conceived in you as reflected light,

Inferno Canto XXVI:85-142. He

Mentioned. Hostile to Dante.

$GULDQ 9 3RSH 2WWREXRQR GH¶

)LHVFKL

Ottobuono de’ Fieschi of Genoa, sent

to England while a Cardinal as Papal

legate in 1268, was elected Pope as

Adrian V on 12th July 1276, and died

on August 18th. The Fieschi were

Counts of Lavagna, taking their name

from a little river that flows into the

Gulf of Genoa between Sestri Levante

and Chiavari. One niece was Alagia

wife of Moroello III Malaspina.

Purgatorio Canto XIX:70-114. He is among the avaricious.

979

$HQHDV

Inferno Canto I:61-99. The legendary ancestor of the Roman people. The son

of the Goddess Aphrodite and

Anchises. 6HH Iliad XX. A Trojan noble he escaped the sack of Troy and

sailed via Carthage (where he was

loved by Dido but abandoned her) to Italy. His wife was Creüsa, daughter of

Priam by whom he had Ascanius (Iulus). His son is Silvius (Ascanius,

or Iulus) in Inferno II. His visit to the

underworld in Aeneid VI inspired

Dante. Aeneas is the symbol of the

Roman Empire achieved from the

ruins of Troy, and the virtuous victor

of the Wars in Latium against Turnus

etc. As the ancestor of Rome’s founder

Romulus, he is Dante’s Imperial founder also.

980

Inferno Canto IV:106-129. He is among the heroes and heroines in

Limbo.

Inferno Canto XXVI:43-84. The Trojan War indirectly led to the

founding of Rome, and the origin of

the Roman people.

cremated his old nurse Caïeta in Italy

(at modern Gaeta, in Campania). See

Ovid’s Metamorphoses XIV157, 443

and XV 716, and Virgil’s Aeneid vii

1-4.

Purgatorio Canto XVIII:112-145. He

is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. He is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto IX:67-126 . Dido’s love for him wrongs Creüsa’s memory.

Paradiso Canto XV:1-36. He saw his father’s shade in the underworld.

Aeneid vi 679.

981

$HROXV

The god of the winds, the son of

Hippotas, and father of Alcyone and

Athamas, who kept the winds imprisoned in a cave in the Aeolian

Islands between Sicily and Italy. See

Ovid’s Metamorphoses-

various

references.

Purgatorio Canto XXVIII:1-51. He is mentioned as loosing the Sirocco, the

south east wind, whose notes are heard

in the pine-forests of Ravenna, on the

Adriatic shore, at Chiassi, the Classis

of the Romans, who used it as a naval

station and harbour. There was a later

fortress there. See Byron’s ‘Don Juan’

iv 105.

$HVRS

The quasi-historical author of the

Fables. He may have been a Phrygian

slave, Babrius, living about the 6th

century BC, at the time of Croesus. He

982

was supposed to have been thrown over a cliff at Delphi for his ugliness,

offensiveness or perhaps rectitude.

Around his name a set of tales

gathered, and were loosely attributed

to him.

Inferno Canto XXII:124-151. Dante quotes the Frog and the Mouse, in

which the Mouse, living on land

(Alichino?) is tied to the frog who offers to carry him over the stream

(Ciampolo? ), and who then leaps into the water, drowning the mouse. A

hawk (Calcabrina? ) then spies the mouse and snatches it up, snatching up

the frog as well. Dante no doubt knew

a variant that fitted the situation more

closely.

$JDPHPQRQ

The King of Mycenae, son of Atreus,

brother of Menelaus, husband of

Clytemnestra, father of Iphigenia,

983

Electra and Orestes. The commander-in-chief of the Greek forces at Troy.

He was told by an oracle to sacrifice

his daughter, and vowed to do so, in

order to gain favourable winds, when

the Greek fleet was waiting at Aulis, to

sail to Troy. He did so and brought

down destruction on his house. See

Aeschylus’s Oresteian trilogy, and

Ovid’s Metamorphoses XII 30.

Paradiso Canto V:1-84. He is mentioned as an example of the danger

of rash vows.

$JDSHWXV,3RSH

Pope 535-536 AD. He induced

Justinian to depose Anthimus, Bishop of Constantinople, because of

Anthimus’s Monophysite leanings,

and the other heads of the sect were

likewise excommunicated. The

Monophysite’s accepted only the

984

divine and not the human nature of

Christ.

$JDWKRQ

The Greek tragic poet (c448-

400BC).

$JKLQROIRRI5RPHQD

See Guido Conte

$JODXURV

The daughter of Cecrops who envied

her sister Herse because of Mercury’s

love for her. She was punished for

treachery, when Pallas Athene

(Minerva) sent the hag Envy to

torment her, and changed to stone by

Mercury. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses

II 740, 752, 820.

985

Purgatorio Canto XIV:124-151. She is the second of the voices, signifying

envy.

$JOL/RWWRGHJOL

Inferno Canto XIII:130-151. Possibly the speaker is Agh, a judge who

hanged himself after giving a false

sentence for money, or Rocco de’ Mozzi.

$JQHOOR6HH%UXQHOOHVFKL

$JRVWLQR)ULDU

He entered the Franciscan Order in

1210, and died on the same day as

Francis after a vision of Francis ascending into Paradise.

Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is in the Fourth Sphere of the Sun.

$JXJOLRQH%DOGRGD

A lawyer who deserted the Whites

from the Blacks in 1302. Baldo was a

986

prior in 1298 and 1311, in which year he drew up the decree recalling the

exiles, but expressly excluding Dante.

In 1299 he had been convicted of

tampering with the public records of

the Courts. See Note to the Purgatorio.

Paradiso Canto XVI:46-87. He is mentioned.

$KDVXHUXV

Ahasuerus, the Persian King, enriched

Haman, until he was accused by Esther

of intending to take the life of

Mordecai. Haman was executed in Mordecai’s place. See Esther iii-viii.

Purgatorio Canto XVII:1-39. He is mentioned.

$KLWRSKHO

King David’s Gilonite counsellor from Giloh, see Second Samuel xv-xviii, who conspired with David’s son

Absalom, and subsequently hanged 987

himself when his counsel was not followed.

Inferno Canto XXVIII:112-142. He is mentioned as an evil counsellor.

$ODJLDVHH0DODVSLQD

$ODUGR(UDUGGH9DOpU\

Inferno Canto XXVIII:1-21. In 1268, at Tagliacozzo, Charles of Anjou

defeated Conradin, Manfred’s nephew, using reserve troops, on the advice of

Erard.

$OEHULFKL

An ancient Florentine family. See

the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.

Inferno Canto XXIX:73-99.

Mentioned.

$OEHULJR)ULDU

Alberigo Manfredi of Faenza, one of

the )UDWL *DXGHQWL, the Jovial Friars,

988

avenged a blow from his younger brother Manfred, in 1284, by inviting

him, and his son, to a banquet in 1285,

and at a given signal ‘Bring the fruits’

Manfred and his son were murdered.

/HPDOHIUXWWD (the evil fruit) GL)UDWH

$OEHULJR became a proverb. He was

still alive in 1300, the date of the

Vision.

Inferno Canto XXXIII:91-157. He is in the Ninth Circle.

$OEHURRI6LHQD

Griffolino of Arezzo obtained money

from Albero by pretending he could

teach him how to fly. On discovering

the deceit, Albero induced the Bishop

of Siena to have Griffolino burned as an Alchemist.

Griffolino is in the tenth chasm.

989

$OEHUW RI +DSVEXUJ .LQJ RI WKH

5RPDQV

Albrecht I of Hapsburg, King of the

Germans, and Emperor of the Holy

Roman Empire (1298-1308), the son

of the Emperor Rudolph (1273-91). To Dante, Albert represented both the

invader of Italian soil, and the

preserver of the Empire. As an

absentee landlord, Dante berates him.

He was murdered ultimately, as Dante

predicts, by his nephew, John

Parricida.

See Ciacco’s prophecy and Inferno

Canto VI:64-93

for an indirect

reference.

Purgatorio Canto VI:76-151. Dante inveighs against the state of Italy and Albert’s indifference to its plight.

Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. Albert carried out an aggressive campaign

against Bohemia in 1304, confiscating

990

it as an expired fief of the crown. He is held as an example of poor kingship.

$OEHUWL $OEHUWR $OHVVDQGUR DQG

1DSROHRQHGHJOL

Alessandro and Napoleone, the two

sons of Count Alberto degh Alberti,

who held Vernia and Cerbaia in the

Val de Bisenzio, quarrelled over their

inheritance and killed each other,

sometime after 1282.

Inferno Canto XXXII:40-69. They are in the Caïna in the Ninth Circle.

Purgatorio Canto VI:1-24. Count Orso, the son of Napoleone was murdered by

Alberto the son of Alessandro in the

continuing vendetta. He is among the

late-repentant.

$OEHUWXV0DJQXV

Albertus of Cologne (1193-1280), the

‘Universal Doctor’, one of the two

great lights of the Dominican order.

991

Albertus, with Thomas Aquinas his pupil, ‘christianised’ Aristotle

adapting his philosophy and making

him a treasury of pagan learning.

Paradiso Canto X:64-99. He is in the fourth sphere of Prudence.

$OFPDHRQ

The son of Amphiaräus and Eriphyle.

She was bribed with the necklace of

Harmonia to betray the hiding place of

her husband, who was compelled to go

to the Theban War where he was

killed. At the father’s request the son

Alcmaeon killed his mother, and was

pursued by the Furies, and was

eventually killed himself. See Ovid’s

Metamorphoses IX 408.

Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. He is depicted on the roadway.

Paradiso Canto IV:64-114. He is mentioned as someone who grappled

with conflicting duties.

992

$OGREUDQGHVFR *XJOLHOPR DQG

2PEHUWR

Purgatorio Canto VI:76-151. The Aldobrandeschi, Ghibelline leaders,

held Santafiora in the Sienese

Maremma for almost five centuries.

They warred with the commune of

Siena until 1300 when a treaty was

agreed.

Purgatorio Canto XI:37-72. Omberto, Count of Santafiora, in the Sienese

Maremma, was put to death at

Campagnatico near Grosseto, by the

Sienese in 1259, who resented the

arrogance of the family with whom

they had long been at war.

$OGREUDQGL7HJJKLDLR

A Florentine Guelph who, with

Guido Guerra, tried to dissuade his party from the conflict that led to the

Guelph disaster at Montaperti in 1260.

993

See Farinata. He fought courageously and took refuge at Lucca with other

defeated Guelphs.

Inferno Canto VI:64-93. Dante asks after him.

Inferno Canto XVI:1-45. He is in the seventh circle for sodomy.

$OHVVDQGURRI5RPHQD

See Conte Guido.

$OH[DQGHUWKH*UHDW

The son of Philip the Second of

Macedonia (Philip ruled 359-336 BC)

who ruled from 336 to 323 BC. He

created an Empire from Greece and

Egypt in the west, to India in the east,

proclaiming himself king of Asia, and

burning Darius’s Persian capital of

Persepolis in 330BC. He married

Roxane. He killed the historian

Callisthenes, a nephew of Aristotle his former tutor, and Clitus, a friend of his

994

youth, in a fit of rage. He died of fever, aged 33, in 323BC, while

preparing for campaigns against

Carthage and the Western

Mediterranean.

Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is placed in the seventh circle, in the ring

of tyrants, unless the reference is to

Alexander of Pherae.

Inferno Canto XIV:1-42. Dante’s source may have been Albertus

Magnus’s

'H 0HWHRULV

which

describes the apocryphal letter,

popular in the Middle Ages, in which

Alexander the Great sends an account

of such marvels to Aristotle his tutor.

The soldiers warded off the flames

with their clothes.

$OH[DQGHURI3KHUDH

The Thessalian tyrant who was killed

by his own wife in 323BC.

995

Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is placed in the seventh circle in the ring

of tyrants, unless the reference is to

Alexander the Great.

$OIRQVR,,,.LQJRI$UDJRQ

He succeeded his father Peter III of Aragon, and died in 1291.

Purgatorio Canto VII:64-136. He is in Purgatory.

$OLWKH&DOLSK

Ali (born c597AD) a cousin and son-

in-law of Mohammed, was his fourth successor, and moved the capital to

Kufa after conflict with Mohammed’s

widow A’isha (First Islamic Civil

War). He won the ‘camel-battle’ of

Basra. He was murdered in 661AD

after the indecisive battle of Siffin

(657) and the arbitration of Adhroh

(658).

996

Inferno Canto XXVIII:22-54. He is in the ninth chasm of the eighth circle as

a schismatic within Islam.

$OLFKLQRDGHPRQ

Inferno Canto XXI:97-139. A demon guarding the eighth circle, the fifth

chasm, of the barrators.

Inferno Canto XXII:97-123. He allows

Ciampolo too much freedom.

Inferno Canto XXII:124-151. He and

Calcabrina quarrel.

$OLJKLHUL

$OLJKLHUR

VRQ

&DFFLDJXLGD

Dante’s great-grandfather. His mother

was Cacciaguida’s wife, Alighiera of the Aldighieri family of Ferrara.

Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. The derivation of Dante’s name.

$OLJKLHUL%HOOD'DQWH¶VPRWKHU

997

$PDWD

Purgatorio Canto XVII:1-39. Queen Amata, wife of King Latinus, who hanged herself through anger at the

death of the hero Turnus, to whom her daughter Lavinia

was originally

betrothed, Lavinia being destined then

to marry Aeneas. The fate of Lavinia was part of the reason for the Wars in

Latium. See Aeneid xii 595.

$PLGHL

Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154

ancient Florentine family. See the note

to Paradiso Canto XVI. Buondelmonte

broke his betrothal oath with a

daughter of the family and his murder

in retaliation was the root of the

factional split within Florence.

$PSKLDUDV

A Greek seer, one of the heroes at the

Calydonian Boar Hunt. He was the son

998

of Oecleus, and father of Alcmaeon.

