi-circular mountain in Emilia. If capitalized, cacume (“height”) could be a proper name.

[63] A quadrant of a circle represents 90°. A line bisecting the quadrant would produce an angle of 45°. The slope here is far steeper than that.

[64] Vv. 47–48 refer to the first ledge of Ante-Purgatory, on which the late repentant, though not excommunicated, will be found.

[65] If Dante had faced the east in Europe, the sun would rise to his right in the southeastern sky, but when he faces the east on Mount Purgatory, it rises to his left in the northeastern sky.

[66] The sun (a chariot of light, v. 59) was passing between the Poets and the Aquilo, properly the north wind, which commonly indicates the north.

[67] The sense of vv. 61–66 is: if we were in the period from May 21 to June 21, when Gemini (with its stars Castor and Pollux, v. 61) is in conjunction with the sun (the mirror, v. 62), which one half of the year leads its light north of the equator and the other half south of it (v. 63), you would see that part of the Zodiac in which the sun is found (the ruddy Zodiac, v. 64) even closer to the north (the Dippers’ sky, v. 65) than it is, as long as the sun does not leave its ecliptic (its ancient track, v. 66), as it did with Phaëthon (cf. v. 72).

[68] The way that Phaëthon could not quite steer (v. 72) is the sun’s ecliptic, above the equator half the year and below it half the year (cf. v. 63). Thus, the more the sun is south (that side, v. 74) of Jerusalem, the less it is north (this side, v. 73) of Purgatory.

[69] Equator: the celestial equator, thus named in the art of astronomy. Winter is always on the opposite side of the equator from the sun (cf. v. 81).

[70] Before they were dispersed, the Jews saw the sun as far towards the south from Jerusalem as it is seen towards the north from Purgatory.

[71] His middle name: literally “his sister.”

[72] Belacqua: nothing certain is known of him.

[73] It is now high noon, two hours and forty minutes having passed since the Poets left Manfred.

[74] Morocco: in northwest Africa is, for the purpose of telling time, equivalent to Gibraltar and thus lies midway between Jerusalem and Mount Purgatory. When it is noon in Purgatory, it is dusk in Morocco.

[75] Upon his left: Dante is facing west, as he climbs with the sun to the north and thus on his right. His shadow, then, falls to his left.

[76] Miserere: Psalm 51, one of the seven penitential psalms.

[77] The lit vapors (v. 37) are meteors that cleave the sky at evening time (v. 38) and lightning that rends August clouds at sunset.

[78] One: Jacopo del Cassero (ca. 1260–1298), of a noble family of Fano, podestà of Bologna in 1296, assassinated by Azzo VIII d’Este (cf. v. 77) at Oriago, between Venice and Padua, in 1298 for opposing his ambitions towards the city, while on the way to assume the same office in Milan.

[79] The reference is to the March of Ancona, roughly the modern department of Marches, between Romagna and the kingdom of Naples under Charles d’Anjou.

[80] Fano: a town on the Adriatic, between Pesaro and Ancona.

[81] Antenor’s sons: the Paduans. Jacopo was murdered in Oriago, a town near Padua, a city believed to be founded by the Trojan traitor Antenor, for whom Dante named the second ring of the ninth circle of Hell.

[82] That one from Este: Azzo VIII d’Este (d. 1308), Marquis of Este and Lord of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio, thought to have suffocated his own father with a pillow.

[83] Jacopo was reportedly abusive of the Marquis, and he admits that the latter had cause to be angry with him, though not to kill him.

[84] Oriaco (modern Oriago) lay between Padua and Venice near a marsh. The highway from Venice passed through it and continued to La Mira (v. 79).

[85] Buonconte: (three syllables) son of Guido da Montefeltro. In 1289 he led the Aretine Ghibellines against the Florentine Guelphs at the battle of Campaldino (v. 92), where his forces were defeated and he was slain. His body was never found (cf. v. 93). His wife Giovanna (v. 89) and other survivors have apparently forgotten him, which causes him sadness and shame (cf. v. 90).

[86] Casentino: the region consisting of the upper Arno valley and the Tuscan Apennines, where Campaldino is located between Poppi and Bibbiena. The Archiano (v. 95) rises in the Apennines above the hermits (v. 96) of a Camaldoli monastery founded by St. Romualdo, traverses the Casentino, and flows into the Arno, where its name becomes vain (v. 97).

[87] The valley in question is the Casentino, which runs from Pratomagno, a mountain ridge at its southern boundary, to the mountain chain of the Apennines at its northeastern boundary.

[88] Royal River: a term for rivers emptying into the sea. Here it refers to the Arno.

[89] La Pia: a Sienese woman, often identified as the daughter of Buonincontro Guastelloni and the wife, first of Baldo di Ildobrandino de’ Tolomei (d. 1290), then of Nello della Pietra de’ Pannocchieschi, the podestà of Velterra and Lucca, who reputedly had her thrown out of a castle window in the Maremma (v. 134) because he suspected her of adultery, or perhaps wished to marry someone else, though there is documentary evidence to the contrary.

[90] In vv. 13–24, an Aretine: Benincasa da Laterina (d. ca. 1297), a judge murdered by the highwayman Ghin di Tacco for having sentenced a brother or uncle of his to death. One who’d drowned: Guccio de’ Tarlati da Pietramala, who died in pursuit of the Bostoli, Guelf exiles from Arezzo. Federig(o) Novello: son of Guido Novello. He was killed near Bibbiena in 1289 or 1291 by the Bostoli d’Arezzo, aiding the Tarlati da Pietramala. One in Pisa born: Gano or Farinata, son of Marzucco degli Scornigiani, a Pisan judge, then Florentine Franciscan, who forgave his son’s murder in 1287. Count Orso: da Mangona, son of Count Napoleone degli Alberti. He was murdered by his cousin Alberto, son of Count Alessandro degli Alberti, ca. 1286. Pierre d(e) la Brosse: of Turenne, chamberlain of Philip III of France. He accused the queen, Marie de Brabant, of poisoning Louis, Philip’s son by Isabella of Aragon. He was hanged in 1278.

[91] In Virgil’s Aeneid, the Sibyl tells Palinurus that prayer cannot bend Heaven’s decree against granting rest to the unburied.

[92] Sordello: an Italian poet (ca. 1200–after 1269), who wrote in Provençal. Born in Goito near Mantua, he was a courtier in Provence and Italy and once in the service of Charles d’Anjou.

[93] Justinian, emperor of Constantinople from 527 to 565, published the Corpus iuris civilis, a collection of four juridical works that codified the Roman law for medieval Europe.

[94] German Albert: Albert I of Austria, uncrowned emperor from 1298–1308, son of Rudolf I of Habsburg, emperor from 1273–1291 (cf. v. 104). Affairs in Germany delayed his coronation in Milan with the result that he never came to establish unity and order in Italy.

[95] Your successor Henry VII, emperor from 1308 to 1313.

[96] Vv. l06–111 name several great families torn by strife.

[97] Highest Jove: a circumlocution for Christ, who is named only in Paradise.

[98] Marcellus: Marcus Claudius Marcellus, consul in 51 BC, Caesar’s foe and Pompey’s friend, pardoned by Caesar in 46 BC at the senate’s request, but later murdered by an attendant of his.

[99] Mount Purgatory, formed at Satan’s fall, remained uninhabited until Christ’s harrowing of Hell.

[100] Octavian: Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (63 BC–14 AD), who received the honorific title “Augustus” from the Roman senate and people in 27 BC. Virgil died in 19 BC.

[101] The Sun most high, which you desire: God as seen in the beatific vision.

[102] A place … saddened only by the dark: Limbo in general, since Virgil himself dwells among the wise in the circle of light.

[103] Vv. 31–33 refer to the Limbus puerorum, for unbaptized infants with only the stain of original sin. Dante combines it with the Limbo of the virtuous pagans in vv. 34–36.

[104] The virtuous pagans practiced the cardinal moral virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance, as well as the speculative intellectual virtues of wisdom, science, and understanding and the practical intellectual virtues of prudence and art, but did not receive through baptism the infusion of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

[105] Purgatory’s proper start: as distinguished from Ante-Purgatory.

[106] The shape of the valley is disputed, but its banks seem to “die” or merge into the mountain-side.

[107] The wood of India: an amber-hued tree gum. But indaco legno has been interpreted differently.

[108] Salve Regina: an antiphon to the Blessed Virgin Mary recited at dusk by “the poor banished children of Eve” in a “valley of tears.” It is thus a hymn of exiles longing for the fatherland.

[109] Rudolph, Emperor: Rudolph I (1218–1291), crowned emperor at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1273, was the first of the Austrian emperors. The one to restore Italy in v. 96 may be Henry VII.

[110] The Moldau rises in southwest Bohemia, enters the Elbe twenty miles north of Prague, and flows through Germany into the North Sea.

[111] Ottokar: Ottokar II, king of Bohemia from 1253 and duke of Austria, defeated and slain near Vienna in 1278, while rebelling against Rudolph.

[112] King Wincelaus: Wincelaus II, son and successor to Ottokar II, and son-in-law to Rudolph I, was king of Bohemia from 1278 to 1305. He is unfavorably compared to his father because he did not continue the resistance to Rudolph.

[113] That small-nosed shade: Philip III, the Bold (1245–1285), son and successor of Louis IX, and nephew of Charles d’Anjou, was king of France from 1270. After the Sicilian Vespers in 1282 and Charles’ loss of Sicily, he lost a war to Pedro III of Aragon and died shortly afterwards, which “deflowered the lilies” of France (cf. v. 105). The one he counsels is Henry I, the Fat, king of Navarre from 1270 to 1274, son of Thibault I and brother and successor to Thibault II.

[114] France’s woe: Philip IV, the Fair, son of Philip the Bold and son-in-law of Henry the Fat, was king of France from 1285 to 1314.

[115] The stout sovereign is Pedro III, king of Aragon from 1276, husband of Manfred’s daughter, Constance, and elected king of Sicily on the expulsion of the French in 1282. He died in 1285.

[116] The one with a manly nose is Charles d’Anjou (1226–1285), son of Louis VIII and brother of Louis IX of France. He was king of Naples and Sicily, and count of Anjou and Provence.

[117] The youth behind him: Pedro, youngest son of Pedro III of Aragon, or perhaps his eldest son, Alfonso III, who reigned from 1285 to 1291.

[118] James and Frederick: the second and third sons of Pedro III. James II, the Just, was king of Sicily from 1285 to 1295 and of Aragon from 1291 to 1327. Frederick II was king of Sicily from 1296 to 1337. When James ceded Sicily to his future father-in-law, Charles II of Naples, war broke out between the two brothers, heirs to their father’s realms but not his virtue (cf. v. 120).

[119] As Pedro III could not pass his virtue on to James and Frederick, so Charles d’Anjou could not do so to Charles II, king of Naples (Apulia or Puglia) and count of Provence from 1285 to 1309.

[120] Manfred’s daughter, Constance (v. 128), was the wife of Pedro III. Beatrice of Provence and Margaret of Burgundy were in turn wives of Charles I, considered a poor husband. Hence, Charles II (the plant) is as inferior to Charles I d’Anjou (the seed) as the latter (whom Beatrice and Margaret cannot praise) is to Pedro III (whom Constance can praise).

[121] England’s Henry: Henry III, king of England from 1216 to 1272, was deemed a simple man (cf. v. 130) of little worth compared to his son Edward I, who was highly esteemed (cf. v. 132).

[122] William the Marquis: William VII, the Longsword, Marquis of Monferrato from 1254 to 1292, captured in 1290 while attempting to squelch a rebellion in Alexandria and exhibited in a cage until his death in 1292. His son Giovanni I led Monferrat(o) and Canavese (four syllables) in vain to seek revenge, for the former was invaded and several of its towns occupied (cf. vv. 135–136).

[123] It was the hour: of dusk, when the bell of Compline sounds (cf. v. 6).

[124] Te lucis ante: a Compline hymn attributed to St. Ambrose. It prays for protection from temptation and troubling dreams. The second stanza contains the line Hostemque nostrum comprime (“And suppress our enemy”), which becomes important in the light of v. 95.

[125] The supernal wheels: the heavenly spheres in their rotations.

[126] Great shades: the negligent princes in the valley.

[127] Nino: Ugolino de’ Visconti da Pisa (d. 1296), son of Giovanni Visconti and grandson on his mother’s side of Ugolino della Gherardesca, with whom he ruled Pisa from 1285 to 1288, when the latter’s treachery forced him to flee. From 1288 to 1293 he warred against the Ghibelline forces of that city under Guido da Montefeltro. As judge of Gallura in Sardinia, he had Fra Gomita hanged for letting prisoners escape on a bribe.

[128] Currado: Corrado Malaspina II (d. 1294), son of Federigo I, marquis of Villafranca, and grandson of Corrado Malaspina I (cf. v. 119).

[129] Giovanna: daughter (ca. 1291–before 1339) of Nino Visconti and Beatrice d’Este. In gratitude for her Guelph father’s support of the Church, Boniface VIII gave her the guardianship of Volterra when she was a young child, but the Ghibellines later divested her of her property. At one point she married Rizzardo da Camino, lord of Treviso, after whose death in 1312 she was reduced to poverty though she did receive a stipend from Florence in 1323 in recognition of her father’s services.

[130] Her mother: Beatrice (d. 1334), daughter of Obizzo II d’Este, sister of Azzo VIII, and wife of Nino Visconti. When he died, she laid aside the white headbands of widowhood (cf. v. 74) and in 1300 married Galeazzo Visconti, who was expelled from Milan in 1302, causing her to long for the white bands again (cf. v. 75). When he died poor in 1328, she returned to Milan, where her son, Azzo, had regained the lordship, and lived there until her death.

[131] The Milanese never pitched camp before they had raised the Visconti standard. The escutcheon of the Visconti of Milan was a blue viper (v. 79) devouring a red Saracen, that of the Visconti of Pisa a cock.

[132] Where stars most slowly turn: towards the south pole. Cf. v. 90.

[133] Three torches: the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

[134] Our enemy: the serpent.

[135] Those hawks of Heaven: more specifically, goshawks (astori), which are said to feed on snakes.

[136] The shade who’d neared the judge: Corrado. Cf. v. 65–66.

[137] That enameled height: either the summit of Mount Purgatory, “enameled with flowers,” or the Crystalline Heaven.

[138] Val di Magra: the Magra River Valley, territory of the Malaspina family, in Lunigiana.

[139] The elder: Corrado Malaspina I, head of the Malaspina dello Spino Secco, lords of Lunigiana, was the grandfather of the speaker and of Franceschino, Dante’s host in their territory in 1306 (cf. vv. 133–139).

[140] The wicked head: probably Pope Boniface VIII or Rome as the seat of the corrupt papacy.

[141] That is, if the divinely ordained course of events prevails (cf. v. 139), the sun will not have returned to the sign of Aries, the Ram, seven times, i.e., seven years will not have passed (cf. vv. 133–135), before you yourself have experienced the merits of the Malaspini (cf. vv. 136–137), which you now know only by the report of others (cf. v. 138).

[142] Tithonus’ concubine: Aurora, the dawn, loved Tithonus, son of Laomedon, and asked the gods for his immortality—though not eternal youth. In his old age, she turned him into a cicada.

[143] Vv. 5–6 refer to the starts of Scorpio.

[144] The paces of the night’s ascent (v. 7) are the twelve hours between sunset and dawn. With two and a half completed (cf. vv. 8–9), it is about 8:30 p.m. on Easter Sunday evening.

[145] Something still of Adam: the body.

[146] All five of us: Virgil, Dante, Sordello, Nino, and Corrado.

[147] Vv. 13–15 allude to the legend of Philomela and Procne. After Procne’s husband, Tereus, had ravished her sister, Philomela, and cut out her tongue, the victim managed to tell Procne by weaving the story into cloth. In revenge, Procne served the flesh of his own child to her husband, who, on finding out, chased the sisters with an ax until they prayed and were changed into birds.

[148] Ganymede: son of Tros, founder of Troy, and most handsome of mortals. While hunting on Mount Ida he was snatched up by an eagle to be the cup-bearer of Jupiter.

[149] Consistory: an ecclesiastical term for an assembly of cardinals presided over by the pope. It here connects Jupiter with the Christian God.

[150] Fiery height: the sphere of fire, between those of the air and the moon.

[151] Achilles’ mother stole him away from his tutor, Chiron (v. 37), the centaur, and took him asleep to the island of Skyros (v. 38) to save him from the Trojan War. Ulysses penetrated his disguise and persuaded him to go to war (cf. v. 39).

[152] It is about 8:00 a.m. on Easter Monday morning.

[153] Lucy: one of the three blessed ladies of Inferno II.

[154] A lady sent from Heaven: Lucy.

[155] Seven P’s: the seven capital vices, from the Latin peccata, which means “sins.”

[156] The Tarpeian rock (cf. v. 136), on which the temple of Saturn stood, loudly echoed back the grating sound of the opening doors when Julius Caesar entered it to seize the Roman treasury in 49 BC, thrusting aside his opponent Metellus (v. 138), an adherent of Pompey, and leaving the temple bare (v. 138).

[157] Deum Te laudamus (syntax altered for meter): a hymn of praise reputedly composed by Ambrose at Augustine’s conversion, but now thought to have been written by Nicetas in the fifth century, often sung when one entered a religious order, and here perhaps at Dante’s entrance into Purgatory.

[158] At this time, the moon sets some three hours after sunrise. The sun was more than two hours high when Virgil and Dante reached the gate of Purgatory, and the moon has set before they issue from the cleft. Their climb must therefore have lasted over an hour.

[159] The mountain “pulls back,” as it were, to form the first terrace.

[160] From its outer edge to the base of the inner wall of rock, the terrace measures some sixteen to eighteen feet, having the same extent all around (cf. vv. 25–27).

[161] Polyclete (Polycletus): a Greek sculptor (ca. 452–412 BC) reputedly as skilled in carving human images as Phidias was in sculpting divine images.

[162] Vv. 34–45 depict the angel Gabriel’s annunciation of the Incarnation of Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

[163] The ban: the period from the Fall to the Crucifixion, during which, for Dante, the righteous souls who believed in Christ-to-come waited in Limbo.

[164] Ancilla ecce Dei (syntax altered for meter): “Behold the handmaid of God.”

[165] Vv. 55–69 portray King David dancing before the ark of the covenant.

[166] In II Samuel, Uzzah, son of Abinadab, stretched out his hand to steady the ark when the oxen drawing its cart made it tip and was struck dead by God for his presumption and profanation.

[167] The sacred vessel: the Ark of the Covenant.

[168] Michol (v. 67) was the daughter of Saul and first wife of David. She despised David in her heart for exposing himself with robes girt up (v. 64), like a commoner, before the slave girls of his followers. She was smitten with sterility for her arrogance.

[169] Vv. 73–96 tell the story of Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Traianus), Roman Emperor from 98 to 117 AD. According to legend, when he was on the way to war, he stopped to accede to the demands of a poor widow seeking redress for the death of her son. According to another legend, through the intercession of Gregory I, pope from 590 to 604, he was called back to life from Hell in order to have opportunity for repentance (cf. v. 75).

[170] The military insignia of the Roman army were made of gold and other metals attached to a pole. Dante, however, represents them after the manner of his time as a standard with black eagles on a gold background.

[171] Their Craftsman: God.

[172] First effects: the angels and the heavens.

[173] The ancient foe (v. 20): the devil, who spurs us to evil.

[174] This last plea (v. 22) probably refers to vv. 19–21, and those behind to the living on earth.

[175] Good sod: charity.

[176] The smear: not the stain of sin, removed when one’s will is reunited to God after sin, but the debt of satisfactory punishment that remains, by the paying of which one is restored to virtue.

[177] A great Tuscan’s heir: Omberto Aldobrandesco (v. 67), the son of Guglielm(o) (v. 59) and lord of the castle of Campagnatico (v. 66), slain by a Sienese expedition in 1259 (cf. v. 65). The Aldobrandeschi were an old family in the Sienese Maremma since the ninth century (cf. v. 61).

[178] Guglielm(o) Aldobrandesco: count of Santafiora (d. shortly after 1254), who allied himself with the Tuscan Guelphs out of animosity towards the Sienese.

[179] Our common Mother: the earth.

[180] Oderisi: da Gubbio (v. 80) (1240–1299), a miniaturist and illuminator (cf. v. 81), and the master of Franco da Bologna (v. 82), with whom he was employed by Boniface VIII to illuminate manuscripts in the papal library.

[181] Cimabue: Giovanni Cimabue (ca. 1240–ca. 1302), Florentine painter and mosaicist, known for his departure from the Byzantine tradition. He was the master of Giotto di Bondone (ca. 1266–1337), a famous Florentine artist and friend of Dante (cf. v. 95).

[182] Guido Cavalcanti (1259–1300), Dante’s “first friend,” stole the glory of the poetic mastery of vernacular Italian from Guido Guinizzelli (ca. 1230–1276).