His wife Eriphyle betrayed him for the golden necklace Aphrodite gave to

Harmonia, wife of Cadmus, and he

enjoined on his son the duty of

punishing her. Alcmaeon killed her,

and was pursued by the Furies. In the

War of the Seven against Thebes,

Amphiaraüs was one of the seven

champions, and fled along the banks of

the river Ismenus in his chariot. He

was on the point of being killed when

Zeus cleft the earth with a thunderbolt,

and he vanished from sight, chariot

and all, and now reigns alive among

the dead. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses

VIII 317, IX 407-410.

Inferno Canto XX:31-51. He is in the eighth circle.

$PSKLRQ

The son of Jupiter and Antiope, and

husband of Niobe. He built the walls 999

of Thebes aided by the magical music of his lyre. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses

VI 176 and XV 427. He killed himself

through grief at the loss of his sons.

Inferno Canto XXXII:1-39. He is mentioned.

$P\FODV

The fisherman who was unawed by

Caesar’s summons and indifferent to the tumult of the times, secure in his

poverty. See Lucan’s Pharsalia v 520-

531.

Paradiso Canto XI:43-117. He is mentioned.

$QDQLDVKXVEDQGRI6DSSKLUD

He and his wife Sapphira sold possessions but kept back part of the

price when other followers of Christ

sold everything and gave everything

into common ownership, to allow

distribution according to need. They

1000

were rebuked by Peter for hypocrisy and died. See Acts iv 32-37 and V 1-11.

Purgatorio Canto XX:97-151. He is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto XXVI:1-69. The Ananias of Damascus who gives sight

to the blind Saul of Tarsus (Paul), see Acts ix 10-18 is mentioned.

$QDVWDJL

A Ghibelline family of Ravenna,

virtually extinct by 1300. They were

prominent in the latter half of the

thirteenth century due to their strife

with the Polentani and other Guelphs

of Ravenna.

Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. They are mentioned.

$QDVWDVLXV3RSH

Pope Anastasius II (469-498), who

censured the non-dogmatic doctrines

1001

of Origen, is here confused, by medieval writers before Dante, with

the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius

(491-518), noted for his tolerance, who

was induced by the deacon of

Thessalonica, Photinus, to adopt the Acacian (Acacius, Patriarch of

Constantinople) formula, which was

an attempt to reconcile the

Monophysite doctrine that Christ

appeared as a man but not with human

nature and substance, with the

Chalcedonian definition of Christ as

known in two natures, one human, and

that without confusion, and in one

person.

Inferno Canto XI:1-66. Anastasius is with the heretics in the Sixth Circle.

$QD[DJRUDV

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher,

born at Clazomenae in Asia Minor

about 500BC, and a Persian citizen

1002

who went to Athens in the year of Salamis 480/79 BC. He taught the

young Pericles, and was later brought

to trial by Pericles’s opponents,

charged with impiety. He retired to

Ionia where he settled at Lampsacus.

He taught a doctrine of divisible

particles of all types that individually

combine together in proportions to

produce unique wholes, ‘in everything

there is a portion of everything’. His

primal force is Mind ( 1RXV) present in

all living things, and is present ‘there

where everything else is, in the

surrounding mass’ and this concept is

his main contribution to philosophy.

Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among the philosophers in Limbo.

$QFKLVHV

Inferno Canto I:61-99. The father of

Aeneas, who carried him from burning Troy on his shoulders.

1003

Purgatorio Canto XVIII:112-145. He

is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto XV:1-36. Aeneas saw his shade in the underworld.

Aeneid vi 679.

Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. He died and was buried at Drepanum in Sicily,

the Isle of Fire because of Mount

Aetna. See the Funeral Games episode

in Aeneid V 40 et seq. and Anchises’s

death at III 700.

$QGDOR/RGHULQJRGHJOL

See Loderingo.

$QGUHD *LDFRPR -DFRPR GD

6DQW¶

A Paduan, who wasted his own and

other people’s fortunes, employing

arson and other extraordinary methods.

He appears to have been executed by

Ezzelino da Romano

in 1239,

presumably after courting death.

1004

Inferno Canto XIII:109-129. He is in the seventh circle.

$QGUHZ,,,.LQJRI+XQJDU\

He ruled Hungary in 1300, having

usurped the crown that belonged to

Carobert the son of Charles Martel.

Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. He is held as an example of poor kingship.

$QQDV

The father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest among the Pharisees, see

John xi 47-53, who said: ‘it is

expedient for us that one man should

die for the people, and that the whole

nation should perish not’. Annas sent

Christ bound to Caiaphas. See John

xviii 24.

Inferno Canto XXIII:82-126. He is in the eighth circle.

1005

$QQH6DLQW

Paradiso Canto XXXII:115-151. The mother of the Virgin. She sits near her, and opposite Saint Peter in Heaven.

$QVHOP6DLQW

St Anselm (1033-1109) Archbishop of

Canterbury, who wrote treatises on the

Trinity and the Incarnation. He is

known as the second father of

Scholasticism, Scotus Erigena in the

ninth century being the first. Both tried

to show the coincidence of natural

reason and revealed truth.

Paradiso Canto VII:55-120. Beatrice’s argument follows Anselm’s CXU 'HXV

KRPR Adam’s disobedience injured himself not God, and what was

demanded was not a propitiation, but

restoration. Man was required to give

back what he owed, to match what he

had taken that he did not own, but

could not since he owes everything

1006

and owns nothing. Therefore God who owes nothing and owns everything had

to become Man to achieve restoration.

See &XU 'HXV KRPR passim, and

specifically Bk i, chapter 15.

Paradiso Canto VII:121-148. Again Anselm’s argument is used: that since

God made Adam and Eve flesh directly, man’s body will be restored at

the Last Judgement when redemption

is complete for the saved.

Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is in the Fourth Sphere of the Sun.

$QVHOPRGHOOD*KHUDUGHVFD

See Ugolino della Gherardesca.

$QWDHXV

One of the Giant sons of Earth and

Tartarus. He is unchained in Hell

because he kept out of the battle

against the gods of Olympus. The

details of him Dante takes from

1007

Lucan’s Pharsalia iv 593-660.

Hercules lifted him in the air, whereby he lost his strength as he no longer

touched the earth, and crushed him.

See Ovid’s Metamorphoses IX 184.

Inferno Canto XXXI:97-145. He sets the poets down in the Ninth Circle.

$QWHQRU

The Trojan, who, according to

medieval tradition betrayed Troy to the

Greeks. (See 'LFW\V &UHWHQVLV, 'DUHV

3KU\JLXV, and the later 5RPDQ GH

7URLH) He escaped to Italy after the fall

of Troy and founded Padua, see

Aeneid i 242 et seq.

Inferno Canto XXXII:70-123. The

Antenora is named after him.

$QWKRQ\6DLQW

Paradiso Canto XXIX:85-126. Saint Anthony (251-356). His symbol was

the pig, and he was therefore the

1008

patron of the pigs that infested Florence, and its neighbourhood,

belonging to the monks. They were fed

on the fraudulent gain made from

selling remissions (indulgences).

$QWLJRQH

The daughter of Oedipus, by Jocasta,

and sister of Eteocles and Polynices.

See Sophocles’s Antigone.

Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. She is in Limbo. One of the people celebrated

by Statius in his epic poetry.

$QWLRFKXV

Inferno Canto XIX:31-87. Antiochus IV, ruler of the Seleucid Empire (175-164BC), whose self-conferred title was

7KHRV(SLSKDQHV the evident God. He

accepted a bribe from Jason to make him high-priest of Judea.

1009

$QWLSKRQ

The Greek tragic poet, praised by

Aristotle and Plutarch.

Inferno Canto XVII:1-30. Geryon’s

$SROOR

The son of Jupiter and Latona (Leto), born on the island of Delos. The sun-god and god of art and music,

prophecy and healing, the archer’s

bow, and the lyre. He was present at

the battle with the Giants. He is called

Thymbraeus from his temple at

Thymbra in the Troad. Artemis-Diana was his sister.

Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. He is depicted on the roadway.

Paradiso Canto I:1-36. He equates to the Sun, as the sun-god, and to Christ

and the Father as the Divine presence.

Dante believed that the Muses

occupied one peak of Mount

1010

Parnassus, and Apollo the other, which Dante calls Cirra.

Apollo flayed Marsyas

for

challenging his skill in music, and

Dante asks for the inspirational breath

with which Apollo played on that

occasion. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses

VI 382.

Apollo loved Daphne, the

daughter of the river-god Peneus, who

was changed into a laurel-tree by the

river-god, as Apollo pursued her. He

then adopted her laurel as the sacred

tree whose leaves would crown his

lyre etc. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses I

452-548.

Paradiso Canto II:1-45. Apollo guides the poet.

Paradiso Canto XIII:1-51. His name as God of Healing, and the religious

hymn of praise in his honour.

Paradiso Canto XXIX:1-66. The sun.

1011

$UDFKQH

A Lydian girl, the daughter of

Idmon, famous for her weaving, who

challenged Pallas Athene to a contest, was defeated, and was changed by

Pallas into a spider. See Ovid’s

Metamorphoses VI 42 etc.

body is adorned with more decoration

than her weaving.

Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. She is depicted on the roadway.

$UFDGHOO¶

An ancient Florentine family. See the

Mentioned.

$UFDV

The son of Callisto or Helice, an

Arcadian nympth, a favourite of

Artemis-Diana, raped by Jupiter.

1012

Diana expelled her from her company, and she was changed by Juno into a bear, and hunted by her son. Jupiter

placed her in the sky as the

constellation of the Bear, Ursa Major,

and Arcas as the constellation of the

little Bear, Ursa Minor, at the pole,

towards which the ‘pointers’ Dubhe

and Merak, of the Great Bear, or

Plough, point as it circles on Polaris

the pole-star. See Ovid’s

Metamorphoses II 409-528

Paradiso Canto XXXI:28-63. Circles over the northern latitudes.

$UGLQJKL

An ancient Florentine family. See the

Purgatorio Canto XXXII:64-99.

Mentioned.

1013

$UHWKXVD

Inferno Canto XXV:79-151. A nymph of Elis, one of Diana’s maidens, who

was loved by the river-god Alpheus.

She was pursued by him, and was

turned into a fountain. See Ovid’s

Metamorphoses V 572.

$UJHQWL)LOOLSR$GLPDUL

A Florentine noble who appears with

Ciacco in Boccaccios’s Decameron IX

8. He was notorious for his fierce

temper and overbearing conduct. He

and the Adimari family may also have

been hostile to Dante.

Inferno Canto VIII:31-63. He is rent by the people in the mud.

$UJLD

The wife of Polynices, sister of

Deiphyle, and daughter of King Adrastus of Argos.

1014

Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. She is in Limbo. One of the people celebrated

by Statius in his epic poetry.

$UJRJOLRVL0DUFKHVHGHJOL

One of the Argogliosi or possibly the

Ordelaffi family of Forlì, who was

Podestà of Faenza in 1296. When told

that he was always drinking he replied

that he was always thirsty.

Purgatorio Canto XXIV:1-33. He is among the gluttonous.

1015

$UJXV

Purgatorio CantoXXIX:82-105. The monstrous son of Arestor, set by Juno

to guard Io (transformed to a heifer).

He had a hundred eyes, but was lulled

to sleep by Mercury, and killed. Juno set his eyes in the peacock’s tail. See

Ovid’s Metamorphoses I 624-723.

Mercury lulled him by telling the tale

of Syrinx.

$ULDGQH

The daughter of Minos, King of Crete, who helped Theseus kill her half-brother the Minotaur, and was then abandoned by him on Naxos.

Dionysus rescued her and married her,

setting Thetis’s crown on her head, which was later made a constellation,

the Corona Borealis, or Northern

Crown, thrown by Dionysus (Bacchus)

into the sky to mark their nuptials. The

1016

constellation consists of an arc of seven stars between Hercules and

Bootes. Dante follows the myth that

makes the constellation Ariadne

herself, set there after her death.

Inferno Canto XII:1-27. She helped Theseus escape the labyrinth.

Paradiso Canto XIII:1-51. Her crown.

$ULVWRWOH

The Greek philosopher, 384-322 BC,

the philosopher par excellence for

Dante and the medieval period.

Aristotle was born at Stageira in

Chalcidice near Salonica. His father

was a doctor. He became a member of

Plato’s Academy at Athens, though he was later to differ from Plato in his

thinking. He was Alexander the

Great’s ‘tutor’ and founded the

Lyceum at Athens, and his teaching

while walking in the garden, the

Peripatos, led to its being called the

1017

‘Peripatetic Philosophy’. On a wave of anti-Macedonian feeling after

Alexander’s death, Aristotle retired to

his mother’s property at Chalcis where

he died.

Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He leads the philosophers in Limbo.

Inferno Canto XI:67-93. Virgil refers

to his Nichomachean Ethics. See VII i

‘....those qualities of character to be

avoided, which may be taken as three

in number, and we call them

incontinence (=ODFN RI VHOIFRQWURO),

brutishness or bestiality YLROHQFH)

and vice (=IUDXG).’ (0\ EUDFNHWHG

H[SDQVLRQ). See also VII vi ‘...it is

thought more excusable to follow the

natural impulses, which all men feel,

than those which are peculiar to

certain persons....bestiality is a lesser

evil than vice.

1018

Inferno Canto XI:94-115. Virgil refers to Aristotle’s Physics II ii ‘.. if Art

mimics Nature.’

Purgatorio Canto III:1-45. The pagan philosophers cannot hope to

understand the ‘ZK\¶ of God’s works,

and are condemned to an unsatisfied

desire for supreme knowledge.

(Aquinas: ‘the one demonstrates by means of the cause and is called

SURSWHUTXLG.... the other by means of

the effect and is called the

demonstration TXLD.)

Paradiso Canto IV:64-114. Dante follows Aristotle’s theory of the dual

will, an absolute will that does not

consent to evil coupled with a practical

will that chooses the lesser of two

evils. The former may remain intent on

its goal, while the latter compromises,

and that is a failing. See Aristotle’s

Ethics III, where the example of

Alcmaeon is also mentioned.