[183] He who made it sprout: the sun.

[184] Provenzan(o) Salvani: a Sienese Ghibelline (ca. 1220–1269), who controlled his city after the battle of Montaperti in 1260 (cf. vv. 112–113) and who at the council of Empoli favored against Farinata the destruction of Florence. His influence faded after the battle of Benevento in 1266, and he was taken prisoner at Colle di Val d’Elsa and executed by the Florentine Guelphs.

[185] Only thirty-one years have passed since his death.

[186] In vv. 133–138, Oderisi alludes to an occasion when Provenzano sat on a bench in the famous oval piazza before the Palazzo Pubblico and humbly begged 10,000 florins from his fellow citizens to ransom a friend of his whom Charles d’Anjou was about to execute.

[187] This tercet refers to Lucifer, cast out of Heaven for his rebellion against God.

[188] Briareus (v. 29): one of the giants who stormed heaven, slain by Jupiter’s thunderbolt and buried under Mount Etna.

[189] Mars (v. 31): the god of war. Pallas (v. 31): surname of the Greek Athena. Thymbraeus (v. 32): a name for Apollo, derived from Thymbra, the site of a temple dedicated to him. Their father (v. 32): Jupiter.

[190] Nimrod (v. 34): supposed builder of the Tower of Babel on the plain of Shinar. The Italian syntax may also be construed to mean that Nimrod is watching those who had shared his pride.

[191] Niobe (v. 37): wife of King Amphion of Thebes. Because of her seven sons and seven daughters, she boasted herself superior to Latona. Latona had her children, Apollo and Diana, slay Niobe’s and had Niobe herself turned to stone, with her tears forever staining her marble cheeks.

[192] Saul (v. 40): first king of Israel. When the Philistines defeated Israel on Mount Gilboa, Saul committed suicide to avoid being the sport of pagans.

[193] Arachne (v. 43): daughter of Idmon and Colophon, challenged Minerva to a weaving contest. Angered at the perfection of her work, which depicted the gods’ love affairs, Minerva tore the cloth to shreds. Arachne hanged herself in despair, but the goddess loosened the rope, changing it to a cobweb and Arachne to a spider.

[194] Rehoboam (v. 46): son of and successor to Solomon. When he refused to lighten the taxes his father had levied, ten of the twelve tribes of Israel revolted, forcing him to flee to Jerusalem.

[195] Alcmaeon (v. 50): son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle. He slew his mother, whom Polynices had bribed with the necklace of Harmonia, when she revealed the hiding place of his father, who foresaw that he would die in the siege of Thebes.

[196] Sennecherib (v. 53): king of Assyria from 705 to 681 BC, had blasphemously threatened to destroy King Hezekiah and the kingdom of Judah if they did not surrender. But the angel of the Lord slew 185,000 of the Assyrian men, and Sennecherib returned to Nineveh, where his sons assassinated him worshipping his god, Nisroch.

[197] Cyrus (v. 56): the Persian emperor (560–529 BC) who murdered the son of Tomyris (v. 56), queen of the Scythian Massagetae. She defeated Cyrus, cut off his head, and threw it in a skin filled with human blood, with the words that Dante translates from Orosius.

[198] Holofernes (v. 59): general of the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, who besieged the Israelite city of Bethulia, mocked the God of Israel, and declared his king to be the only god. Under the pretext of sleeping with him, Judith entered his tent and cut off his head, throwing his army into a panic.

[199] The fall of Troy is the classic example of humbled pride. Note that in vv. 25–36 each tercet begins with M, in vv. 37–48 with A, in vv. 49–60 with N, thus spelling man (uom in Italian). The first letters of vv. 61–63 repeat the acrostic, emphasizing that pride is synonymous with man.

[200] Eve: the first to sin by pride, wishing to be like God, and mother of all who imitate her.

[201] Handmaids: hours. It is thus noon on Easter Monday. An angel: of humility.

[202] A church: the eleventh-to-thirteenth century Romanesque San Miniato al Monte, to the east of Florence. It lies across the Arno, above the Rubaconte’s bridge (v. 101), now the Ponte alle Grazie, and was built in 1237 and named for Rubaconte da Mandello da Milano, podestà of Florence. A stairway cut into the steep mountainside leads up to the Church (cf. v. 103–104). Well-guided sheep: an ironical reference to Florence.

[203] A reference to two scandals of Dante’s time. In 1299, Niccolò Acciaiuoli tore a leaf out of the municipal record in order to cover up a false entry made to his advantage with the complicity of the podestà. Durante de’ Chiaramontesi received salt from the commune with an honest measure and dealt it out with a measure reduced by one stave, thus enriching himself.

[204] Beati paup(e)res spiritu: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” the first of the beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:3), one of which is heard on leaving each terrace.

[205] He … who held the keys: the angel guarding the gate to Purgatory.

[206] Non habent vinum (v. 29) (syntax altered for meter): “They have no wine”—Mary’s words to Jesus at the wedding feast of Cana show her loving care for the young couple and their guests.

[207] Orestes: slew his mother, Clytemnestra, who had murdered his father, Agamemnon. When he was condemned to death, his friend Pylades impersonated him to die in his place, but Orestes would not accept such a sacrifice. They both cried out, “I am Orestes,” each to save the other.

[208] On each terrace, the examples of the virtue to be acquired function as a scourge (v. 39) or goad to pursue good whereas the examples of the contrary vice serve as a curb (v. 40) to refrain from evil. The pass of pardon will lie at the entrance to the third terrace, where the angel will remove another P from Dante’s brow, signifying the purgation of envy.

[209] The blind used to beg at churches on special days when indulgences were granted.

[210] The speaker plays on savia (sage, wise) and Sapia (ca. 1210–before 1289), the inimical aunt of Provenzano Salvani and wife of Ghinibaldo Saracini. She so hated her townsmen and envied her nephew’s position that she joyed at the defeat of the Sienese Ghibellines in 1269 at Colle di Val d’Elsa under her nephew’s command (cf. vv. 115–117).

[211] Colle: (two syllables) a Tuscan town about fourteen miles northwest of Siena, where the Sienese Ghibellines were defeated by the Florentine Guelphs aided by Charles d’Anjou.

[212] The last days of January are “blackbird’s days” in Italy. When the sun shines, this bird is supposedly fooled into thinking that winter is over and sings the words Sapia has used.

[213] Peter Pettinaio: a Franciscan hermit (d. 1289), who made and sold combs, was famed for his piety, miracles, and uncommon honesty.

[214] Talamone: a small seaport in the Tuscan Maremma on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was purchased by the Sienese in 1303 to compete with the Genoese for sea trade. The venture failed because of the cost of dredging the silt that choked the harbor and because of the malaria endemic to the region.

[215] Diana: a subterranean river believed to run beneath Siena. As of Dante’s day, large sums of money were unsuccessfully expended to find it in the hope of supplementing the water supply.

[216] This line is variously interpreted. It may mean that the ambitious who wish to captain large fleets will lose even more than others interested in the harbor, or that the admirals will lose their lives to malaria, whereas the citizens will only lose their money.

[217] Two spirits: the first is Guido del Duca (cf. v. 81), the second Rinieri da Calboli (cf. v. 88).

[218] Vv. 16–18 refer to the Arno, which rises at Monte Falterona in the Apennines, and flows some 150 miles through Tuscany (cf. vv. 17–18).

[219] Such a valley: the Val d’Arno.

[220] Pelorus: Punta del Faro or Cape Faro, the promontory at the northeastern end of Sicily. Dante is speaking as if Pelorus were part of the Apennines, cut off, as it were, by the Straits of Messina.

[221] Where it yields: just below Pisa.

[222] Circe: daughter of Helios and Perse. She dwelt on the island of Aeaea, on the north side of the Gulf of Gaeta, where Ulysses ran aground, and was an enchantress who changed men into beasts.

[223] Vv. 43–45 refer to the Casentino, whose inhabitants are characterized as brute swine (v. 43).

[224] Vv. 46–48 allude to Arezzo, where the Arno turns its snout, as if it too were an animal, northwest towards Florence (cf. vv. 47–48). Its citizens are depicted as dogs (v. 46) perhaps because of their motto: “A boar is often held down by a small dog.”

[225] Vv. 49–51 portray the Florentines as wolves (vv. 50, 59) for their violence.

[226] Vv. 52–54 depict the Pisans as foxes (v. 53) for their cunning.

[227] Another: Dante.

[228] Your grandson: Fulcieri da Calboli, grandson of Rinieri, and corrupt podestà of Florence in 1303, as well as a bitter enemy of the White Guelphs after the return of the Blacks through the agency of Charles de Valois.

[229] The dismal wood: Florence, “deforested” of its citizens (cf. vv. 65–66).

[230] That spirit: Rinieri, grandfather of Fulcieri.

[231] Guy of Duca: Guido del Duca da Bretinoro, known to be a judge to the podestà of Rimini in 1199. The Guelphs seized Bretinoro when they were driven from Ravenna by Pier Traversaro (cf. v. 98) in 1218 and drove out the Ghibellines, among them Guido del Duca, who returned to Ravenna for protection under Pier Traversaro. He died after 1229. Nothing is known of his envy.

[232] Rinieri: de’ Paolucci da Calboli, a Guelf from Forlì and podestà of Faenza (1247), Parma (1252), and Ravenna (1265). After an active political life, he was expelled from Forlì in 1294 and killed trying to re-establish control in 1296.

[233] His blood: his family.

[234] This verse refers to Romagna, bounded by the Po di Primaro to the north, the Apennines to the south, the Adriatic to the east, and the Reno River to the West.

[235] In vv. 97–111, Lizïo: da Valbona, a Guelph nobleman of Romagna who aided Rinieri against the Ghibellines. (Arrigo) Mainardi: a gentleman of Bertinoro and friend of the Ghibelline Guido del Duca. He was imprisoned by the Farentines in 1170. (Pier) Traversaro (v. 98): was a member of a powerful family of Ravenna (ca. 1145–1225), several times podestà of the city, and friend of the Emperor Frederick II. (Guido) di Carpigna (v. 98): was a member of a family established in Ravenna in the tenth century (d. before 1283) and Guelph podestà of that city in 1251. Fabbro (v. 100): de’ Lambertazzi (d. 1259), a noble family of Bologna descending from the dukes of Ravenna, was the Ghibelline podestà of several cities of Northern Italy. (Bernardin di) Fosco (v. 101): of humble origin, rose to be podestà of Pisa (1248) and Siena (1249) and figured prominently in the defense of Faenza against the Emperor Frederick II in 1240. (Ugolin) d’Azzo (v. 104): Ugolino degli Ubaldini (d. 1293), son of Azzo da Siena, husband of Beatrice Lancia, the daughter of Provenzano Salvani, was a man of great wealth and landed property. (Guido) da Prata (v. 105): from the modern Prada in Romagna, between Forlì, Faenza, and Ravenna, was a person of some importance in the lattermost city and owned considerable landed property in its environs. He died between 1235 and 1245. (Federigo) Tignoso (v. 106): was a noble of Rimini noted for his wealth and hospitality, of a family of some importance in that region from the eleventh century. The Anastag(i) (v. 107): were a powerful Ghibelline family in Ravenna, allied with the Traversari and the counts of Bagnacavallo, and adversaries of the Church. They fell into decay after 1258. Traversari’s own (v. 107): were the Traversari family, another powerful Ghibelline house of Ravenna, prominent from the mid-twelfth century.

[236] Vv. 112–123 pass in review a number of lords and nobles of Romagna. Bretinoro (now Bertinoro): a small town in Romagna between Forlì and Cesena, known for the hospitality of its nobles. It was the home of Guido del Duca. Bagnacaval(lo) (v. 115): a town in Romagna between the rivers Senio and Lamone and the cities of Imola and Ravenna. The Ghibelline Malvicini, counts of Bagnacavallo who expelled Guido da Polenta and the Guelphs from Ravenna in 1249, were becoming extinct by 1300. Castrocaro (v. 116): formerly a castle in Romagna near Forlì belonging to the Ghibelline counts of Castrocaro, who submitted to the Church in 1282. The Ordelaffi of Forlì assumed possession of it around 1300. Conio (v. 116): (two syllables) a castle in Romagna near Imola belonging to Guelph counts, destroyed shortly after 1295. Pagani (v. 119): a noble Ghibelline family, lords of Faenza, Forlì, and Imola. The demon-sore (v. 118) was Maghinardo Pagano da Susinana (d. 1302), lord of Faenza (1290), Forlì (1291), and Imola (1296). (Ugolin) de’ Fantolin(i) (v. 121): a highly respected gentleman of Faenza (d. 1278), Guelph lord of several castles in the Lamone Valley, and podestà of Faenza (1253).

[237] The words of Cain, who killed his brother, Abel.

[238] Aglauros: the daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens. Mercury turned her to stone for trying to prevent his tryst with her sister, Herse.

[239] You: since envy is not Dante’s besetting sin, Virgil is probably addressing all humankind.

[240] In vv. 1–6, Dante is saying that, counting backwards, the period between the end of tierce (9:00 a.m.) and the break of day (6:00 a.m.) (v. 3) is equal to the period, counting forwards, from the present moment (3:00 p.m.) to sunset (6:00 p.m.). It is thus about 3:00 p.m. (the beginning of vespers, v. 6) in Purgatory and midnight (v. 6) in Italy where the Poet is writing.

[241] The ecliptic’s sphere: the yearly course of the sun, which resembles a playing child insofar as it rises under different zodiacal signs according as it nears the Tropic of Capricorn or the Tropic of Cancer. Vv. 1–3 focus on the sun’s daily course, vv. 4–5 on its annual course.

[242] Where there sets the sun: in this season, the northwest. The Travelers faced the west when they began their ascent, but by having always traveled to the right they are now going northwest.

[243] Vv. 16–21 state that since the angle of reflection of a ray is equal to the angle of incidence, the distance of the direct or reflected ray from the perpendicular (the free fall of a stone, v. 20) is equal, a fact empirically verifiable and theoretically explicable (cf. v. 21).

[244] A messenger: the angel of charity.

[245] Beat(i) misericordes: “Blessed are the merciful,” the fifth beatitude.

[246] That cloister: the Empyrean Heaven.

[247] A luminous body was thought to have a predisposition to receive light, for which reason light was able to come to it.

[248] The angel of charity has wiped away the P of envy from Dante’s brow. Five more P’s remain to be removed by the Pilgrim’s participation in the various painful purgations (cf. v. 81).

[249] Another round: the third terrace, where the sin of wrath is purged.

[250] Vv. 87–92 concern the finding of the child Jesus in the temple. Returning home from the Passover in Jerusalem, and discovering that the child was not with them, Mary and Joseph backtracked and, after a three-day search, found Jesus discussing with the teachers in the temple.

[251] In vv. 94–105, the wife of Pisistratus, ruler of Athens (560–527 BC), demanded the death of an amorous youth who kissed their daughter in public, to which the King replied as in vv. 103–105.

[252] Athena and Poseidon contended for the honor of renaming Cecropia, which was the original name of Athens. The former won by conferring the more useful gift upon mankind, namely, the olive tree, as opposed to Poseidon’s spring of water.

[253] Vv. 106–114 relate the stoning of St. Stephen by the Jews on the charge of blasphemy. Before dying, he prayed for his persecutors, as is seen in vv. 112–114.

[254] The vesper glow: the sun is setting, and the Poets have spent some three hours on this terrace.

[255] Agnus Dei: the “Lamb of God,” said three times during Mass, at the breaking of the host, as a petition for mercy and peace from God (cf. v. 17).

[256] In Ante-Purgatory, where the excommunicates must spend thirty times as long as their excommunication and the indolent as long as they spent on earth, time is still measured extrinsically by the calendar and the celestial phenomena on which it is based. But in Purgatory proper, time is measured intrinsically by the degree of purification achieved.

[257] Perhaps a reference to the ladder of contemplation, which has been forsaken in modern times.

[258] Marco (Lombardo): nothing certain is known about him.

[259] Above: in the court of Heaven (cf. v. 41).

[260] Dante’s doubt (v. 53), prompted by the words of Guido del Duca about the absence of virtue in Tuscany, was simple (v. 55) at first, but now it is doubled (v. 55) by Marco’s words about the general abandonment of virtue (cf. vv. 47–48).

[261] In heaven: in the celestial spheres. Down here: in human beings.

[262] Light: the natural light of reason.

[263] In allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, “chewing the cud” is meditation and “split hooves” the power of making distinctions. The pastor in the lead (Pope Boniface VIII) (v. 98) may ruminate on the Scriptures, but he does not distinguish between spiritual and temporal authority and wrongfully usurps the latter.

[264] Two suns: the pope and emperor.

[265] Adige and Po: indicate Lombardy, i.e., northern Italy, specifically the March of Treviso. These rivers mark the place; the time is indicated by Frederick II (cf. v. 116), king of Naples and Sicily (1215–1250), and by his fight with the Honorius III, Gregory IX, and Innocent IV.

[266] Currado (v. 124): da Palazzo, a Guelph from Brescia, vicar for Charles d’Anjou in Florence in 1276, and podestà of Piacenza in 1288. Gherardo (v. 124): da Camino, captain-general of Treviso (1283–1306). Guido da Castel: a gentleman of Reggio nell’Emilia, vernacular poet, and one of Dante’s hosts during his exile. He is perhaps called simple (v. 126) in the French sense of “honest” by way of exception to other Italians, called “Lombards” by the French.

[267] Load: the weight of temporal governance.

[268] The Levites (the tribe of priests) had no inheritance in Israel.

[269] Gaia: Gherardo’s daughter (d. 1311) by his second wife, Chiara della Torre of Milan. Perhaps the vice of the daughter, reputedly a loose woman, may be more familiar to Dante’s age than the virtue of the father.

[270] Yonder angel: the angel of gentleness.

[271] Moles were thought to be blind owing to a membrane covering the eye.

[272] It is about 6:00 p.m. on Easter Monday.

[273] Fantasy: the faculty of imagination.

[274] The coming images will be neither from sense nor from astral influence but infused by God.

[275] Vv. 19–21 concern Procne, daughter of King Pandion of Athens, wife of Tereus, and sister of Philomela. She was transformed into a nightingale for having slain her son and fed him to her husband, who had violated her sister.

[276] Vv. 25–30 regard Haman, chief minister of Ahasuerus (v. 28). When Mordecai (v. 29) refused to bow down to him, he had his lord decree the death of all Jews in the Persian Empire. Through the intervention of Mordecai’s cousin, Esther (v. 29), the Jews were saved and Haman hanged (crucified [v. 25] according to the Vulgate) on the gibbet he had built for Mordecai.

[277] Vv. 34–39 tell of Amata, wife of Latinus and mother of Lavinia (v. 37) (three syllables with -ia as a diphthong). She hanged herself in a rage when she wrongly thought that Turnus, her daughter’s fiancé, had been killed in battle and therefore feared Lavinia would marry Aeneas (cf. v. 37).

[278] Lavinia will mourn the fall of her mother before that of Turnus.

[279] Beati … pacifici: “Blessed are the peacemakers,” the seventh beatitude.

[280] Vv. 115–117 describe pride as an inordinate desire for one’s own excellence.

[281] Vv. 118–120 portray envy as sorrow at another’s good seen as a hindrance to one’s own.

[282] Vv. 121–123 depict wrath as a desire for revenge that is unjust, excessive, not according to legitimate order, or not for a due end.

[283] Vv. 130–132 give an account of sloth as a sorrow at the divine Good.

[284] Vv. 136–137 refer to excessive love for a finite good that takes the forms of avarice, gluttony, and lust, purged on the last three terraces.

[285] Intentions: a technical term for image or concept.

[286] As a flame’s natural motion upwards was held to follow on its substantial form, so the motion of desire follows on an apprehended form.

[287] The “Epicureans” referred to in vv. 35–36 are the blind of v. 18.

[288] The moon completes its revolution in a little less than twenty-eight days. It was full on the fourteenth day and rose at sunset when Dante was in the dark woods; it will rise at midnight on the twenty-first day. It is now the eighteenth day, so that it rises a little before midnight.

[289] The moon is in the path of the Zodiac (Sagittarius) that the sun follows when the Romans see it set in the southwest between Sardinia and Corsica, which takes place in late November.

[290] Pietola: the town where Virgil was born, three miles south of Mantua.

[291] The orgiastic rites of Bacchus were once observed along the rivers Ismenus and Asopus (v. 91) near Thebes.

[292] V. 100 refers to Mary’s haste to visit Elizabeth shortly after the Annunciation.

[293] Vv. 101–102 relate Caesar’s hurry to subdue Lérida (ancient Ilerda) in Catalonia, Spain. He besieged Marseilles on the way, but left its completion to Brutus.

[294] The abbot of San Zeno: identified with a certain Gherardo II (d. 1187), abbot of a church of Verona (v. 119) during the reign of the Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (v. 119), who razed Milano in 1162 (v. 120).