1019

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Dante refers to Aristotelian logic, where the

propositions that this is so, and this is

not so, cannot both be true in the same

sense at the same time. Related

propositions are termed contradictories

e.g. if ‘some swans are not white’ is

true, then ‘all swans are white’ is

false, since a black swan would be

white, and not white, if both

statements were true simultaneously.

Paradiso Canto VIII:85-148. Aristotle taught that human society requires

varied conditions and qualifications

amongst its members. In the Politics

he shows that the individual is not self-

sufficient but a part of a whole, and a

State is a group of citizens providing

all the necessary variety for a complete

life. Functions and duties are

distributed so that the State can be

self-sufficient where the individual is

not.

1020

Paradiso Canto XXVI:1-69. He taught that God is the supreme object,

towards whom the Heavens yearn. In

the Metaphysics the Prime Mover is

the object of longing or of intellectual

apprehension.

$ULXV

The presbyter of Bishop Alexander of

Alexandria (early 4th Century). The

Arian heresy denies that the incarnate

Son is one substance with the

transcendent First Cause of creation,

though differing in Person. The heresy

created dissension until the end of the

fourth century.

Paradiso Canto XIII:91-142. He is mentioned.

$UQDXW'DQLHO

The Provençal poet. He flourished

between 1180 and 1200 and Richard

Coeur de Lion was among his patrons.

1021

(See Ezra Pound’s poem ‘Near

Perigord’ in his collection Lustra).

Arnaut was a master of form, the

WUREDU FOXV or hidden style, inventing

the sestina form, and it was for this

above all that Dante and others

regarded him so highly, rather than his

sentiment.

Purgatorio Canto XXVI:112-148. He

is among the lustful. In the Provençal

poem Dante invents for him, he refers

to the style that KLGHV, and is here

open, and reminds Dante to consider

his RZQ punishment to come, for Lust,

as Dante himself goes onward.

$UULJRGH¶)LIDQWL"

His family is uncertain. He is said to

have been one of Mosca de’

Lamberti’s accomplices in the murder

of Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti, that initiated the Guelf and Ghibelline

factional alignments in Florence.

1022

Inferno Canto VI:64-93. Dante asks after him.

$UULJXFFL

An ancient Florentine family. See the

Purgatorio Canto XXIX:61-81.

Mentioned.

$UWHPLV'LDQD'HOLD

The daughter of Jupiter and Latona,

and twin sister of Apollo, born on the island of Delos (hence Delia). She is a

moon-goddess, and goddess of the

chase.

Purgatorio Canto XXV:109-139. She expelled Callisto (Helice) from her company, after Callisto was raped by

Jupiter. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses II 409-528.

Paradiso Canto X:64-99. She has a 1023

rainbow-coloured girdle (the Moon’s halo) in her Moon incarnation.

Paradiso Canto XXII:100-154. The moon-goddess and daughter of Latona.

Paradiso Canto XXIII:1-48. Called Diana Trivia by the Romans,

identifying her with Hecate, as an

underworld aspect of the Triple-

Goddess, worshipped where three

ways meet. See Ovid’s

Metamorphoses II 416.

Paradiso Canto XXIX:1-66. The moon.

$UWKXU.LQJRI%ULWDLQ

The mythical King of Britain, after the

Roman withdrawal, around whose

name medieval legends gathered. See

Malory’s ‘Le Morte D’Arthur’.

Mordred

his nephew and son,

attempted to usurp his kingdom. In the

last battle Arthur pierced Mordred

with his lance, at the same time

1024

receiving his own death-wound.

According to an Old French version of

the theme, which differs from

Malory’s version ‘after the lance was

withdrawn a ray of sunlight passed

through the wound...’

Inferno Canto XXXII:40-69. He is mentioned in the Ninth Circle.

$UXQV

The Etruscan seer who in Lucan’s

Pharsalia i 584-638 prophesied the

Civil War in Rome that ended in

Julius Caesar defeating Pompey the Great.

Inferno Canto XX:31-51. He is in the eighth circle.

$VFLDQR&DFFLDGH¶&DFFLDFRQWL

See Caccia.

1025

$VGHQWH

A shoemaker of Parma. Asdente, ‘the

toothless’, whose real name was

Benvenuto, practised as a soothsayer.

He died c1284.

Inferno Canto XX:100-130 He is in the eighth circle.

$WKDPDV

Inferno Canto XXX:1-48 . Juno was angered because of Jupiter’s adultery with Semele, whom she punished, and took vengeance on the house of

Cadmus of Thebes, her father. She pursued Ino, Semele’s sister by driving her husband Athamas mad. He killed

their son Learchus, and drove Ino to throw herself over a cliff, with their

son Melicertes. Ino and Melicertes became sea-gods, namely Leucothea,

the White Goddess, and Palaemon. See

Ovid’s Metamorphoses III 261 and IV

519.

1026

$WKHQH0LQHUYD3DOODV

Pallas Athene (the Roman Minerva),

the daughter of Jupiter, sprung from his head, and the goddess of wisdom,

intelligence, technical skill, and

women’s arts. The olive was her gift to

mankind. Often depicted as a warrior

goddess. Present at the battle with the

Giants.

Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. She is depicted on the roadway.

Purgatorio Canto XXX:49-81. The olive is sacred to her. See Ovid’s

Metamorphoses VI 335, VIII 275 and

664.

Paradiso Canto II:1-45. Minerva breathes intellectual inspiration into

the poet.

$WURSRV

The third of the three Fates, or

Moerae, in Greek myth. They were

1027

begotten by Erebus on Night. Their names are Clotho,’ the spinner’,

Lachesis, ‘the measurer’, and Atropos,

‘she who cannot be avoided or turned’.

Clotho spins the thread of a life,

Lachesis measures it out, and Atropos

cuts the thread. Moera means a phase,

and they are yet another incarnation of

the triple Moon-goddess.

Inferno Canto XXXIII:91-157. She is mentioned.

Purgatorio Canto XXI:1-33. The other two are mentioned.

$WWLOD

Attila the Hun, the scourge of God

IODJHOOXPGHL), king of the Huns (433-

453) who advanced into the Eastern

Roman Empire, and on to the west, but

was turned back at Chalôns in the

Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in 451.

He retreated to Hungary (the plains of

Tisza) and died there.

1028

Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is in the seventh circle.

Inferno Canto XIII:130-151. The historians, and Dante, confused him

with Totila, the leader of the Goths,

who reputedly sacked Florence. Totila

gained Italy (542-552) excluding

Ravenna, and resisted Belisarius from

544 to 549, but died fighting Narses at

Tadinae.

$XJXVWLQH6DLQW

Augustine of Hippo (354-430),

Christian Saint and influential

theologian. The Bishop of Hippo in

North Africa, and one of the four Latin

(western) fathers of the Church with

Jerome , Gregory, and Ambrose. He was born at Tagaste in Numidia, and

was given religious instruction by

Monica, his mother. He wrote the

famous &RQIHVVLRQV, and 7KH &LW\ RI

*RG.

1029

Paradiso Canto X:100-129. He is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto XXIV:115-154. Dante echoes Augustine, that the conversion

of the world without miracles, would

have been a greater miracle than any

recorded, attesting to their reality.

Paradiso Canto XXXII:1-36. He is seated below John the Baptist in Heaven.

$XJXVWXV&DHVDU

Inferno Canto I:61-99. Generally known as Octavian (Octavius) until

27BC when he became the Roman

Emperor Augustus. The adopted son

of Julius Caesar. The founder of the Imperial system and first Roman

Emperor who was Caesar from 31BC

to AD14. Virgil lived in his reign.

Purgatorio Canto VII:1-39. He ordered

Virgil’s remains to be brought from 1030

Brindisi to Naples, after Virgil’s death in 19BC, and interred there.

Purgatorio Canto XXIX:106-132. His

Triumph is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in the summary of Imperial history.

$XURUD

Purgatorio Canto II:1-45. The goddess of the dawn, daughter of the Titan

Pallas, and wife of Tithonus, for whom she won eternal life but not eternal

youth..

$YHUURsV

Ibn Rushd, 1128-1198 AD. An

Arabian physician and commentator

on Aristotle. He espoused a sceptical philosophy, and as ‘WKH &RPPHQWDWRU¶

in Latin translation c. 1250 made

Aristotle’s philosophy supreme in the

Middle Ages.

1031

Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among the group of wise men in

Limbo.

Purgatorio Canto XXV:1-79. He

taught, in error, that the human

intellect being potential not actualised,

discursive rather than intuitive like the

angels, could not have its seat in the

actual organs in the way that animals

have intelligence, and so existed

independently of physical form. He

does however make self-consciousness

a characteristic of the rational or

intellectual soul, as life is of the

vegetable soul, and sensation of the

animal soul. ‘The action of the

intellect is likened to a circle, because

it turns round upon itself, and

comprehends itself.’

$YLFHQQD

An Arabian physician and

commentator on Aristotle 979-1037

1032

AD. He codified Galen

with

smatterings of Hippocrates, and was translated into Latin, for European use,

by Gerard of Cremona c. 1180.

Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among the group of wise men in

Limbo.

$]]RVHH GD(VWH

$]]R VHH 8JROLQR G¶$]]R GHJOL

8EDOGLQL

$]]ROLQR(]]HOLQR

Ezzellino III da Romano, the tyrant

(1194-1259), lord of Verona, Vicenza

and Padua, called ‘the son of the

devil’, imperial vicar under Frederick

II. Pope Alexander IV declared a crusade against him, and he was

defeated at Cassano on the Adda, and

subsequently died. He was the head of

the Ghibellines in Northern Italy.

1033

Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is in the seventh circle, first ring.

Paradiso Canto IX:1-66. His mother dreamed she had given birth to a

firebrand that scorched the land.

Cunizza was his sister.

%DFFKXV

The god of the vine, the son of Jupiter

and

Semele, was worshipped

ecstatically at Thebes in Boeotia (See

Ovid’s Metamorphoses III 528). The

banks of the neighbouring rivers,

Ismenus and Asopus, were crowded

with worshippers, when the midnight

rituals were enacted, that were

designed to ensure the fruitfulness of

the crop. The worship of Bacchus

(Dionysus) was introduced into Greece

from Asia Minor.

Purgatorio Canto XVIII:76-111. The rites are mentioned.

1034

Paradiso Canto XIII:1-51. He is mentioned in the context of the shouts

of praise cried out at his rites.

%DUEDULFFLDDGHPRQ

Inferno Canto XXI:97-139. A demon guarding the eighth circle, the fifth

chasm, of the barrators.

Inferno Canto XXII:1-30. The sinners hide from him.

Inferno Canto XXII:31-75. He protects

Ciampolo from the other demons so that Virgil can speak to him.

Inferno Canto XXII:124-151. He is left rescuing Calcabrina and Alichino

from the boiling pitch.

%DUEDURVVD VHH

)UHGHULFN ,

(PSHURU

%DUXFFL

An ancient Florentine family. See

the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.

1035

Purgatorio Canto XVIII:49-75. As

Mentioned.

%DWWHROOHVHH )HGHULJR 1RYHOORRI

%HDWULFH GDXJKWHU RI 5D\PRQG

%HUHQJHU

The daughter of Raymond Berenger, and wife of Charles I of Anjou.

Purgatorio Canto VII:64-136. She is mentioned.

%HDWULFHG¶(VWH9LVFRQWL

Beatrice d’Este, daughter of Obizzo

d’Este II of Ferrara, married Nino de’

Visconti by whom she had a daughter

Giovanna, voted a pension by the Guelphs in 1328. After Nino’s death

Beatrice married Galeazzo Visconti of Milan, a separate branch. The

Milanese Visconti suffered misfortune

in 1302.

Giovanna

married

Riccardo da Cammino of Treviso. The 1036

arrangements for Beatrice’s marriage were in progress at Easter 1300, and

the wedding took place in the June.

Purgatorio Canto VIII:46-84. She is mentioned.

%HDWULFHRI$QMRX

The youngest daughter of Charles the Lame, Charles I of Anjou. She married

Azzo VIII d’Este in 1305.

Purgatorio Canto XX:43-96. She is mentioned.

%HDWULFH GLYLQHSKLORVRSK\

A personification, but also the real

Beatrice who Dante first saw as a child

of eight in May 1274 when he was

nine years old. His love for her

inspired the Vita Nuova and the

Divine Comedy. She was Bice, or

Beatrice, Portinari daughter of Folco

de’ Portinari who died in 1288. She

died young in June of 1290. (See

1037

Rossetti’s painting Beata Beatrix –

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery,

England)

Inferno Canto I:61-99 . Virgil says she will be Dante’s guide in Paradise.

Inferno Canto II:43-93. She asks Virgil to aid Dante.

Inferno Canto X:94-136. She will, through Cacciaguida, reveal Dante’s future to him.

Purgatorio Canto VI 25-48. Virgil tells Dante he will see her again, when they

reach the summit of the Mount of

Purgatory.

Purgatorio Canto XVIII:1-48. Her Divine philosophy goes beyond

Virgil’s human philosophy, entering

into matters of Faith.

Divine Philosophy she takes Freewill

to be the noble virtue.

1038

Purgatorio Canto XXVII:1-45. Dante must pass through the purifying fire to

reach her.

Purgatorio Canto XXX:1-48. She appears to Dante, wreathed in the olive

sacred to Pallas Athene-Minerva, dressed in the white, green and red of

Faith, Hope and Charity. Line 48 is a

translation of Virgil’s Aeneid iv 23

‘$JQRVFR YHWHULV YHVWLJLD IODPPDH : I

recognise the tokens of the ancient

flame.’

Purgatorio Canto XXXI:91-145. For Beatrice’s attributes, note 9LWD 1XRYD

xxi the sonnet: ‘My lady bears Love in

her eyes,’ and &RQYLWR III vv 55-58 of

the canzone: ‘Her aspect shows the joy

of Paradise, seen in her eyes and in her

smiling face: Love brought them there

as as to his dwelling-place.’ Beatrice’s

first beauty, her eyes, is that of the

cardinal virtues, her VHFRQGD EHOOD]D,

1039

her second beauty, her smile, is the beauty of the theological virtues.