[295] The reference is to Alberto della Scala, lord of Verona, father of an illegitimate son (v. 124), Giuseppe, who, though lame and retarded, was abbot of San Zeno from 1291 to 1314 (cf. v. 126).

[296] Vv. 133–135 speak of the Israelites who, after crossing the Red Sea (cf. v. 134), grumbled against the Lord and were therefore not allowed to enter the Promised Land.

[297] Vv. 136–138 tell of the Trojans who remained in Sicily with Acestes to avoid the hardships of the journey, thus losing the glory of founding Rome.

[298] The earth is chilled after sunset, and the moon and Saturn supposedly shed cold rays.

[299] The geomancers (v. 4) told the future with figures drawn between random points but representing stellar constellations. One of these, Fortuna Major (v. 5), resembles the last stars of Aquarius and the first of Pisces. It is seen in the east in this season just before sunrise

[300] Ulysses: the hero of Homer’s Odyssey, where, however, he has himself tied to a mast to resist the Sirens, though in Ovid’s account he yields to Circe.

[301] The saintly lady has been variously identified.

[302] Dante and Virgil go west on the north side of the mountain. It is some time after dawn of Easter Tuesday.

[303] Qui lugent: “who mourn,” a phrase from the fourth beatitude.

[304] That fifth, clear round: the fifth terrace, where the avaricious and prodigal are purged.

[305] Adhaesit pavimento … anima mea: the psalm verse “My soul lies prostrate in the dust.”

[306] What was hidden: from him, namely, that Dante and Virgil were not souls undergoing purgation. Or perhaps the Italian should be translated Who was hidden (until now from us), namely, the soul lying face down.

[307] Scias quod … successor Petri ego fui (syntax altered for meter): “Know that I was a successor of Peter.” The speaker is Pope Adrian V, nephew of Innocent IV. He reigned only thirty-eight days from July 11 to August 18, 1276. Neither his avarice nor his late conversion has found historical documentation. Dante seems to have confused Adrian V with Adrian IV based on a passage in the Policraticus of John of Salisbury.

[308] Sestri and Chiavari: towns in Luguria on either side of the Lavagna River (cf. v. 101) near Genoa. Adrian’s family took from it the title of counts of Lavagna (cf. v. 102).

[309] Neque nubent: “Neither do they marry” a Gospel verse cited to show that earthly relationships do not hold after death and applied here to the pope as spouse of the Church.

[310] Alagia: de’ Fieschi, daughter of Niccolò de’ Fieschi, the imperial vicar in Italy, and wife of Moroello Malaspina, was the niece of Adrian V.

[311] According to Luke’s Gospel, Mary gave birth to Jesus in a manger.

[312] Fabricius (four syllables) (v. 25): Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, Roman consul in 282 and 278 BC, and censor in 275 BC, when he worked to restrain the luxury of the Romans. He was famed for his refusal to take bribes from Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, when negotiating an exchange of prisoners, and to accept gifts from the Samnites when concluding a peace. He died in poverty.

[313] Nicholas (v. 32): fourth-century bishop of Myra in Lycia, Asia Minor. He reputedly saved a man from prostituting his three daughters by throwing gold for their dowries into their windows.

[314] The speaker is Hugh Capet (stressed on the second syllable) (v. 49), first king (987–996) of the Capetian line in France.

[315] These are four of the main cities of Flanders, where in 1299 Philip the Fair and Charles de Valois besieged the land and imprisoned its Count Guy and his sons after having accepted their offer of surrender. Flemish vengeance (v. 47) was had at the Battle of Courtrai in 1302.

[316] By 1300 there were four kings of the Capetian line named Louis and four named Philip.

[317] Popular tradition held this to be true of Hugh the Great, the father of Hugh Capet. In actuality, Hugh the Great descended from the counts of Paris.

[318] A grey-clad anchorite: Charles de Lorraine, son of Louis IV (936–954) and brother of Lothair (954–986). On the death of Lothair’s son, Louis V (986–987), the throne should have passed to Charles, the last of the Carolingian line, but the French rejected him since he was a vassal of the German emperor, and thus enabled Hugh Capet to win the election. Charles, however, was not a monk and must be confused here with Childeric III, the last of the Merovingians (d. 755), who are more appropriately called the ancient kings (v. 54).

[319] Actually, it was Hugh Capet who became king on the extinction of the Carolingian line (987), not his son, Robert, who, though crowned in that same year, succeeded him only in 996. It was therefore with the former that the Capetian line began, not the latter, as in v. 60.

[320] The dowry of Provence: refers to the marriage of Charles d’Anjou to Beatrice, daughter of Raymond Berenguer IV, in 1246, through which Provence became a French dependency. The union was “shameless” for Beatrice was engaged to Raymond de Toulouse (cf. v. 62).

[321] In 1204 Philip II seized Normandy, and in 1294 Philip IV took Ponthieu and Gascony from England.

[322] Charles: d’Anjou. At the invitation of Urban IV and Clement IV, he entered Italy in 1265, defeating Manfred at Benevento in 1266 and Conradin at Tagliacozzo in 1268 (cf. v. 68), to assume the crown of Sicily and Naples. He was falsely rumored to have had Thomas Aquinas poisoned in 1274 on his way from Naples to the Council of Lyons (cf. v. 69).

[323] Another Charles: de Valois (1270–1325), third son of Philip III of France. He was called to Italy by Boniface VIII to reconcile the Whites and Blacks in Tuscany. Entering Florence on All Saints’ Day, 1301, he delivered the city over to the Blacks, exiling the Whites, Dante included. He was accompanied by only a small cavalry force (cf. v. 73), since he had arms and money at his disposal from Charles II and Boniface VIII.

[324] Charles de Valois (Charles Sansterre) had inherited no land and was unable to conquer any.

[325] The third: Charles II, son of Charles d’Anjou, and king of Naples (1248–1309), was taken captive in 1284 when as Prince of Salerno he engaged the fleet of Pedro III of Aragon in the attempt to help his father regain Sicily after the Sicilian Vespers. He married his daughter, Beatrice, in 1305 to Azzo VIII d’Este for a large sum of money (cf. vv. 80–81).

[326] The lily: Philip the Fair. He had levied a tax upon the clergy, at which Pope Boniface VIII declared himself the sole trustee of all ecclesiastical possessions, which were now free of any secular obligation. When Philip ceased all tribute to the Pope in response, the latter excommunicated him. The forces of Philip, the new-made Pilate (v. 91) seized the Pope, the Vicar of Christ (v. 87) in Alagna (Anagni), forty miles southeast of Rome, imprisoned him, and abused him. Boniface was rescued by the townsmen and taken to Rome, where he died a month later.

[327] Temple: the Knights Templar, one of the three military orders founded in the twelfth century to defend the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. To take possession of their wealth, in 1307 Philip the Fair accused them of heresy and tortured confessions out of them. Through Philip’s influence, they were condemned in 1312 by Clement V and suppressed by the Council of Vienne.

[328] That only bride: the Blessed Virgin Mary.

[329] Pygmalion: son and successor of Belus, king of Tyre, and brother of Dido. He murdered her husband, Sichaeus, for his wealth.

[330] Midas: king of Phrygia, who was granted a wish by Bacchus for his kindness to the latter’s teacher, Silenus. Midas wished that everything he touched should turn to gold but then found he could not even eat. The god mercifully took the favor back.

[331] Achan: son of Carmi, of the tribe of Judah. He stole from the spoils of Jericho, which Joshua (v. 111) had laid under the ban. When the Israelites were, because of his disobedience, defeated in their attack on Ai, he confessed and was then stoned to death with his family.

[332] Sapphira with her mate: Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, sold a piece of property and pretended to donate the entire proceeds to the Apostles, while in reality withholding some of it for themselves. When Peter rebuked them, they fell dead at his feet.

[333] Heli(o)dorus: treasurer of Seleucus IV Philopator, king of Syria (187–175 BC). According to II Maccabees, when he attempted under orders to remove the treasures from the Jerusalem temple, a horse appeared bearing a rider in gold armor and trampled him, after which two young men also appeared and beat him.

[334] Polymnestor: a Thracian king, to whom Priam, the king of Troy, had entrusted his son, Polydorus (v. 115), with a large sum of money. When Troy fell, Polymnestor killed Polydorus for the money and cast his body into the sea. Polymnestor died with his eyes torn out by Hecuba.

[335] Crassus: Marcus Licinius Crassus, consul with Pompey in 70 and 55 BC, triumvir with Pompey and Caesar in 60 BC, governor of Syria in 54 BC, defeated and beheaded by the Parthians in 53 BC, whose king, Hyrodes, poured molten gold down his throat to mock his lust for wealth.

[336] Latona: the goddess who, to escape the wrath of Juno, gave birth to Apollo and Diana, the sun and the moon (cf. v. 132), her children by Jupiter, on the island of Delos (v. 130), supposedly a floating island until Jupiter anchored it to the ocean floor with an adamantine chain.

[337] Gloria in excelsis Deo: “Glory to God in the highest.”

[338] Shepherds: to whom, in Luke’s Gospel, the angels announced Christ’s birth.

[339] A reference to the “living waters” Jesus promised to the woman at the well in John’s Gospel.

[340] The risen Christ appeared to disciples on the road to Emmaus, but they did not recognize him.

[341] Shades: the spirit does not notice that Dante is alive. They are now on the west side of the mountain, and it is mid-morning, so that Dante does not cast a shadow.

[342] The reference in vv. 25–27 is to Lachesis, who placed a certain amount of wool on Clotho’s distaff at the birth of every mortal, the length of time employed in spinning it equaling the number of days allotted to the person in question.

[343] My school: the truth attainable by the light of natural reason.

[344] This tercet may mean that Purgatory proper undergoes no meteorological change per se (cf. vv. 46–57). But when a soul that Heaven draws out of itself (i.e., creates) is “taken up” again (i.e., returns to God), then there is an earthquake. Cf. vv. 58–60. Aristotle distinguished between wet vapors such as rain, hail, snow, dew, and hoarfrost (cf. vv. 46–47) and dry vapors such as clouds, lightning, and wind (cf. vv. 49–50).

[345] Thaumas’ daughter: the rainbow personified as Iris, daughter of Thaumas and Electra. Always appearing opposite the sun, she often seems to change her sphere (v. 51).

[346] Earthquakes were thought to be caused by dry vapors escaping from the earth.

[347] Free to change its inn: from Purgatory to Heaven.