Purgatorio Canto XXXIII:1-57.

Beatrice employs Christ’s words to his disciples. See John xvi 16.

Paradiso Canto XXXI:64-93. Dante sees Beatrice crowned in Heaven, and

his final prayer to her.

Paradiso Canto XXXII:1-36. She, Divine Philosophy, sits with Rachel

(Contemplation) in Heaven, in the

third rank, below the Virgin.

Paradiso Canto XXXIII:1-48. She prays, with Bernard, to the Virgin, that Dante finds the strength to persevere

in his affections.

%HFFDULD7HVDXURGH¶%HFFKHULD

Tesauro de’ Beccheria of Pavia, Abbot

of Vallombrosa, and Legate of Pope

Alexander IV in Florence, plotted

against the Guelphs, after the

1040

Ghibellines had been expelled in 1258

and was executed.

Inferno Canto XXXII:70-123. He is in the Ninth Circle.

%HGH7KH9HQHUDEOH

Bede (c673-735) the English

Ecclesiastical historian who died in

Jarrow.

Paradiso Canto X:130-148. He is in the fourth sphere of Prudence.

%HODFTXD

A Florentine maker of musical

instruments, a friend of Dante’s, noted

for his laziness.

Purgatorio Canto IV:88-139. He is among the late-repentant.

%HOLVDULXV

Belisarius (c505-565) restored the

authority of the Empire in Italy by his

campaigns against the Ostrogoths. He

1041

fell into disfavour, and, according to legend, beggary. See Robert Grave’s

historical novel ‘Count Belisarius.’

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. He is mentioned.

%HOOD*LDQRGHOOD

An ancient Florentine family. See the

Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. The

Mentioned.

%HOOLQFLRQ%HUWLGH¶5DYLJQDQL

The father of ‘ the good Gualdrada’

one of the honoured knights of ancient

Florence.

Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. He is mentioned.

Conti Guidi were descended from him through Gualdrada.

1042

Paradiso Canto XXXI:94-142. He

Mentioned as marrying one of his

daughters to one of the Adimari.

%HOOR*HULGHO

A first cousin of Dante’s father, who

was killed for sowing dsicord among

the Sacchetti family, and was not

revenged until thirty years after the

vision, when Geri’s nephews, the sons

of Messer Cione del Bello Alighieri

killed oneof the Sacchetti in his own

house. The families were reconciled in

1342.

Inferno Canto XXIX:1-36. He is in the ninth chasm.

%HOXV

Paradiso Canto IX:67-126. King Belus of Sidon, the Phoenician, father of

Dido.

1043

%HQHGLFW6DLQW

The Christian Saint (c480-543) the

founder of the oldest Western

monastic order, the Benedictines. He

was born at Nursia in Umbria, and

went to Rome to study. He lived as a

hermit for several years near Subiaco.

He founded the famous monastery at

Monte Cassino on a mountain between

Rome and Naples, a spur of Monte

Cairo, a few miles from Aquino in the

north of Campania. It was once

crowned by altars to Apollo and

Venus-Aphrodite. The Rule of his Order demanded poverty, chastity and

obedience, manual labour, and

irrevocable vows. He was remembered

for his many acts of healing.

Paradiso Canto XXII:1-99. He is manifest in the seventh sphere.

Paradiso Canto XXXII:1-36. He is seated below John the Baptist in Heaven.

1044

%HQLQFDVDRI$UH]]R

Benicasa da Laterina, judge to the

Podestà of Siena. He condemned a

relative of Ghin di Tacco, a

highwayman, to death, and Ghino took

his revenge by murdering him while

he was sitting as a magistrate in Rome.

Purgatorio Canto VI:1-24. He is among the late-repentant.

%HUHQJHU 5D\PRQG &RXQW RI

3URYHQFH

His daughter Margaret married

Louis IX of France, Eleanor married

Henry III of England, Sancha married Richard of Cornwall, and Beatrice

married Charles of Anjou, bringing Provence as her dowry, after her

father’s death.

Paradiso Canto VI:112-142. Danter refers to the fable of his chamberlain,

Romeo of Villeneuve.

1045

%HUQDUGRI4XLQWDYDOOH

A wealthy citizen of Assisi who gave

up his possessions to follow

Saint Francis, and became his first disciple.

Paradiso Canto XI:43-117. He is mentioned.

%HUQDUG6DLQW

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) the

Cistercian monk and theologian, son

of a noble Burgundian family, who

founded the great monastery at

Clairvaux in France and was Abbot

there till his death. He had a particular

devotion to the Virgin, expressed in

his 'H /DXGLEXV 9LUJLQLV PDWULV and

his nine sermons for the feasts of the

Purification, Assumption, Nativity etc.

He opposed the celebration of her

Immaculate Conception. He dedicated

all the monasteries of the Cistercian

1046

Order to her. He is the type of contemplation.

guides Dante to the final Vision.

Paradiso Canto XXXII:37-84. Bernard is made to express the orthodox view

that the unbaptised child must remain

in Limbo (See Inferno IV), where spirits live ‘without hope, in longing’.

However Bernard himself in his

treatise addressed to Hugh of Saint Victor, holds back from this terrible

conclusion. ‘We must suppose that the

ancient sacraments were efficacious as

long as it can be shown that they were

not notoriously prohibited. And after

that? It is in God’s hands. Not mine be

it to set the limit.’

%HUQDGLQGL)RVFR

His father was a field labourer.

Bernadin distinguished himself at the

siege of Faenza against the Emperor

1047

Frederick II in 1240. He was a Guelph, and died c1250 having become one of

the mobility of Faenza.

Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. He is mentioned.

%HUQDGRQH3LHWUR

The father of Saint Francis, to whom Francis gave all his worldly

possessions, in order to pursue

Poverty.

Paradiso Canto XI:43-117. He is mentioned.

%HUWUDQGGH%RUQ

Bertrand (c1140-1215), The Lord of

the Castle of Hautefort (Altaforte),

near Périgord, who spent his life in

feudal warfare, ended it in the

Cistercian monastery of Dalon,

nearby. He was one of the most

individual of the Provençal

troubadours. One of his finest poems

1048

(‘6LWXLWOLGRKOHOKSORUHOKPDUULPHQ ’) is his song of lament on the death of

Prince Henry Plantagenet, the elder

brother to Richard Coeur de Lion, and

named the ‘Young King’, the son of

Henry II of England, and twice

crowned in his father’s lifetime.

Bertrand was accused of stirring up the

strife whereby Henry II refused to

grant the sovereignty of England or

Normandy to his son, and which lasted

until the Young King’s death in 1183.

(See Ezra Pound’s poem ‘Near

Périgord’ from Lustra, and his

translation of the lament ‘Planh for the

Young English King’ in Personae: also

his translation of ‘'RPSQDSRLVGHPH

QR¶XV FDO¶ in Lustra, where Bertrand

makes ‘a borrowed lady’, ‘XQD

GRPSQD VRLVHXEXGD¶ or ‘XQD GRQQD

LGHDOH¶, out of the best characteristics

of the noble women he knows, and its

1049

companion piece ‘1D $XGLDUW’ in Personae.)

Inferno Canto XXVIII:112-142. He is in the ninth chasm of the eighth circle,

as a ‘stirrer up of strife’.

%RFFDVHH $EDWL%RFFDGHJOL

%RsWKLXV

Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus

Boëthius (c475-525), Roman consul

and philosopher who was condemned

to death by Theodoric, at Pavia. He

wrote the &RQVRODWLRQ RI 3KLORVRSK\

while in prison, defending the virtuous

life and the ways of God. He stressed

revealed truth, and the earthly life, and

though a Pagan with Christian

connections was accepted as a

Christian teacher. He argued the

timelessness of God’s view of

existence, and the validity of Human

Freewill. Cieldauro (Golden Ceiling)

1050

is St. Peter’s Church in Pavia where he was buried. Since his opponents were

Arian heretics, he is claimed as a

Catholic martyr.

Paradiso Canto X:100-129. He is in the fourth sphere of Prudence.

%RQDWWL*XLGR

The private astrologer to

Guido da Montefeltro. He came from Forlì and was a tiler by trade. He wrote

‘/LEHU ,QWURGXFWRULXV DG -XGLFLD

6WHOORUXP’ (c1170) and was credited

with aiding Guido’s victory over the

French Papal forces at Forlì in 1282.

Inferno Canto XX:100-130. He is in the eighth circle.

%RQDYHQWXUD6DLQW

Giovanni Fidanza, the Franciscan

‘Seraphic Doctor’ Saint Bonaventura

(1221-1274). He was born at

Bagnoregio near Bolsena. He was a

1051

friend and colleague of Thomas

Aquinas, and minister-general of the Franciscan Order from 1256. He wrote

the official life of Saint Francis, and

shortly before his death was made a

Cardinal and Bishop of Albano by

Pope Gregory X.

Paradiso Canto XII:1-36. He is in the fourth sphere of the Sun.

Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. His

extended speech to Dante.

%RQLIDFH9,,,3RSH

Benedetto Gaetani who succeeded

Celestine V in 1294, and imprisoned him after his abdication until his death.

His political manoeuvres are the

background to the critical three years

of Dante’s political life, leading to his

exile from Florence, and described in

Ciacco’s prophecy. For Dante, he represented the corrupt Papacy, placed

in Hell for his vindictiveness; falsity;

1052

profligate simony; an ultramontane sacerdotalism, that saw the Empire as

subordinate to the Church, with only a

derived authority; and his destructive

policies that led to French control of

Florence. Boniface died in October

1303, and was succeeded by Benedict

XI. Boniface is therefore WKH 3RSH at

the time of the Vision in 1300.

See Ciacco’s prophecy and

Inferno Canto VI:64-93 for an indirect reference.

Inferno Canto XV:100-124. He is mentioned, indirectly, regarding his

translation of Andrei dei Mozzi from Florence to Vicenze in 1295.

Inferno Canto XIX:31-87. His place in Hell is reserved for him in the eighth

circle with the Simonists.

Inferno Canto XXVII:58-136. He

persuaded Guido da Montefeltro to leave his religious retreat in order to

advise him on the razing of Palestrina,

1053

giving him absolution in advance, which Dante explicitly rejects, as

unacceptable, logically and morally.

(Acre is mentioned as the last

possession of the Christians in the

Holy Land, lost to the Saracens in

1291.)

Purgatorio Canto XX:43-96. In the name of Philip IV, the Fair, Sciarra Colonna and William de Nogaret

seized Boniface at Anagni his

birthplace, forty miles south east of

Rome, in September 1303 and treated

him with such cruelty that he died at

Rome, a month after his release from

their hands, on October 11th 1303.

Paradiso Canto IX:67-126. His

indifference to the fate of Acre and the

Holy Land is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto IX:127-142. His reign has caused the abandonment of the

study of the Gospels, for the study of

1054

the law-books, the Decretals, since that study brings preferment.

Paradiso Canto XII:37-105. The ideal of Poverty has been abandoned by the

Holy See.

Paradiso Canto XVII:1-99. He

engineered Dante’s exile.

Paradiso Canto XVIII:100-136. Dante deems him in love with the gold coins

of Florence that carried the figure of

the Baptist, as well as the lily, the florins, that he has forgotten the

meaning of his office.

Paradiso Canto XXVII:1-66. He is denounced as a corrupt usurper of the

Papal Office.

Paradiso Canto XXX:97-148. When Clement V arrives in Hell (1314),

Boniface will be pushed further down.

1055

%RQLID]LR GH¶ )LHVFKL $UFKELVKRS

RI5DYHQQD

Archbishop of Ravenna from 1274 to

1295. Dante refers to the ornamental

rook like a chess-piece set at the top of

the ancient pastoral staff of the

Archbishops of Ravenna.

Purgatorio Canto XXIV:1-33. He is among the gluttonous.

%RQWXURVHH'DWL

%RUHDV

The north wind personified as a god.

The north-westerlies are classically

cloud-bearing winds, the north-

easterlies sky-clearing winds.

Paradiso Canto XXVIII:58-93. He is mentioned.

%RUVLHUH*XJOLHOPR

A retired purse-maker who entered the

aristocracy. There is a story about him

1056

in Boccaccio’s Decameron I, 8 where he is noted for refinement, and

eloquence. He died shortly before

1300.

Inferno Canto XVI:46-87. He is in the seventh circle for sodomy.

%RVWLFKL

An ancient Florentine family. See the

See Ugolino della Gherardesca.

Mentioned.

%RWDLR0DUWLQR

One of the elders of Lucca.

Inferno Canto XXI:31-58. He is in Hell.

%UHQQXV

Chief of the Sennonian Gauls who

sacked Rome in 390BC.

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in the summary of Imperial history.

1057

%ULDULXV%ULDUHXV

One of the Giant sons of Earth and

Tartarus who fought against the gods

of Olympus. See Virgil’s Aeneid x

565-568, where he is described as

having fifty heads and a hundred arms.

See also Statius Theb. ii 596.

Inferno Canto XXXI:97-145. He helps guard the central pit.

Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. He is depicted on the roadway.

%ULJDWD1LQRGHOOD*KHUDUGHVFD

%URVVH3LHUUHGHOD

The surgeon and afterwards

chamberlain of King Philip III of France. Mary of Brabant was accused by Pierre and others of having

murdered Louis, Philip’s son by his

first wife, with poison, in 1276. She

1058

destroyed Pierre by falsely accusing him of an attempt on her honour, and

of treasonable correspondence with

Alfonso X of Castile, Philip’s enemy.

Pierre was hanged for this in 1278.

Purgatorio Canto VI:1-24. He is with the late-repentants.

%UXQHOOHVFKL$JQHOOR

A Florentine noble, and a thief.

Inferno Canto XXV:34-78. He merges with Cianfa as a serpent.

%UXQHWWRVHH /DWLQL

%UXWXV -XQLXV ZKR H[SHOOHG

7DUTXLQ

The type of a noble Roman of the

Republic. Lucius Junius Brutus

conquered

Tarquinius Superbus,

whose son had raped Lucretia,

Collatine’s wife, in 510 BC. (See

Shakespeare’s 5DSHRI/XFUHFH)

1059

Inferno Canto IV:106-129. He is among the heroes and heroines in

Limbo.

%UXWXV 0DUFXV ZKR DVVDVVLQDWHG

-XOLXV&DHVDU

Marcus Junius Brutus, who with

Gaius Cassius plotted to assassinate

Julius Caesar, fearful of Caesar’s increasing power, and the death of the

Republic. Caesar, who had loved

Brutus’s mother Servilia, according to

Suetonius, so that Brutus was perhaps

his own child, was murdered on the

Ides of March in 44BC, in the Hall of

Pompey where the Senate were due to

meet. One of the Casca brothers struck

the first blow, with a sweep of his

dagger just below the throat. Twenty-

three dagger thrusts went home, and it

was said that when he saw Brutus

about to deliver the second blow,

Caesar reproached him in Greek,

1060

saying: ‘You too, my child?’ In the ensuing Civil War, Octavian, later

Augustus Caesar, and Mark Antony, defeated Brutus at the Second Battle of

Philippi in 42BC. Brutus’s head was

sent to Rome to be thrown at the foot

of Caesar’ divine image. Dante holds

him in special opprobrium, because of

his murder of the founder of the

Roman Empire, and because no doubt

of the close relationship between

Brutus and Caesar, making the

betrayal more bitter.

Inferno Canto XXXIV:55-69. He is tormented in one of Satan’s mouths.

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in the summary of Imperial history.

%U\VR%U\VRQ

The Greek philosopher, considered by

Aristotle an example of the powers of false-reasoning.

1061

Paradiso Canto XIII:91-142. He is mentioned.

%XLDPRQWH*LRYDQQL

Inferno Canto XVII:31-78. A knight of the Bicchi family of Florence, still

alive in 1300 at the time of the Vision.

His arms were ‘three eagles’ beaks or

on field azure’.

%XRQDFFRUVL3LQDPRQWH

The Brescian Counts of Casalodi held

Mantua in 1272 but were unpopular

and threatened with expulsion.

Pinamonte de Buonaccorsi, obtained

control, by advising

Alberta da Casalodi to banish the powerful nobles, as a source of

trouble. He then took over, massacred

any opponents, expelled Alberta, and

held Mantua until 1291.

Inferno Canto XX:52-99. Mentioned regarding Mantuan history.

1062

%XRQDJLXQWD2UELFFLDQL

Bonagiunta Orbicciani degh Overardi,

a notary and poet, of Lucca, who died

between 1296 and 1300.

Jacopo da Lentino ( LO 1RWDLR, the Notary), Guittone del Viva known as Fra Guittone, of Arezzo (1230-1294:

one of the )UDWL *DXGHQWL) in his first

poetic period, and Bonagiunta were

prominent members of the Sicilian

school of Poetry, continued in Central

Italy, based on Provençal traditions.

Their style lacked the spontaneity and

sweetness of the GROFH VWLO QXRYR

developed by Guido Guinicelli of Bologna, Guido Cavalcanti and Dante.

Purgatorio Canto XXIV:1-33. He is among the gluttonous.

%XRQFRQWHVHH 0RQWHIHOWUR

1063

%XRQGHOPRQWL%XRQGHOPRQWHGH¶

See Mosca.

Buondelmonti was

betrothed to a daughter of the Amidei,

but broke faith at the instigation of

Gualdrada Donati. In the debate as to whether he should be killed Mosca

said the evil word, ‘A thing done has

an end.’ Buondelmonte was murdered,

at the foot of the statue of Mars, on the

Ponte Vecchio, in 1215. The family

divisions created the Guelph and

Ghibelline factional conflicts.

Paradiso Canto XVI:46-87. They are mentioned among the ancient

Florentine families.

Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. The family originated from Valdigreve and

settled in the Borgo Saint Apostoli. To

reach Florence they would have

crossed the small stream called Ema.

%XRVRVHH 'RQDWL

1064

&DFFLDGH¶&DFFLDFRQWLRI$VFLDQR

A member of the %ULJDWD

6SHQGHUHFFLD, the Spendthrift Brigade,

a club founded by twelve wealthy

Sienese, in the second half of the

thirteenth century, who vied with each

other in squandering their money on

riotous living.

Inferno Canto XXIX:121-139. He is in the tenth chasm.

&DFFLDJXLGD

Dante’s great-great-grandfather, whose

son was Alighiero I. Cacciaguida’s wife was Alighiera of the Aldighieri family of Ferrara.

He took part in Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’s crusade of 1147 under

Emperor Conrad III, and was killed.

His brother’s name Eliseo suggests a connection with the Elisei family.

Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. He is in the Fifth sphere of Mars.

1065

Paradiso Canto XVI:1-45. He was born, according to Dante in 1091,

calculated from the period of Mars

orbit, 687 days, multiplied by the the

580 orbits mentioned. He was then

fifty-six when he joined the crusade.

Paradiso Canto XVIII:1-57. He leaves Dante to rejoin the other spirits, in the

Fifth Sphere of Mars.

&DFFLDQLPLFR9HQHGLFRGH¶

His father Alberto was head of the

Bolognese Guelphs. He himself was a

leading Guelph, exiled in 1289, and a

follower of Marquis Obizzo II d’Este

of Ferrara. He assisted the Marquis in

the seduction of his own sister,

Ghisola, who later married Niccolò de Fontana of Ferrara in 1270. Dante met

him in exile, possibly in Florence.

Inferno Canto XVIII:40-66. He is in the eighth circle, first chasm, of pimps,

go-betweens, and panders.

1066

&DFXV

The three-headed shepherd, son of

Hephaestus and Medusa. He lived in a deep cave in the Aventine forest. He

stole two of Hercules’s prize bulls, and four heifers, after Hercules had taken

the cattle of King Geryon in his Tenth Labour. Hercules battered him to

death. Dante follows Livy i. 7, and

Virgil Aeneid viii 193-267, where

Virgil calls him VHPLKRPLQLV, leading

to Dante confusing him with the

Centaurs, who guard the Violent

higher up, in the seventh circle.

Inferno Canto XXV:1-33. He is in the eighth circle, with the thieves.

&DGPXV

The son of the Phoenician King

Agenor, who searches for his sister

Europa, stolen by Jupiter in the form

of a bull. He sows the serpent’s teeth,

1067

and founds Thebes, but offends the sacred Serpent of Mars. He and his

wife Harmonia are ultimately turned

into snakes. See Ovid’s

Metamorphoses IV 563 et al.

Inferno Canto XXV:79-151.

Mentioned, as an example of mutation.

&DHFLOLXV

Caecilius Statius the comic poet (d.

168 BC)

Inferno Canto XX:100-130.

&DJQDQR$QJHORRU$QJLROHOORGD

See Carignano

&DJQD]]RDGHPRQ

Inferno Canto XXI:97-139. A demon guarding the eighth circle, the fifth

chasm, of the barrators.

Inferno Canto XXII:97-123. He does not trust Ciampolo.

1068

&DLDSKDV

The high priest among the Pharisees,

see John xi 47-53, who said ‘it is

expedient for us that one man should

die for the people, and that the whole

nation should perish not’. His father-

in-law was Annas, see John xviii 13.

Inferno Canto XXIII:82-126. He is in the eighth circle.

&DLQ

The son of Adam and Eve, who killed his brother Abel. He was expelled from Eden to the land of Nod. See

Genesis iv.

Paradiso Canto II:46-105. The Man in the Moon in popular superstition, was

Cain carrying a bundle of thorns as he

went to sacrifice.

Purgatorio Canto XIV:124-151. He is the first of the voices, signifying envy.

1069

&DOEROL)XOFLHULGD

The grandson of Rinieri, and Podestà of Milan, Parma, and Modena, but

notorious for his tenure at Florence,

from January to November 1303, by

favour of the Blacks, when he proved

a bitter enemy of the Whites.

Purgatorio Canto XIV:28-66. He is mentioned, adversely.

&DOEROL5LQLHULGD

Rinieri a Guelph of Forlì, was Podestà

of Faenza in 1247, Parma in 1252, and

Ravenna in 1265 and 1292. He

attacked Forlì in 1276 but had to retire

to Calboli in the valley of Montone,

where

surrendered

Guido da Montefeltro, the Captain of Forlì, who razed the stronghold. When

Rinier was re-elected Podestà of

Faenza in 1292 Mainardo Pagano was Captain. The citizens opposed a tax

1070

levied on them by the Count of Romagna, and successfully opposed

him. In 1294 the da Calboli were

expelled by the Ghibellines, but

returned with other Guelphs in 1296,

when their enemies were away

fighting against Bologna. Shortly after

this the Guelphs were routed again and

expelled by the Ghibellines, and the

aged Rinier was killed.

Purgatorio Canto XIV:1-27. He is among the envious.

&DOFDEULQDDGHPRQ

Inferno Canto XXI:97-139. A demon guarding the eighth circle, the fifth

chasm, of the barrators.

Inferno Canto XXII:124-151. He and

Alichino quarrel.

&DOFKDV

The Greek augur, the brother of

Leucippe and Theonoë. At Aulis,

1071

where the Greek ships waited for a favourable wind to sail to Troy,

Calchas interpreted the appearance of

a snake that killed a sparrow and her

eight fledglings, and then was turned

to stone. It signified that Troy would

be taken in the tenth year after a long

struggle. He also prophesied that they

must pacify Artemis by sacrificing

Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigenia.

After that the north-east wind dropped

and the fleet was able to set sail for

Troy.

Inferno Canto XX:100-130. He is mentioned in the eighth circle.

&DOIXFFL

An ancient Florentine family, a branch

of the Donati.

See

the

Inferno Canto XXV:1-33. Cacus

Mentioned.

1072

&DOOLRSH

The Muse of Epic Poetry, the mother

of Orpheus, and the eldest sister of the Muses (see the fuller entry under

Muses). She took the lead in the competition with the Pierides.

Purgatorio Canto I:1-27. Dante asks her to accompany his words.

&DOOLVWRRU+HOLFH

An Arcadian nympth, a favourite of

Artemis-Diana, raped by Jupiter.

Diana expelled her from her company,

and she was changed by Juno into a bear, and hunted by her son Arcas.

Jupiter placed her in the sky as the

constellation of the Bear, Ursa Major,

and Arcas as the constellation of the

little Bear, Ursa Minor, at the pole,

towards which the ‘pointers’ Dubhe

and Merak, of the Great Bear, or

Plough, point as it circles on Polaris

1073

the pole-star. See Ovid’s

Metamorphoses II 409-528.

Purgatorio Canto XXV:109-139. She is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto XXXI:28-63. The Great Bear, circling over the northern

latitudes.

&DOOL[WXV,6DLQWDQG3RSH

Saint Callixtus I, Pope (217-222AD).

Paradiso Canto XXVII:1-66. He died for the faith.

&DPLFFLRQH

See Pazzi.

&DPLOOD

Inferno Canto I:100-111. A virgin warrior, the Roman version of an

Amazon, whose death is described in

Aeneid XI.

1074

Inferno Canto IV:106-129. She is among the heroes and heroines in

Limbo.

&DPLQR*DLDGD

The daughter of Gherardo da Camino.

The reference to her is unclear, and

may refer to her virtue or her lack of it.

Purgatorio Canto XVI:97-145. She is mentioned.

&DPLQR*KHUDUGRGD

Captain-General of Treviso from 1283

till his death in 1306 when he was

succeeded by his son Riccardo.

Gerard’s daughter Gaia died in 1311.

The allusion to her is not understood.

Purgatorio Canto XVI:97-145. He is mentioned.

&DPLQR5LFFDUGRGD

The brother of Gaia, and husband of

Giovanna Visconti, who was

1075

treacherously murdered at Treviso where the rivers Sile and Cagnano

meet, in 1312.

Paradiso Canto IX:1-66. His death is prophesied.

&DQFHOOLHUL)RFDFFLDGH¶

One of the Cancellieri family of

Pistoia, who fomented an internal feud

in which many of his kinsmen died.

This feud was the source of the Blacks

and Whites, the Neri and Bianchi

factions, introduced into Florence also.

Inferno Canto XXXII:40-69. He is in Caïna, in the Ninth Circle.

&DSDQHXV

Inferno Canto XIV:43-72. An Argive chief in the war of the seven against

Thebes who scaled the wall, and was

struck down by Jupiter’s lightning bolt. He was a symbol of pride. (See

Aeschylus: Seven against Thebes)

1076

outdoes him in pride and arrogance.

&DSHW+XJK

King of France (987-996) here

confused with his father Hugh the

Great (Duke of the Franks, Count of

Paris, died 956) who was the supposed

son of a butcher. When Louis V died

in 987, and the Carlovingian Dynasty

ended it was Hugh who succeeded,

and founded the Capetian Dynasty, not

his son and successor Robert I. On Louis V’s death, his uncle Duke

Charles of Lorraine, son of Louis IV, was the only survivor of the

Carlovingian line. He was captured by

Hugh and imprisoned till his death in

991. He was not a monk, and Dante

may have confused him with the last

of the Merovingians Childeric III who

was deposed by Pepin le Bref in 751

and compelled to become a monk.

1077

Between 1060 and 1300 four Philip’s (I-IV) and four Louis’s (VI-IX) ruled

France between them.

Purgatorio Canto XX:43-96. He is among the avaricious.

&DSRFFKLR

A Florentine alchemist, known to

Dante, burnt alive at Siena in 1293.

Inferno Canto XXIX:121-139. He is in the tenth chasm.

Inferno Canto XXX:1-48. He is attacked by Gianni Schicci.

&DSRQVDFFR

An ancient Florentine family.

Mentioned.

&DSXOHWVWKH&DSSHOOHWLRI9HURQD

Purgatorio Canto VI:76-151. Feuded with the Montagues, see Shakespeare’s 1078

Romeo and Juliet for a fictitious recreation of the feuding.