[348] The speaker is (Publius Papinius) Statius (ca. 45–ca. 96), the greatest poet of the Silver Age of Latin literature.

[349] Statius has spent over 500 years purging the sin of prodigality and, as will be seen, over 400 years prior to that cleansing himself of the sin of sloth. The almost 300 years remaining must have been spent in Ante-Purgatory.

[350] Titus: son and successor of Vespasian as Roman Emperor (79–81 AD), who in 70 AD conquered the Jews and destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem. Orosius interpreted his victory as divine vengeance on the Jews for their crucifixion of Christ.

[351] Judas betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver.

[352] That most lasting and most honored name: of Poet.

[353] Statius was actually from Naples but was confused with the rhetorician Lucius Statius Ursulus of Toulouse.

[354] Statius: three syllables as in Latin.

[355] Statius’ two main works were the Thebaid, an epic poem about the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, and the Achilleid, an unfinished epic on the life of Achilles and the Trojan War (cf. v. 93). The former work was modeled on Virgil’s Aeneid. Cf. vv. 97–99.

[356] A stroke: the P of avarice and prodigality.

[357] A reference to the fourth beatitude, “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst (sitiunt) for righteousness,” without the reference to hunger, which will be used in connection with gluttony.

[358] Juvenal: Decimus Junius Juvenalis (ca. 60–ca. 140), a Roman satirist and younger contemporary of Statius.

[359] In the Aeneid, these lines refer to Polymnestor’s murder of Polydorus for money. Another interpretation takes sacra fame as “holy hunger” which restrains the lust for gold.

[360] Where stones are rolled: in Hell’s fourth circle. Those with close-cropped heads (cf. v. 46) are the prodigal.

[361] Jocasta’s double pains: Jocasta was the wife of Laius, king of Thebes, and mother of Oedipus, whom she unwittingly married and by whom she bore Eteocles and Polynices, whose fratricidal strife caused the war of the Seven against Thebes, the subject of the Thebaid. She was also the mother of Antigone and Ismene (cf. vv. 109, 111).

[362] That singer of bucolic strains: Virgil, as author of the fourth Bucolic or Eclogue, some lines of which are paraphrased in vv. 70–72.

[363] Clio: the muse of history, invoked at the beginning of the Thebaid.

[364] The Fisherman: Peter, a fisherman whom Jesus made a fisher of men.

[365] Parnassus: a twin-peaked mountain in ancient Phocis, north of the Gulf of Corinth, overlooking Delphi, and sacred to Apollo and the Muses (cf. vv. 104–105). The cavern streams: the Castalian Spring at the foot of the mountain.

[366] The original text in Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue probably referred to the birth of a son to Gaius Asinius Pollio, consul in 40 BC. It was later interpreted as a prophecy of the birth of Christ.

[367] Messengers of the eternal reign: the Apostles as preachers of the Gospel.

[368] Domitian: Titus Flavius Domitianus Augustus (51–96), the second son of Vespasian and successor of his brother, Titus, became the third of the Flavian emperors of Rome in 81. According to Orosius, he persecuted the Church relentlessly.

[369] That fourth ring: the terrace where sloth is purged.

[370] Varius: Lucius Varius Rufus, a friend of Horace and Virgil, was a writer of tragedies and epics. Terrence (Publius Terentius Afer, ca. 195–159 BC), Caecilius Statius (v. 98), a contemporary of Ennius, and (Titus Maccius) Plautus (v. 98) (ca. 250–184 BC) were comic poets. (Aulus) Persius (Flaccus) (v. 100) (34–62 AD) was a satirist. That Grecian wit (v. 101) is Homer. In all these Latin names, the ending -ius counts as two syllables.

[371] That first circle: Limbo.

[372] Nursemaids: the Muses.

[373] The following are all Greek poets. Antiphon: a tragic poet, of whose works only fragments have survived. Euripides: a tragedian (ca. 485–406 BC), of whom eighteen plays have come down more or less intact. Simonides (v. 107): a lyric poet (ca. 556–467 BC). Agathon (v. 107): a tragic poet (ca. 448–402 BC), none of whose works have been preserved.

[374] Clan: the people treated in Statius’ poems. Of the following eight characters, the first six are from the Thebaid, the last two from the Achilleid. Antigone: daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. Deiphyle (v. 110): daughter of Adrastus, king of Argos, and sister of Argia (v. 110), the wife of Polynices; she wore the necklace of Harmonia. Ismene (v. 111): also a daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, sad because of the death of her beloved, the blinding of her father, the suicide of her mother, and her brothers’ murder of each other. She…who showed Langia’s well (v. 112): Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, king of Lemnos; she led Adrastos and his comrades to a fountain near Nemea in the Peloponnesus when they were suffering from thirst. Tiresias’ dear girl (113): Manto (whom Dante had placed in the fourth ditch of the eighth circle of Hell, a point not adequately explained). Thetis (v. 113): daughter of Nereus and Doris, wife of Peleus, and mother of Achilles. Deidamia (v. 114): daughter of Lycomedes, king of Skyros. Thetis hid Achilles with her.

[375] The fifth handmaid (i.e., hour) is guiding the pole (cf. v. 119) of the sun’s chariot. It is about 11:00 a.m., Easter Tuesday. The Poets have been on the sixth terrace for four hours.

[376] That worthy soul: Statius, who, as fully cleansed, would go in the right direction.

[377] A tree: reminiscent of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, and perhaps a tree of temperance, since temperance is the virtue that regulates desires pertaining to bodily life.

[378] That is, on the inner side of the terrace.

[379] A voice: unidentified. Its words (cf. v. 141) echo the Genesis prohibition of eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[380] Vv. 142–144 refer to the wedding feast of Cana, where Mary interceded for the young married couple rather than indulge herself.

[381] According to Valerius Maximus, the ancient Roman women supposedly drank no wine (cf. vv. 145–146a). In the Book of Daniel, its protagonist, refusing to eat food that may have been offered to idols and thus been made unclean, was given the gift of interpreting visions and dreams.

[382] Vv. 148–150 refer to Ovid’s description of the Golden Age.

[383] According to the Gospels, John the Baptist, the precursor of Christ, lived in the desert and fed on locusts and wild honey.

[384] My more than Father: Virgil.

[385] Those sages: Virgil and Statius.

[386] Labia mea, Domine: part of a psalm verse which runs: “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.”

[387] Marveling: that Dante casts a shadow, as is clear from vv. 113–114.

[388] Erysichthon: son of Triopas, king of Thessaly. When he cut down trees in Ceres’ sacred grove, she so afflicted him with hunger that he ate his own flesh.

[389] When Titus besieged Jerusalem, Mary, daughter of Eleazar, killed and ate her own son out of starvation.

[390] The word omo (Latin homo, “man”) can be read in the human face by taking the eyes as o’s and the eyebrows and nose as an m.

[391] Forese (Donati): son of Simone, and brother of Piccarda and Corso, as well as Dante’s friend (d. 1296), with whom our Poet exchanged several epistolary sonnets (perhaps referred to in vv. 115–117) which degenerated into mutual insults. In one of them, Dante speaks of Forese’s gluttony.

[392] Eli: in Matthew and Mark’s Gospels, the beginning of Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

[393] Five years: merely a round number; it has been a little less than four years since Forese’s death.

[394] This verse refers to the Ante-Purgatory of the negligent, who must wait for a period equal to their lives on earth.

[395] Nella: perhaps an abbreviation of Giovanella, the diminutive of Giovanna. Little is known of her beyond what is said here.

[396] Where they await (v. 89): in Ante-Purgatory. The other circles: the lower circles of Purgatory proper.

[397] In vv. 91–93, Dante may be making amends for the unkind things he wrote of Nella and of Forese’s treatment of her in his sonnets to the latter.

[398] Barbagia (three syllables): an alpine region in central Sardinia, whose inhabitants supposedly descended from prisoners settled by the Vandals. They were known for their savagery and lewdness. Their women, who reputedly went bare-breasted, are compared as models of modesty with the Florentine women (cf. vv. 95–96).

[399] Although there were regulations against feminine extravagance, none has survived against immodest attire.

[400] The time indicated is about fifteen years. Several calamities did befall Florence between 1300 and 1315: the invasion of Charles de Valois in 1301, a famine in 1302, an interdict in 1303, and the defeat of the Florentine Guelphs at Montecatini in 1315.

[401] A reference to the full moon in the dark wood. Diana (the Moon) is the sister of Apollo (the Sun).

[402] Those most truly dead: the souls in Hell, who undergo the “second death.”

[403] That shade (v. 8): Statius. Him: Virgil.

[404] Piccarda: the sister of Forese. She had entered a convent in Florence but was withdrawn by her brother Corso (cf. vv. 82–87) to marry Rossellino della Tosa for political reasons. Shortly thereafter she fell ill and died, presumably in answer to her prayer to be spared violating her vow of virginity.

[405] On high Olympus: in Heaven. Her crown: her eternal reward.

[406] Bonagiunta: Orbicciani degli Overardi da Lucca (ca. 1220–1297), a notary and poet, given to wine-drinking. Some of his poems were written to Dante, who criticized their language.

[407] The reference is to Martin IV, pope from 1280 to 1285, and former treasurer of the cathedral of St. Martin of Tours (cf. v. 22). He died from a surfeit of eels caught in Lake Bolsena in central Italy and stewed in the white wine of Vernaccia (modern Vernazza) in Liguria (cf. v. 23).

[408] Ubaldin(o): degli Ubaldini da la Pila (a castle north of Florence), brother of Cardinal Ottaviano and of Ugolino d’Azzo, and father of Archbishop Ruggieri. A feaster and entertainer, he died in 1291. Boniface: Bonifazio de’ Fieschi Da Genoa, a wealthy archbishop of Ravenna (1274–1295) and nephew of Innocent IV. He served as an arbitrator and ambassador for the Pope. Boniface pastured (v. 29) in the double sense of feeding the Christian flock with the Word and the Eucharist and feeding the greedy courtiers who frequented his company.

[409] Messer Marchese: degli Argogliosi da Forlì in Romagna (cf. v. 31), podestà of Faenza in 1296, a notorious wine-drinker who justified his continual drinking by his continual thirst.

[410] Gentucca: either the proper name of Gentucca Morla, wife of Cosciorino Fondora da Lucca (cf. v. 43) and friend to Dante in exile, or a pejorative term meaning “low people.”

[411] The wimple was a woman’s head covering with a chin strap, black for married women and white for widows.

[412] The verse quoted is the initial verse of the first canzone of the Vita nuova, which marks a turning point in Dante’s understanding of love and in his poetic style.