&DULJQDQR$QJLROHOORGD

Malatestino Malatesta of Rimini, the

‘one-eyed traitor’, ‘the young mastiff’,

obtained possession of Fano, and

added it to Rimini. He invited the two

chief nobles Guido del Cassero, and Agniello to meet him at La Cattolica

on the Adriatic between Fano and

Rimini. Their boat was intercepted and

they were drowned off the headland of

Focaro, between Fano and La

Cattolica. The headland was notorious

for its dangerous winds, so much so

that sailors made vows and prayers for

safe passage.

Inferno Canto XXVIII:55-90. Their death is prophesied.

&DUOLQRVHH 3D]]L

1079

&DUSLJQD*XLGRGD

Renowned for his liberality. A

member of a noted family near

Montefeltro. He died between 1270

and 1289.

Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. He is mentioned.

&DVDORGL$OEHUWDGD

The Brescian Counts of Casalodi held

Mantua in 1272 but were unpopular

and threatened with expulsion.

Pinamonte de Buonaccorsi, obtained control, by advising Alberta to banish

the powerful nobles, as a source of

trouble. He then took over, massacred

any opponents, expelled Alberta, and

held Mantua until 1291.

Inferno Canto XX:52-99. Mentioned regarding Mantuan history.

1080

&DVHOOD

A musician of Florence or Pistoia, and

a personal friend of Dante’s, whose

poetry he set to music, including

perhaps this second canzone which

Dante annotated in the Convito. He

died between 1283 and 1300. He

gathers with the dead souls who are

not condemned to the Acheron, at

Rome, the portal of salvation. Since

the Jubilee, which began on Christmas

day 1299, all those who have wished

for grace have been carried to

Purgatory, by the Angel.

Purgatorio Canto II:79-114. He is entering Purgatory.

&DVVHUR*XLGRGHO

Malatestino Malatesta of Rimini, the

‘one-eyed traitor’, ‘the young mastiff’,

obtained possession of Fano, and

added it to Rimini. He invited the two

chief nobles Guido, and

1081

Agniello da Carignano to meet him at La Cattolica on the Adriatic between

Fano and Rimini. Their boat was

intercepted and they were drowned off

the headland of Focaro, between Fano

and La Cattolica. The headland was

notorious for its dangerous winds, so

much so that sailors made vows and

prayers for safe passage.

Inferno Canto XXVIII:55-90. Their death is prophesied.

&DVVHUR-DFRSRGHO

A Guelph from Fano, in the mark of

Ancona, between Romagna and the

Kingdom of Naples, ruled by

Charles II of Anjou. He was Podestà of Bolgna in 1296. He frustrated the

designs on the city of Azzo VII d’Este,

Marquess of Ferrara, incurring Azzo’s

wrath, and exchanged his office for

that of Milan, in 1298. He was

murdered on Azzo’s orders at Oriaco,

1082

near the River Brenta, between Venice and Padua, and died in the marshes

there, while fleeing to La Mira would

have taken him to drier land. The

Paduans are called Antenori from their

founder Antenor . Riccardo da Camino

was one of the assassins.

Purgatorio Canto V:64-84. He is one of the late repentants.

&DVVLXV

With Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius

plotted

assassinate

Julius Caesar, fearful of Caesar’s increasing power, and the death of the

Republic. Caesar was murdered on the

Ides of March in 44BC, in the Hall of

Pompey where the Senate were due to

meet. One of the Casca brothers struck

the first blow, with a sweep of his

dagger just below the throat. In the

ensuing Civil War, Octavian, later

Augustus Caesar, and Mark Antony, 1083

defeated Cassius at the First Battle of Philippi, and Brutus at the Second

Battle of Philippi, in 42BC. Dante

holds him in special opprobrium,

because of his complicity in the

murder of the founder of the Roman

Empire.

Inferno Canto XXXIV:55-69. He is tormented in one of Satan’s mouths.

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in the summary of Imperial history.

&DVWHOOR*XLGRGD

A gentleman of Treviso, noted for his

hospitality and generosity. To the

French the Lombards were tricky, and

often usurers, perhaps the source of his

name, being in contrast, the ‘honest

one’, VLPSOLFH.

Purgatorio Canto XVI:97-145. He is mentioned.

1084

&DVWRUDQG3ROOX[

Purgatorio Canto IV:52-87. The Twins, the Dioscuri, the Gemini,

represented by that constellation of the

Zodiac. They were the twin sons of

Tyndareus and Leda, famous for their

horsemanship, though Pollux

(Polydeuces) may have been Zeus’s

swan-son, and Helen’s brother, while Castor

was mortal and

Clytaemnestra’s brother. Pollux

refused immortality unless his brother

could share it, and Zeus set them

among the stars. They are the saviours

of shipwrecked sailors, and were

worshipped by the Spartans

&DVWURFDUR&RXQWVRI

Ghibellines, based in the stronghold of

Castrocaro, near Forlì

Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. They are mentioned.

1085

&DWDODQR&DWDOLQLRU0DODYROWL

One of the )UDWL *DXGHQWL, or Jovial

Friars, a derisive name for the

&DYDOLHUL GL 6 0DULD (2UGR PLOLWDH

EHDWDH0DULDH) founded at Bologna in

1261, with the approval of Urban IV,

to act as mediators, and protect the

weak. It was disbanded due to its

laxity. Catelano de’ Catalini (or de’

Malavolti) c.1210-1285, and

Loderingo degh Andalò, a Ghibelline, were called to Florence, from Bologna,

in 1266 to act together as Podestà, and

reform the government. They were

accused of hypocrisy and corruption

and expelled. The Gardingo district

(3LD]]D GL )LUHQ]H) the site of the

Uberti Palace, was destroyed in a

rising against the Ghibellines.

Inferno Canto XXIII:82-126. They are in the eighth circle.

1086

&DWLOLQL

An ancient Florentine family. See the

Mentioned.

&DWRRI8WLFD

Marcius Portius Cato, the Younger

(95-46BC), the Republican opponent

of Julius Caesar. He supported

Pompey as the lesser of two evils, and was noted for his honesty and moral

stance. After the battle of Thapsus, in

46 BC, he committed suicide while

governor of Utica near Carthage rather

than fall into enemy hands. This was

regarded as an act of supreme devotion

to liberty. Cato the lawgiver is

depicted with the righteous in Virgil’s

Aeneid VIII 670. Dante derived his

knowledge of Cato from Lucan’s

Pharsalia II 373. Cato’s wife was

Marcia.

1087

Inferno Canto XIV:1-42. Cato crossed the Libyan desert in 47BC, at the head

of Pompey’s army, to meet up with

Juba, King of Numidia. The march is described by Lucan in Pharsalia IX

411 et seq.

Purgatorio Canto I:28-84. The Poets meet him. The Mount of Purgatory is

in Cato’s care.

&DYDOFDQWL&DYDOFDQWHGH¶

The father of the poet

Guido Cavalcanti, is mentioned in Boccaccio’s Decameron VI 9, in a tale

which concerns Guido.

Inferno Canto X:52-72. He is in the Sixth Circle as a heretic.

&DYDOFDQWL)UDQFHVFR*XHUFLRGH¶

Francesco, who changes from serpent

to man, and back, was killed by the

villagers of Gaville, in the upper Val

d’Arno, the murderers and others

1088

being summarily executed by his kinsmen.

Inferno Canto XXV:79-151. He is in the eighth circle.

&DYDOFDQWL*XLGRGH¶

The poet, son of

Cavalcante Cavalcanti, born between 1250 and 1259, was Farinata’s son-in-law, and a prominent White (Bianchi)

Guelf. He married Farinata’ daughter,

Beatrice, during one of the attempts to

forge peace through marriage

alliances. He, ‘the first of my friends’,

and Dante are the chief poets of the

Florentine School of the GROFH VWLO

QXRYH style of lyric poetrythat

superseded the Bolognese school of

Guido Guinicelli. The Vita Nuova was dedicated to Guido. He was exiled

with the Whites (a decision Dante was

party to) in June 1300 to Sarzana in

the Lunigiana. Allowed to return to

1089

Florence, due to illness, caused by the unhealthy locality, he died in the

August and was buried on August

29th, but was still alive at the time of

the Vision itself. He is mentioned in

Bocaccio’s Decameron VI 9.

Inferno Canto X:52-72. His father Cavalcante asks after him. Dante

mentions Guido’s disdain of Virgil,

through poetic preference, political

allegiance, Epicurean principles,

preference for Italian over Latin, or

some other reason.

See

and

Inferno Canto VI:64-93 for an indirect reference.

Purgatorio Canto XI:73-117. Dante expresses the view that he has

surpassed the poetic school of

Guido Guinicelli. (The earlier poet who wrote the lines ‘Love was not

before the gentle heart, nor the gentle

heart before love’)

1090

&HOHVWLQH96DLQWDQG3RSH

Pietro da Morrone, a saintly hermit

from the Abruzzi, was compelled to

become Pope by the Cardinals in 1294,

at the age of eighty. Five months later,

worn out, he abdicated. He was

confined

his

successor

Boniface VIII till his death in 1296.

He was canonised in 1313.

Inferno Canto III:58-69. Celestine is the likeliest candidate, as attested by

Petrarch and others, for he who made

‘il gran rifiuto’.

Inferno Canto XXVII:58-136. Dante again refers to Celestine’s indifference

to the Papal honour.

&HQWDXUV

Fabulous creatures, living in the

mountains of Thessaly, half man and

half horse. They were the sons of

Ixion, and a cloud, in the form of Juno.

1091

They fought violently at the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, at the

marriage feast of Pirithoüs and

Hippodamia, at which Theseus was present. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses

XII 210. Virgil calls them IXUHQWHV in

Georgics ii 45-456.

Inferno Canto XII:49-99. They guard the river of blood in the seventh circle.

Purgatorio Canto XXIV:100-154. The battle is referred to.

&HUEHUXV

The triple headed hound of Hell, with

snakes for hair, and barbed tail, that

guarded the gates of Tartarus. The

foam from his mouth was poisonous.

He was born of Echidne by Typhon.

Associated with the Egyptian god

Anubis, by the Greeks. He was

dragged from Hell by Hercules (The Twelfth Labour) and the foam from

1092

his mouth gave birth to the poisonous plant aconite.

Inferno Canto VI:1-33. He guards the third circle of the gluttonous.

Inferno Canto IX:64-105. His throat is still scarred from Hercules assault on

him.

&HUFKL

See

and

Inferno Canto VI:64-93 for an indirect reference.

Paradiso Canto XVI:46-87. They are mentioned among the ancient

Florentine families. Leaders of the

Whites they originated from Acone in

the Val di Sieve. See

the

Inferno Canto XXXI:1-45 Roland

Mentioned indirectly.

1093

&KDUOHPDJQH(PSHURU

Charles (Born 742, Ruled 768-814

AD), the son of Pepin the Short , King

of the Franks. He conquered the

Langobard kingdom in 773-774, and

extended his empire into Slav territory.

As the Founder of the Holy Roman

Empire, Pope Leo III (795-816)

crowned him Emperor 23-24

December 800, with the Imperial title

‘5RPDQRUXP JXEHUQDQV LPSHULXP ’.

By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in

812, the Eastern Roman Emperor,

Michael I, recognised Charlemagne as

Emperor in exchange for the surrender

of Istria, Venetia, and Dalmatia. He

died at Aix-la-Chapelle in 814 and was

entombed in the Dome. He was the

legendary rebuilder of Florence.

(Orlando) Charlemagne’s nephew, and

the hero of the battle of Roncesvalles,

went down to defeat with his Franks,

1094

fighting against the Saracens, while attempting to hold the valley in

778AD. He blew his horn in

desperation, to alert his uncle eight

miles away, but Charlemagne was

misled by the advice of the traitor

Ganelon, and did not provide aid. The epic is told in the Old French &KDQVRQ

GH 5RODQG, the ‘Song of Roland’,

where the intensity of Roland’s blast

on the horn shattered it. The defeat

allowed Arab incursions into

Narbonne in 793.

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in the summary of Imperial history, as

having protected the Church by use of

Imperial force and right.

Paradiso Canto XVIII:1-57. He is in the Fifth Sphere of Mars.

&KDUOHVRI/RUUDLQH

See Hugh Capet.

1095

&KDUOHV,RI$QMRX.LQJRI1DSOHV

DQG6LFLO\

The brother of Louis IX of France, and Count of Provence. He defeated

Manfred King of Sicily, at Benevento, in 1265, and seized Naples and Sicily,

supported by Pope Clement IV. He

was described as silent, serious and

cold, though not uncultured. He

schemed to bring down the Eastern

Emperor Michael Paleologus, but was

opposed by King Pere II of Aragon whose wife Constance (Constanza)

was Manfred’s daughter. On Easter

Monday 1282 the approaches of a

young French soldier to a young

Sicilian woman in Palermo provoked

his murder by her husband, and, while

the bells called Vespers, it led to a

chain reaction of anti-French

massacres in Sicily. Pere was able to

take advantage of a power vacuum,

and ousted Charles from Sicily. It was

1096

the beginning of the ninety-year ‘War of the Vespers’. He and Peter (Pere)

both died in 1285.

Inferno Canto XIX:88-133. Charles refused to accept one of Pope

Nicholas III’s nieces as a wife for his nephew, and Nicholas deprived

Charles of the office of Senator of

Rome, and accepted money from

Michael Paleologus, helping to fuel

Charles’s anti-Byzantine policy.

Inferno Canto XXVIII:1-21. Manfred

trusted the pass of Ceperano (on the

Liris) to the barons of Apulia, in 1266.

They betrayed the pass to Charles,

leading to Manfred’s defeat and death

at Benevento.

In 1268, at Tagliacozzo, Charles

defeated Conradin, Manfred’s nephew, using reserve troops, on the advice of

Erard de Valéry (Alardo). He married

Beatrice of Provence, and then

Margaret of Burgundy.