[413] The Notary: Giacomo da Lentini, a member of the Sicilian school of poetry that flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century. He helped to establish the poetry of courtly love in Italy and may have invented the sonnet. Guittone: d’Arezzo (ca. 1230–1294), an assistant to his father, the chamberlain of Arezzo, and a member of the Frati Gaudenti from about 1266. He helped to establish the Sicilian style of poetry in Tuscany.

[414] The sweet new style: this term has come to be applied to a certain school of Florentine poets originating with Guido Guinizelli, but Bonagiunta may be referring only to Dante himself.

[415] If the shore is not metaphorical, it may be that near Ostia, where souls depart for Purgatory, or that of the Mountain itself, where they arrive.

[416] That one: Corso Donati, brother of Forese and Piccarda, and leader of the Black Guelphs in Florence. In 1300 the priors of Florence exiled the leaders of the Black and White parties in order to stop the feuding. Corso Donati prevailed upon Pope Boniface VIII to send Charles de Valois to pacify the city. He, however, allowed Corso and others to return to war with the Whites. After his attempt to seize power, Corso, together with his father-in-law, Uguccione della Faggiuola, was charged with conspiracy against the liberties of the commonwealth. Upon refusing to appear before the podestà, he was sentenced to death as a traitor. He seems to have thrown himself from his horse when he was captured in 1308, at which one of his captors speared him in the throat.

[417] Those wheels: the heavenly spheres.

[418] Another tree: probably inverted like the first one, and perhaps one of several such trees more or less equally spaced around the mountain.

[419] This will be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from the Book of Genesis. It will appear here in the Earthly Paradise on top of Mount Purgatory.

[420] Drawn closer: along the inner wall of the terrace in order to avoid the forbidden tree.

[421] The reference is to the centaurs, mythical half-equine, half-human creatures (cf. double breast), the offspring of Ixion, King of the Lapithae, and of Nephele, a cloud-woman (cf. formed in the clouds, v. 122). At the wedding of Ixion’s son, Pirithous, and Adrastos of Argos’ daughter, Hippodamia, they attempted in their drunkenness to carry off the bride and other women as well, whereupon they were slain by Theseus and the Lapithae.

[422] In the Book of Judges, God chose to deliver the Midianites into the hand of Gideon, a judge of Israel, with the 300 men who raised the water of a stream in their cupped hands to drink rather than with the others of the 10,000 who impatiently knelt down on all fours to lap it up.

[423] Vv. 151–154 are an expansion of the second part of the fourth beatitude. What is right in the original can refer either to due measure in desire or to righteousness as the desired object.

[424] In the spring, the sun in Aries is over Purgatory at noon and enters Taurus about 2:00 p.m. At 2:00 a.m. in the northern hemisphere, the “night” is in Scorpio, opposite Taurus. It is Easter Tuesday, and the Wayfarers have spent four hours on the terrace of the gluttonous.

[425] Meleager: son of Oeneus, the king of Calydon, and of his wife, Althaea. When the Fates declared to his mother that he would live only until a certain firebrand had finished burning, she immediately removed the log, doused it, and stored it away. Because her brothers, the sons of Thestius, took the skin of the Calydonian boar slain by Meleager away from his love, Atalanta, to whom he had given it, Meleager slew them. To avenge the death of her brothers, Althaea retrieved the log and put it back on the fire. When it was consumed, Meleager died.

[426] Perfect blood: according to medieval physiology, food went through a series of digestions: food in the stomach becomes chyle, which in the liver turns to blood, which in the veins is purified, and then nourishes the body’s members (vv. 37–42). The superfluity is further purified into semen in the testicles (what is best unnamed, v. 44).

[427] Nature’s vase: the uterus.

[428] Semen was considered the active principle and menstrual blood the passive in generation.

[429] A perfect place: the heart, where the perfect blood is stored.

[430] Sponges: were held to lie on the borderline of the animal and vegetable kingdoms according to Aristotelian and then medieval zoology.

[431] Speaking ones: speech is a sign of rationality, which is characteristically human.

[432] One wiser: Averroës, who held that the possible (or potential, v. 65) intellect is a separate substance from the sensitive soul, which informs the body, and is united to it only in intellection.

[433] The intellect does not use a corporeal organ as sense does.

[434] As the solar heat was thought to ferment grape juice and produce a new substance, wine, so the soul created by God transforms the animal fetus into a human being.

[435] Lachesis: the Fate who spins the thread of mortal life.

[436] The human stands for the vegetative and sensitive powers of the soul, the divine for the rational powers. Only the former are in potency when the soul is separated from the body.

[437] Either shore: that of Acheron or that near the Tiber’s mouth.

[438] Summae Deus clementiae: the hymn “God of Supreme Clemency” (called Summae Parens clementiae since the revision of Pope Urban VIII in 1631) is sung at Matins on Saturdays as a prayer for purity of heart.

[439] Virum non cognosco: “I do not know man.” When the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was to be the mother of the Savior, she asked how that could be, since she was a virgin.

[440] Diana lived secluded in the woods to preserve her virginity. But when one of her handmaids, the nymph Helice (three syllables), was “poisoned” by Venus and seduced by Jupiter, Diana dismissed her.

[441] The cures are the flames, the repasts the hymn and the examples of chastity.

[442] Dante faces south-southwest at about 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. The climb has lasted two or three hours.

[443] Sodom and Gomorrah: biblical cities destroyed by a rain of fire for their unnatural lust.

[444] Pasiphae (v. 41): concealed herself within the wooden cow made by Daedalus, had intercourse with a bull, and thus conceived the Minotaur.

[445] The Riphaeans: supposedly a lofty mountain range at the extreme north of the world. The sands: of the Libyan desert.

[446] A lady: Beatrice, or perhaps the Blessed Virgin Mary.

[447] That heaven (v. 62): the Empyrean.

[448] Suetonius says that Caesar, having committed sodomy with King Nicomedes of Bithynia, was hailed as “Queen” in a public assembly and mocked by soldiers during a triumph. The two incidents were conflated into one by Uguccione da Pisa, whom Dante seems to follow.

[449] Hermaphrodite: heterosexual, and thus not unnatural like sodomy.

[450] Guido Guinizzell(i): an Italian poet (d. ca. 1276), first an admirer, later a critic of Guittone d’Arezzo (cf. vv. 121–126), and a precursor of the “sweet new style.”

[451] Lycurgus: king of Nemea. When Hypsipyle was tending Lycurgus’ son, Archemorus, in a wood, she left him to show the Seven fighting against Thebes a fountain, and a snake killed him in her absence. Lycurgus would have killed her had her sons, Thoas and Euneus, not saved her.

[452] So high I did not surge: to embrace Guido as her sons did Hypsipyle.

[453] Lethe: the river of forgetfulness of sin, on the summit of the Mountain.

[454] Modern use: the composition of poetry in the vernacular.

[455] The better craftsman, surpassing all writers of love verse or prose romance (cf. vv. 118–119), is Arnaut Daniel (fl. 1180–ca. 1210). A noble of Ribérac in Périgord (modern Dordogne), he frequented the court of Richard Coeur de Lion and was a friend of Bertran de Born. He invented the sestina and practiced the obscure style (trobar clus). The mother tongue: the Romance languages.

[456] All am’rous verses (v. 118): in Provençal. Romance tales: in French.

[457] Limoges’s (three syllables) bard: Giraud de Borneil (ca. 1150–ca. 1220), from Excideuil near Limoges. He was considered the master of the troubadours.

[458] Guittone: d’Arezzo. He helped to establish the Sicilian style of poetry in Tuscany.

[459] A paternoster: an “Our Father,” the Lord’s Prayer.

[460] That is, without the words “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

[461] Although Arnaut is the only non-Italian Dante allows to speak in his native language in the Commedia, I have translated his words into English because it would be impossible to rhyme v. 139 with v. 141 and v. 148 with v. 146, if they were left in Provençal.

[462] Vv. 1–5 draw on the four cardinal points to indicate the time. It is sunrise in Jerusalem (cf. v. 2), midnight in Spain, where the Ebro River falls beneath the constellation of the Scales (cf. v. 3), noon on the Ganges River in India (cf. v. 4), and sunset in Purgatory (cf. v. 5).

[463] Beati mundo corde: “Blessed are the pure in heart,” the sixth beatitude.

[464] The reference is probably to the practice of burying criminals headfirst in a pit.

[465] Thisbe (v. 37) and Pyramus were lovers against their parents’ wishes. When once they arranged a tryst at the tomb of Ninus, Thisbe arrived first but, on seeing a lioness gore an ox, fled, dropping her veil, which the beast tore and stained with blood. When Pyramus found the garment, he assumed that Thisbe had been killed and stabbed himself in grief, staining some white mulberries nearby red with his blood. Thisbe returned, discovered her dying lover, and slew herself as well after praying that mulberries might henceforth be red in memory of Pyramus.

[466] Venite, benedicti…Patris mei: “Come, blessed of my Father,” the words Christ will speak to the just at the Last Judgment. There is no mention of this angel removing the final P from Dante’s brow. It must have been burned away by the fire.

[467] At the beginning of the last canto, Dante was on the west-northwest side of the mountain. An hour or two later he is climbing with the sun in the west directly behind him so that he casts a shadow before him. He thus faces the east, the direction of the Garden of Eden.

[468] Cytherea: the planet Venus, which rises just before dawn. The epithet comes from Cythera (modern Cerigo), an island near the southeast coast of the Peloponnesus, where Venus rose from the foam of the sea.

[469] In the Book of Genesis, Leah is Jacob’s first wife, Rachel (cf. v. 105) his second wife.

[470] The eternal fires (v. 127) are those of Hell, the temporal those of Purgatory.

[471] Dante was facing west when he began the ascent of the mountain. He is now facing east and the dawn of Easter Wednesday. He has therefore come halfway around the mountain.

[472] Lovely eyes: those of Beatrice.

[473] That is, to the west, where early morning shadows are cast.

[474] Their rhymes: their singing.

[475] Chiassi (v. 20): the former harbor of Ravenna, near which a pine forest extends along the Adriatic. Aeolus: god of the winds. Sirocco: a southeast wind that blows across Italy from Africa.

[476] Since Dante is walking towards the east, the stream must flow north.

[477] A lady: later named Matelda, not convincingly identified with any historical person.

[478] Love’s rays: those of the planet Venus.

[479] Persephone: daughter of Jupiter and the earth goddess, Ceres. When she was collecting flowers in a meadow near Enna in Sicily, Pluto carried her off to reign with him over the underworld. Hermes was sent to rescue her, but it was already too late, for she had eaten part of a pomegranate, which bound her to remain in Hades. By way of compromise, she was allowed to divide her time between earth and the nether world, so that the former mourns her absence every year through winter until she returns in the spring.

[480] Accidentally pricked by Cupid’s arrow while kissing him, Venus fell in love with Adonis.

[481] Xerxes: son of Darius, king of Persia (486–465 BC), crossed the Hellespont (modern Dardanelles) in 480 BC on an expedition against Greece, only to be defeated.

[482] Leander: a youth of Abydos (v. 74) in Asia Minor, at the narrowest point of the Hellespont, swam across nightly to visit Hero, the priestess of Sestos (v. 74), which lay directly opposite in Thrace, but was drowned one night in a storm.

[483] The “Delectasti”–psalm: Psalm 92, especially v. 5, which praises God for his creation.

[484] My recent faith: inspired by Statius, concerning meteorological phenomena in Purgatory.

[485] A place: the Garden of Eden.

[486] Through his fault: through the sin of Adam.

[487] Vapors from water and moist earth (cf. v. 97) were thought to be drawn upwards by the heat of the sun (cf. v. 98) until they were condensed into rain by air in its cold sphere (cf. v. 122).

[488] The Primum Mobile (v. 104): the first sphere, bearing the others around with it, thus causing the sphere of air to circle the earth, unless the current is broken by high mountains.

[489] The rest of earth: the hemisphere of land, inhabited after the Fall.

[490] Lethe: the river of the forgetfulness of sins. Eunoe: the river of the remembrance of good deeds.

[491] Parnassus: the mountain sacred to Apollo and the Muses, and a source of poetic inspiration.

[492] Mankind’s root: our first parents, Adam and Eve.

[493] Beati quorum … tecta sunt peccata: the Psalm verse “Happy are those whose sins are covered.”

[494] Counter to the stream: thus, towards the south.

[495] A single maid: Eve.

[496] The cover: the veil of ignorance to be lifted by eating of the tree of knowledge.

[497] Virgins sacrosanct: the Muses.

[498] Helicon: a mountain range of Boeotia, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. Its streams were Aganippe and Hippocrene.

[499] Urania: the Muse of Astronomy, and thus of heavenly things.

[500] The common object: an object common to more than one sense such as motion, rest, number, figure, and magnitude. Although the senses are not deceived about their proper objects, they may be about a common object.

[501] This is the “cogitative power” or the “particular reason,” which compares and distinguishes individual sense objects.

[502] Delia (two syllables with -ia as a diphthong): the moon, so named from Diana, the moon goddess born on the island of Delos. Her belt is the lunar halo.

[503] Benedicta: blessed. This accolade echoes the words of Gabriel and Elizabeth to Mary.

[504] Argus: son of Arestor. In one account, he had a hundred eyes. Juno had Argus watch over Io, Jupiter’s love, whom she had transformed into a cow. But Jupiter sent Mercury to slay him, lulling him to sleep and cutting off his head. Juno then affixed his eyes to the tail of the peacock.

[505] There are four wings in Ezekiel, six in the Book of Revelation.

[506] A griffin: an animal, half eagle, half lion.

[507] Africanus: Scipio Africanus the Younger (185–129 BC), the adopted son of Scipio Africanus the Elder, who defeated Hannibal. The Younger led the Romans against Carthage in the Third Punic War, conquering and destroying the city, and was honored with a triumph at Rome. Augustus: the first Roman Emperor (63 BC–14 AD), who celebrated various triumphs.

[508] When Phaethon attempted to drive the chariot of the sun to prove himself the child of Apollo but lost control, nearly igniting the earth, the latter prayed for deliverance, and Jove killed Phaethon with a thunderbolt.

[509] Three ladies: the theological virtues. The red one (vv. 122–123) is charity, the emerald (vv. 124–125) hope, and the white (cf. vv. 125–126) faith.

[510]  Four more (v. 131): the four cardinal virtues. Their queen is prudence, the other three justice, fortitude, and temperance.

[511] Hippocrates: the father of medicine (ca. 460–ca. 377 BC).

[512] The seven: those named in vv. 133–144.

[513] That first heaven’s Dipper: the seven candlesticks representing the sevenfold Spirit of God in the Empyrean.

[514] The lower Dipper: either the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) or the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor).

[515] The truthful people: the twenty-four elders.

[516] Veni, sponsa … de Libano: “Come, my bride, from Lebanon,” from the Song of Songs.

[517] Ad vocem tanti senis: “at the voice of so great an elder.”

[518] Benedictus … qui venis: “Blessed are you who come,” words of acclamation used at Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and repeated at Mass before the consecration. The masculine may be used for Christ who comes to judge in the person of Beatrice.

[519] Manibus … date lilia plenis: “Give lilies with full hands,” a verse from the Aeneid that originally mourned the death of Marcellus (d. 23 BC), a nephew of Augustus.

[520] A lady: Beatrice (cf. v. 73).

[521] All this time: the ten years since Beatrice had died.

[522] The ancient mother: Eve.

[523] The leafage of Minerva: the olive wreath of v. 31. Minerva was the goddess of wisdom.

[524] In te speravi, Domine (syntax altered for meter): “In you, Lord, have I hoped,” from Psalm 31, v. 8 of which reads: “You have set my feet (pedes meos) in a spacious place.”

[525] The spine of Italy: the ridge of the Apennines.

[526] Slavonia (four syllables) : a part of Croatia.

[527] Regions lacking shade: the torrid regions of Africa at the Equator.

[528] The eternal day: the eternal “now” of Heaven.

[529] Such lofty vapors: the inscrutability of divine causality.

[530] My second age: the first age is from adolescence until age twenty-five, the second is “youth.”

[531] I changed my life: Beatrice died in 1290, when she was twenty-four.

[532] The streams: Lethe, the river of the forgetfulness of sin.

[533] Such a Judge: God, who sees all things.

[534] In the Aeneid, Iarba, king of the Gaetulians in North Africa, sued in vain for Dido’s hand.

[535] Primal creatures: the angels, the first of God’s creatures.

[536] Others here: other women on earth.

[537] The maid: Matelda.

[538] Asperges me: “Sprinkle me,” a psalm verse beginning a prayer for moral purification.

[539] Four fair maids: the infused moral virtues.

[540] The emeralds: Beatrice’s green eyes.

[541] The first beauty was Beatrice’s eyes, the second beauty is her mouth.

[542] Its cisterns: Castalia, the spring of Parnassus.

[543] The harmonies of heaven: perhaps the seven streamers of color.

[544] Ten years: Beatrice died in 1290; it is now 1300.

[545] Goddesses of grace: the three theological virtues.

[546] It is still morning, so that in wheeling around to the right the procession faces the sun.

[547] Wood of yore: the chariot pole.

[548] Blest load: the chariot.

[549] The lovely maid who’d drawn me at the ford: Matelda.

[550] The wheel in question is the right wheel.

[551] Her: refers to Eve.

[552] India was renowned for its tall trees.

[553] According to legend, the Cross was made from the wood of the forbidden tree.

[554] Vv. 52–54 refer to the budding of plants, when the springtime sun (the greater light, v. 53) is in the constellation of Aries, the one following Pisces (the heavens’ Fishes).

[555] Another group of stars: Taurus, which follows Aries. Sprouted plants blossom in a month.

[556] The hundred-eyed Argus, guardian of Io, was lulled to sleep by Mercury with the tale of Syrinx and Pan and then slain.

[557] The apple tree: a figure of Christ. The simile of vv. 73–81 refers to the Transfiguration.

[558] Some: those whom Christ raised from the dead.

[559] The clement lady: Matelda.

[560] Fire: lightning, falling from the sphere of fire (cf. v. 111).

[561] That bird of Jove: the eagle.

[562] Venerunt, Deus, gentes (syntax altered for meter): “O God, the nations have come,” a Psalm verse that continues: “into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple.”

[563] Modicum, et non videbitis me; et iterum … modicum, et vos videbitis me: “Within a short time you will lose sight of me, but soon after that you shall see me again”—in John’s Gospel, Christ’s words to the disciples, telling them of his imminent death and resurrection.

[564] The maid: Matelda. The sage: Statius.

[565] The vessel: the chariot. The serpent: the dragon.

[566] The guilty: Clement V and Philip the Fair.

[567] No sop: the reference may be to the custom that freed a murderer from vengeance if he could eat a sop of bread and wine over his victim’s grave.

[568] Dante considered Frederick II (d. 1250) the last Roman Emperor. The imperial eagle is thus presently without an heir (v. 37). The Church symbolized by the car (v. 37) became a monster through its wealth and then a prey to the French kings.

[569] A God-sent Five-hundred-ten-and-five: in Roman numerals, DXU, usually transposed to DUX ( = leader). The cryptographic reference may be to Henry VII, who became Emperor in 1308.

[570] Themis: daughter of Heaven and Earth, and a prophetess preceding Apollo at Delphi. She sent the Thebans a beast to ravage their flocks and harvests (v. 51) to avenge the death of her oracle, the Sphinx, who killed herself when Oedipus rightly guessed her riddle. Oedipus was the son of Laius (Latin Laiades), but Dante used a faulty text that substituted the Naiads (v. 49; Latin Naiades), who were water-nymphs.

[571] Two times: first, by Adam’s disobedience, then, by the events of last canto, particularly when the giant (Philip the Fair) steals the chariot (the Church) from the tree of law renewed by the chariot pole (the Cross of Christ).

[572] According to Eusebius, Christ was born 5,200 years after the creation and died in 5232. In v. 61, pain refers to the 930 years that, according to Genesis, Adam spent on earth and want to what Dante calculated as his 4,302 years in Limbo awaiting Christ’s descent.

[573] Elsa’s streams: a river rising west of Siena and joining the Arno west of Empoli. Near Colle, it petrifies objects immersed in it because of its carbonic acid and surcarbonate of lime.

[574] Pyramus’ blood stained red, and thus darkened, the white mulberry.

[575] Pilgrims to the Holy Land wreathed their staffs with palms to show where they had been.

[576] The highest spinning sphere: the Primum Mobile.

[577] It is noon of Easter Wednesday. The sun seems to move more slowly in the meridian (cf. v. 103), which is relative to the observer’s position, than on the horizon.

[578] The Tigris and Euphrates: two rivers rising in Turkey, joining in Iraq, and emptying into the Persian Gulf. These two rivers are the last of the four watering the Earthly Paradise.

[579] Eunoe: the river of the remembrance of good deeds.

↑ Back to top