1097

Purgatorio Canto VII:64-136. He is one of the negligent rulers. His son

Charles II of Anjou and Naples, is inferior to him.

Purgatorio Canto XI:118-142. He

imprisoned a friend of Provenzan

Salvani.

Purgatorio Canto XX:43-96. He received Provence as a dowry, on

marrying Beatrice in 1246, after the

death of her father Raymond Berenger.

He defeated Conradin, last of the Swabians, at Tagliacozzo. On Oct 29th

1268 two months after his defeat the

seventeen-year-old Conradin was

beheaded, on Charles’s orders.

Charles’s son was Charles the Lame,

who assisted him in trying to retake

Sicily. He was supposed to have had

Thomas Aquinas poisoned in 1274, though this is spurious.

1098

&KDUOHV,,.LQJRI1DSOHV

Carlo Zoppo, Charles the Lame, the

son of Charles I of Anjou. King of Naples (Apulia) and Count of Anjou

and Provence (1243-1309), and alive

at the time of the Vision. Titular King

of Jerusalem, and head of the Italian

Guelphs in 1300.

Purgatorio Canto VII:64-136. Dante regards him as far inferior to his

father.

Purgatorio Canto XX:43-96.

Attempting with his father to regain

Sicily he was captured by Roger di

Loria, the admiral of Peter III of Aragon, near Naples in a naval battle,

and taken prisoner, in June 1284. His

life was spared on the instigation of

Manfred’s daughter Costanza. He was still in captibity in 1285 when he

succeeded his father as King of

Naples. In 1305 he married his

younger daughter Beatrice to Azzo

1099

VIII of Este, Marquis of Ferrara, of evil reputation, and her senior by many

years, presumably for a consideration.

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in the summary of Imperial history,

with disdain.

Paradiso Canto VIII:31-84 . Charles

Martel was his son, who died before him.

Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. He is held as an example of poor kingship.

Paradiso Canto XX:1-72. He is a burden to Naples.

&KDUOHV0DUWHO

Charles (1271-1295) the eldest son of

Charles II of Naples and Mary of Hungary, the daughter of Stephen IV.

Dante probably met him in March

1295 when he visited Florence, and

was popular. He died in the August.

He was married to Clemenz, or Clementina, the daughter of Emperor

1100

Rudolph of Hapsburg, and his line might have reconciled the Guelph and

Ghibelline factions, but his early death

quenched Dante’s hopes. His brother

was Robert Duke of Calabria. His daughter Clemenza married Louis X of

France. His wife Clemenz died in

1296. His son Caroberto became heir to Naples but was ousted by Robert,

his uncle.

Paradiso Canto VIII:31-84. He describes the regions over which he

would have held power including

Provence, of which the Angevin kings

of Naples were Counts; Hungary of

which he had already been crowned

king in 1290 at Naples, holding it from

his mother; and Sicily, which would

already have been his had it not been

for the Sicilian Vespers, in 1282, the

rising in Palermo against the French

that led to rule by the House of

Aragon.

1101

&KDUOHVRI9DORLV

See

Inferno Canto XXIV:130-151.

and

Inferno Canto VI:64-93 for an indirect reference.

Vanni Fucci’s prophecy, covers his involvement in the entry of the Blacks

into Florence in November 1301.

Purgatorio Canto XX:43-96. The brother of Philip IV, the Fair, nicknamed Senzaterra (Lackland, so

called as a younger son or because of

his failures in Sicily in 1302) who

entered Florence in November 1301,

and left in the following April. He

supported the Neri (Blacks) at

Boniface’s instigation, using treachery and perjury to coerce the Signoria, and

left the city, covered with disgrace,

and loaded with plunder, leaving the

Neri in control. The treachery of he

and Philip his brother towards the

1102

Count of Flanders in 1299 was

revenged three years later at Courtrai,

where the Flemish (‘Douay, Lille,

Ghent and Bruges’) routed the French.

&KDUOHV5REHUW&DUREHUW

Paradiso Canto IX:1-66. The son of

Charles Martel and Clemenza. See the entry for Charles.

&KDURQ

The ferryman of the River Acheron in

the Underworld. His price for ferrying

a dead spirit across the river was an

REROXV, a coin, without which the spirit

was doomed to wander the deserted

shore without refuge. The Greeks

placed an REROXV in the mouths of the

dead, as their fare. Acheron, the son of

Gaea, quenched the thirst of the Titans

and was thrown by Zeus into the

Underworld, where he was changed

into the river bearing his name. The

1103

other rivers of the Underworld were the Cocytus a tributary of the Acheron,

with its tributary the Phlegethon, the

Lethe, and the Styx.

Inferno Canto III:70-99. He tells Dante to depart since he is still living.

Inferno Canto III:100-136. He ferries the dead souls over the Acheron.

&KDU\EGLV

The whirlpool in the straits of

Messina. She was the daughter of

Neptune and Earth hurled, by Jupiter’s

thunderbolt, into the sea. The rock

Scylla not mentioned here was nearby

in the other cliff, a dog-like monster

with six heads. To be between Scylla

and Charybdis was to be in dire straits.

(See Ovid’s Metamorphoses XIII 730)

Inferno Canto VII:1-39. Dante compares the dance of the Avaricious

to the waves of Charybdis’s whirlpool.

1104

&KLDUDPRQWHVL'XUDQWHGH¶

An ancient Florentine family. See the

Purgatorio Canto XXI:1-33. He

Mentioned in connection with

falsification of the measures. See

note to Purgatorio.

&KLURQ

The wise Centaur, son of Saturn and Philyra, to whom Apollo entrusted his

son Aesculapius, and who variously

reared Jason, and Achilles. He was wounded by one of Hercules’s

poisoned arrows, but could not die

because he was immortal. Prometheus

accepted immortality in his stead to

allow him to end his suffering.

Inferno Canto XII:49-99. Chiron appoints Nessus to guide them in the seventh circle.

Purgatorio Canto IX:34-63. He is mentioned.

1105

&KULVW

Inferno Canto IV:1-63. The Saviour, whose name is not mentioned

explicitly in the Inferno. Dante follows

the legend that Christ descended to

Hell in the year 33AD (fifty two years

after Virgil’s death and entry into

Limbo).

Inferno Canto XII:28-48. The earth shook at his death, prior to his descent

into Hell. See Matthew xxvii 51.

Inferno Canto XXXIV:70-139. Christ is the symbol of Divine Humanity,

sinless from birth.

Purgatorio Canto VI:76-151. Dante calls God, incarnate in Christ, the

highest Jove (Jupiter), thereby

identifying supreme Empire and law

with the Deity, while superseding the

Pagan Gods.

1106

Purgatorio Canto XX:43-96. The Pope is his Vicar on earth. His trial and

crucifixion is referred to.

offered

water

the

woman of Samaria. See John iv 7-15.

Purgatorio Canto XXI:1-33. He

appeared at Emmaus after the

Resurrection. See Luke xxiv 13-15.

Purgatorio Canto XXIII:37-90. On the cross, Christ cried out: ‘(OF (OF ODPD

VDEDFKWKDQL? that is to say, My God,

My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’

Matthew xxviii 46, Mark xv 34.

Purgatorio Canto XXXI:70-90. He is represented by the Grifon in the

Divine Pageant.

Purgatorio Canto XXXII:64-99. At the Transfiguration, see Matthew xviii 1-8

Christ shone like the sun in white

raiment, and Moses and Elias appeared talking with him, and after they were

overcome he said ‘Arise, and be not

1107

afraid’. Christ is the apple-tree, in accord with the Song of Solomon ii 3,

‘As the apple tree among the trees of

the wood, so is my beloved among the

sons.’

Paradiso Canto VII:1-54. The Crucifixion was both supreme justice

exacted on human nature for the Fall,

and supreme injustice when the person

on whom it fell is considered.

Paradiso Canto IX:67-126. Rahab, the prostitute, symbol of the Church, who

was the first to welcome Joshua into what became Israel, was the first spirit

snatched up to Heaven at Christ’s

triumph.

Paradiso Canto XI:1-42. As the Bridegroom of the Church.

Paradiso Canto XI:43-117.

Saint Francis exhibited the five wounds of Christ, as stigmata, and

bore the marks for two years.

1108

Paradiso Canto XIII:91-142. Christ is Humanity’s delight and joy.

Paradiso Canto XIV:67-139. Dante’s vision of Christ on the Cross.

Paradiso Canto XXV:1-63. He is referred to as Jèsu.

Paradiso Canto XXV:97-139. The Pelican, supposed to feed its young

with its own blood, is a symbol of

Christ. He with the Virgin alone ascended to Heaven in body as well as

in spirit. Enoch and Elijah were only elevated to the Earthly Paradise.

&KU\VRVWRP6DLQW-RKQ

John Chrysostom, or Golden Mouth (c

344-407) Archbishop of

Constantinople, of fearless eloquence,

who denounced the vices of the Court

and was persecuted and exiled by the

Empress Eudoxia.

Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is in the Fourth Sphere of the Sun.

1109

&LDFFR

A Florentine, Ciacco (KRJ), was a

contemporary of Dante. He was

renowned for his gluttony, and is

mentioned in a story in Bocaccio’s

Decameron (ix.8). He is said to have

died in 1286.

Canto VI:34-63. He is punished in the third circle, of the gluttonous.

&LDPSROR

A member of the household of,

Teobaldo II, Thibaut V Count of Champagne, King of Navarre (1253-1270), son of the poet-king Thibaut I

mentioned by Dante in his 'H9XOJDUL

(ORTXHQWLD. (see Blake’s engraving,

‘Ciampolo tormented by Devils’,

British Museum, London)

Inferno Canto XXII:31-75. He is in the eighth circle of barrators.

1110

Inferno Canto XXII:76-96. He names other barrators with him.

Inferno Canto XXII:97-123. He tricks the demons.

&LDQIDVHH 'RQDWL

&LDQJHOODGHOOD7RVD

Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. A

notorious shrew who married an

Imolese.

&LPDEXH

Giovanno Cimabue, the great

Florentine painter (c1240-c1302).

Purgatorio Canto XI:73-117. He was surpassed by his pupil Giotto.

&LQFLQQDWXV

Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus, dictator

458 and 439BC. His name derives

from the word FLQFLQQXV, a curl of hair.

He conquered the Aequians.

1111

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in the summary of Imperial history.

Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. The type of the good citizen.

&LQ\UDV

Inferno Canto XXX:1-48. Myrrha the daughter of Cinyras, a Cyprian king,

the son of Pygmalion, conceived an incestuous passion for him, and in

darkness, using an assumed name,

entered his bed. She conceived

Adonis, and was changed into the

myrrh-tree from which Adonis was

born. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses X

299.

&LUFH

The witch, the daughter of Titan and

Perse, who lived on the ‘island’ of

Aeaea (Cape Circeo, on the coast of

western Italy). She bewitched the

followers of Ulysses, and delayed him 1112

on her island. See Ovid’s

Metamorphoses XIV 247,and Homer’s

Odyssey.

Inferno Canto XXVI:85-142. She is mentioned.

Purgatorio Canto XIV:28-66. She is mentioned.

&LULDWWRDGHPRQ

Inferno Canto XXI:97-139. A demon guarding the eighth circle, the fifth

chasm, of the barrators.

Inferno Canto XXII:31-75. He

torments Ciampolo.

&ODUH6DLQW

Chiari Scifi of Assisi, now known as

Santa Clara, Saint Clare (c1194-1253),

the friend and disciple of Saint Francis

of Assisi, who founded the order of

Franciscan nuns known as the ‘Poor

Clares’ (The Order wore a grey habit,

1113

with white coif covered with black veil)

Paradiso Canto III:97-130. She is higher in Heaven than Piccarda.

&OHPHQW,93RSH

Purgatorio Canto III:103-145. He had

Manfred’s body disinterred and reburied, with the rites of

excommunication, outside the Papal

territory.

&OHPHQW93RSH

Inferno Canto XIX:31-87. Bertrand de Got (Goth), Archbishop of Bordeaux,

elected Pope in 1305, through the

support of Philip IV, the Fair, of France. He transferred the Papal See to

Avignon where it remained until 1377.

He died eleven years after Boniface

VIII in 1314.

Paradiso Canto XVII:1-99.

Encouraged the Emperor Henry VII’s

1114

expedition to Italy but was disloyal to him.

Paradiso Canto XXVII:1-66. An indirect reference to the Gascon Pope.

Paradiso Canto XXX:97-148.

Supported Henry VII and then turned

away from him. His place in Hell is

reserved.

&OHPHQ]ZLIHRI&KDUOHV0DUWHO

Paradiso Canto IX:1-66. Dante addresses her, living, though she is

assumed to have died in 1295. She was

the daughter of the Emperor Rudolph.

She was the mother of Caroberto.

&OHRSDWUD

Cleopatra VII, Queen of Ptolemaic

Egypt (68-30BC, r.51-30BC). Of

Macedonian origin. She had a child

Caesarion with Julius Caesar and married Mark Antony, committing suicide on his death following the lost

1115

battle of Actium. She had twins by Antony, namely Cleopatra Selene, and

Alexander Helios.

Inferno Canto V:52-72. She is a carnal sinner in Limbo.

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in the summary of Imperial history.

&OHWXV6DLQWDQG3RSH

Saint Cletus, Pope (76-88AD).

Paradiso Canto XXVII:1-66. He died for the faith.

&OLR

The Muse of History, one of the nine

Musae the daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory), and

patronesses of the liberal arts. Their

haunts were Mount Helicon and

Mount Parnassus, and their sacred

springs were Aganippe and

Hippocrene on Helicon, and Castalia

on Parnassus. Statius’s Thebaid begins 1116

with an invocation to her, setting the Pagan, not Christian, tone of the poem.

Purgatorio Canto XXII:55-93. She is mentioned.

&ORWKR

One of the Three Fates, the Moerae,

whom Erebus and Night conceived:

Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. Atropos is the smallest but the most terrible.

Clotho spins the thread of life,

Lachesis measures it out, and Atropos

‘she who cannot be avoided or turned’

shears it. At Delphi only two fates

were worshipped of Birth and Death.

Dante here has Lachesis as the spinner,

and Clotho apparently as the measurer,

or Clotho is both and the syntax is

misleading.

Purgatorio Canto XXI:1-33. She is mentioned.

1117

&O\PHQH

Paradiso Canto XVII:1-99. The daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. The

wife of the Ethiopian king Merops.

She was loved by Apollo and bore him

Phaethon, who came to her to ask for the truth about his paternity. See

Ovid’s Metamorphoses I 756 et seq.

&RQLR&RXQWVRI

Ghelphs, based in the stronghold of

Conio, near Forlì. Conio was ruled by

the Barbiano family, and Count

Alberigo da Barbiano of Conio was a

famous condottiere in the next epoch,

who won the battle of Marino in 1379.

One of St Catherine’s letters is

addressed to him.

Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. They are mentioned.

&RQUDGVHH 0DODVSLQD DQG3DOD]]R

1118

&RQUDG,,,(PSHURU

The son of Rudolph II of Burgundy,

raised at the Saxon

Court.

Hohenstaufen leader of the Second

Crusade (1147-1149) with Louis VII

of France . Emperor from 1137-1152.

Paradiso Canto XV:88-148.

Cacciaguida served him.

&RQUDGLQ

The son of Conrad IV of Germany

(1250-1254), he was defeated at

Tagliacozzo in 1268 and executed at

Naples, at the age of seventeen.

Purgatorio Canto XX:43-96. He is mentioned.

&RQVWDQFH(PSUHVV

Purgatorio Canto III:103-145. The wife of Frederick II, and grandmother of Manfred. She was the daughter of King Roger II, and heiress of the

Norman House of Tancred that

1119

conquered Sicily and Southern Italy from the Saracens in the eleventh

century, and so of the crown of ‘the

Two Sicilies’ (Naples and Sicily).

Paradiso Canto III:97-130. She had married Henry son of Frederick

Barbarossa

in 1186, who was

afterwards Emperor Henry VI, and bore him Frederick, later Emperor

Frederick II. Frederick Barbarossa, Henry and Frederick II were the three

stormwinds of Suabia. She assumed

the regency for her son, after Henry’s

death at the early age of 32. She died

in 1198. Dante follows the tradition

that she had been a nun, and had been

forced to make a political marriage

against her will.

&RQVWDQFH &RVWDQ]D 4XHHQ RI

$UDJRQ

Purgatorio Canto III:103-145. The daughter of Manfred, and wife of Peter

1120

(Pere) III of Aragon, who avenged Manfred’s death by conquering Sicily

in 1282, after the Sicilian Vespers,

taking it from Charles of Anjou.

Purgatorio Canto VII:64-136. She was the mother of James II, King of Aragon, and Frederick II, King of Sicily (both were reigning in 1300).

&RQVWDQWLQHWKH*UHDW

The ruler of the Western Roman

Empire (lived c280-337) after his

victory over Maxentius at the Milvian

Bridge on the Tiber in 312 AD. The

son of Helena. He defeated Licinius at

Adrianople and Chrysopolis in 324,

becoming sole ruler of the eastern and

western empire (WRWLXV

RUELV

LPSHUDWRU) Byzantium was renamed

Constantinople in 330 and made the

second Rome, and the Christian capital

as he had embraced Christianity. He

died in 337 after receiving baptism on

1121

his deathbed. He consolidated

Diocletian’s structure of the absolute

state, to emphasise the divine nature of

the Emperor.

Inferno Canto XIX:88-133. The Donation of Constantine was a forged

document of the Middle Ages, in

which Pope Sylvester I was supposed to have cured Constantine of leprosy,

he then resolving to transfer his capital

to Constantinople, leaving the Pope

with temporal power in Italy. Dante

saw this as the source of the fatal

involvement of the Church in temporal

power, and as a consequence the

Empire’s involvement in coveting the

spiritual power of the Church. He

considered the Donation invalid as the

Emperor could not relinquish temporal

power, nor could the Pope receive it.

(See Dante 'H0RQDUFKLD iii 10 etc)

Inferno Canto XXVII:58-136. The cure of his leprosy mentioned.

1122

Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. He is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto XX:1-72. He is in the sixth sphere of Jupiter.

&RQWL*XLGLWKH

Lords of Montemurlo which they sold

to Florence in 1254.

Paradiso Canto XVI:46-87. They are mentioned

among the ancient

Florentine families.

&RUQHOLD

The daughter of Scipio Africanus

(Publius Cornelius Scipio Major), and

the wife of Tiberius Sempronius

Gracchus, and mother of Tiberius and

Caius the two famous tribunes, the

Gracchi. A type of the noble Roman

woman. She claimed that ‘her sons

were her jewels’.

1123

Inferno Canto IV:106-129. She is among the heroes and heroines in

Limbo.

Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. She is mentioned as a type of the good

woman.

&RUQHWR5LQLHULGD

A notorious highwayman of Dante’s

time.

Inferno Canto XII:100-139 He is in the seventh circle.

&RVHQ]D%LVKRSRI

Purgatorio Canto III:103-145. He

disinterred Manfred’s body from the cairn at Benevento and re-interred it

across the Verde (Garigliano) outside

the kingdom of Naples, with all the

rites of excommunication, on the

orders of Pope Clement IV.

1124

&RVWDQ]D VHH &RQVWDQFH 4XHHQ RI $UDJRQ

&UDVVXV

Marcus Licinius Crassus, surnamed

'LYHV, the Wealthy, triumvir with

Caesar and Pompey in 60BC. He was notorious for his love of gold, and

being killed in battle with the

Parthians, their King Orodes

(Hyrodes) poured molten gold down

his throat. (Florus, (SLWRPH iii 2)

Purgatorio Canto XX:97-151. He is mentioned.

&UHVD

The wife of Aeneas, lost at Troy. See Virgil’s Aeneid II 735.

Paradiso Canto IX:67-126 . Dido’s love for Aeneas wrongs her memory.

&XQL]]DVHH 5RPDQR

1125

&XSLG

The love-god, the son of Venus-

Aphrodite. Called Cupido or Amor.

The archer whose arrows cause desire

in those they hit.

Paradiso Canto VIII:1-30. He is mentioned.

&XULR

Inferno Canto XXVIII:91-111.

Advised by Curio, according to Lucan

(see Pharsalia i. 281) Caesar crossed the Rubicon (‘LDFWD DOHD HVW – the die

is cast’), near Rimini, and declared

war by that act against the Republic in

49BC. The Rubicon was at that time

the boundary between Italy and

Cisalpine Gaul.

&\FORSHV

A fabulous race of giants on the coast

of Sicily, with one eye in the centre of

their foreheads.

1126

Inferno Canto XIV:43-72. They forged

Jupiter’s lightning bolts in the fires of Mount Aetna on Sicily.

&\UXV

King of the Medes and Persians,

defeated by the Massagetae in 529 BC.

Tomyris, the Scythian Queen, cut off his head and threw it into a cauldron of

blood. See the entry for Tomyris.

Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. He is mentioned.

'DHGDOXV

Inferno Canto XVII:79-136. The Athenian artificer who made the

labyrinth at Cnossos, for the Cretan

king Minos. The father of Icarus, he made waxen wings, in order for them

to escape from Crete. Flying too near

the sun Icarus’s wings melted and he

fell into the sea. He was buried on the

island of Icaria, and the Icarian Sea

1127

and the island, were named after him.

See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VIII 195.

Inferno Canto XXIX:100-120. He is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto VIII:85-148. The type of the artificer, the inventor and

craftsman.

'DPLDQVHH 3HWHU

'DQLHO

An Israelite, taken up by

Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, after his

capture of Jerusalem. He interpreted

the king’s dreams and himself saw

prophetic visions. He initially refused

the king’s meat and wine. See Daniel i

8 and 17.

Purgatorio Canto XXII:115-154. He is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto IV:1-63. He divined the king’s dream and interpreted it as

1128

well, as Beatrice divines and answers Dante’s doubts. See Daniel ii.

Paradiso Canto XXIX:127-145. Daniel vii 10 indicates the vastness of the

Angel multitude.

'DQWH

For the history of the period

immediately after the Vision,

involving Dante’s exile, see Ciacco’s

prophecy.

Inferno Canto X:73-93 . Farinata warns him of his long exile, telling him that

not fifty moons will pass before he

learns how hard it is to return from

banishment. The date of the Vision is

April 1300, and Dante’s efforts at

return were thwarted by the failure of

Pope Benedict XI, who succeeded

Boniface to achieve reconciliation in early 1304. Benedict visited Florence

but left on June 4th leaving the

rebellious city under an interdict. It

1129

was less than fifty one lunar months before Dante’s efforts at return failed,

suggesting a communication with

Benedict (Dante was acting as

secretary then to Allessandro da

Romano, of the old Ghibelline family

of the Counts Guidi, who was the

leader of the Ghibellines in exile)

some time in March or early April.

Inferno Canto XIX:1-30. Dante broke one of the SR]]HWWL or round holes that

surrounded the font in the Baptistery

(St John) in Florence, to help a child

(said to have been Antonio the son of

Baldinaccio de’ Cavicciuoli). Dante

explains here, to counter charges,

presumably of sacrilege made against

him.

Inferno Canto XXI:59-96. Dante indicates he was present at the

surrender of the Pisan fortress of

Caprona, besieged by the Tuscan

1130

Guelphs in August 1289. He fought at Campaldino later that year.

Inferno Canto XXII:1-30. He indicates that he saw the campaigning in Aretine

territory (in 1289 also?).

Purgatorio Canto XXIV:34-99.

Bonagiunta quotes the opening line of the famous first canzone of the 9LWD

1XRYD.

Purgatorio Canto XXX:49-81.

Beatrice speaks his name.

Purgatorio Canto XXX:82-145. She refers indirectly to his work the 9LWD

1XRYD, his early tribute to her

memory. He first saw her in May

1274, and she died in June 1290 in her

twenty-fifth year on the threshold of

her second age of life.

Paradiso Canto V:85-139. Dante, entering the sphere of Mercury that rules Gemini his birth-sign, comments

on his own mercurial nature, subject to

change and inconstancy.

1131

Paradiso Canto VIII:31-84. The spirit of Charles Martel quotes Dante’s own opening line of the first canzone of the

Convivio.

Paradiso Canto XXIV:115-154. In the Metaphysics Aristotle shows that the prime Mover, which causes motion but

is not itself moved, must be eternal,

must be substantial, and actual, the

prime object of desire, and of

intellectual apprehension. From these

five attributes Aquinas builds his five proofs of the existence of God.

Dante confirms his belief in the

Trinity. The sources in the Testaments

are chiefly: in the OT the plural form

of the word for God, the use of the

plural in Genesis i 26, the threefold cry

in Isaiah vi 3: in the NT the baptism

formula in Matthew xviii 19, the text

of the three heavenly witnesses in First

Epistles of John v 7 (Vulgate and AV),

and the threefold formula in Romans

1132

xi 36: but the Unity of the Trinity is the breath behind the word throughout

according to Petrus Lombardus and

others.

Paradiso Canto XXV:1-63. Dante refused to accept a laurel crown at

Bologna in 1318, invited to do so by

Giovanni del Virgilio, hoping to return

still to Florence, and be crowned there.

'DSKQH

Paradiso Canto I:1-36. Apollo loved Daphne, the daughter of the river-god

Peneus (hence Peneian), who was

changed into a laurel-tree by the river-

god, as Apollo pursued her. He then

adopted her laurel as the sacred tree

whose leaves would crown his lyre etc.

See Ovid’s Metamorphoses I 452-548.

'DWL%RQWXURGH¶

Inferno Canto XXI:31-58. Head of the popular party in Lucca, and the worst

1133

barrator or abuser of office in the city.

Dante’s comment is ironic,

presumably since Bonturo was loudest

to deny the offence.

'DYLG

The King of Israel. The son of Jesse,

anointed by Samuel. See the Bible, First and Second Samuel, and First

Kings. The type of the pious King.

Inferno Canto IV:1-63. Christ takes his spirit from Limbo into Paradise.

Inferno Canto XXVIII:112-142. King David’s Gilonite counsellor from

Giloh, Ahitophel, see Second Samuel

xv-xviii, conspired with David’s son

Absalom against the King, and subsequently hanged himself when his

counsel was not followed. Absalom

was killed at the battle in the wood of

Ephraim, and David mourned for him,

saying ‘O my son Absalom, my son,

my son Absalom! Would God I had

1134

died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!’

Purgatorio Canto X:46-72. He danced before the Ark of the Covenant, in an

act of humility and worship. See the

Second Book of Samuel vi 6.

Paradiso Canto XX:1-72. He is in the sixth sphere of Jupiter. David is the

earthly ancestor of Christ, born at the

time when Aeneas came into Italy, so making manifest the Divine ordination

of the Roman Empire.

Paradiso Canto XXV:64-96. Dante refers to the Vulgate, the Psalm of

David ix 10.

Paradiso Canto XXXII:1-36. The great-grandson of Ruth. The ‘singer’

of Psalm 51, the Miserere.

'HFLLWKH

See Justinians’ Empire.

1135

'HLDQLUD

The daughter of Oeneus, king of

Calydon, and the sister of Meleager.

She was wooed and won by Hercules,

and unwittingly caused the death of

Hercules, through the shirt of Nessus.

Inferno Canto XII:49-99. She is mentioned.

'HLGDPLD

Inferno Canto XXVI:43-84 Achilles

was discovered in hiding on Scyros,

where his mother Thetis had concealed him, at the court of Lycomedes.

Deidamia fell in love with him there,

and bore him a son, and died of grief

when he left.

Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. She is in Limbo. One of the people celebrated

by Statius in his epic poetry.

1136

'HwSKLOH'HLSK\OH

The daughter of King Adrastus of

Argos, wife of Tydeus, and mother of

Diomede.

Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. She is in Limbo. One of the people celebrated

by Statius in his epic poetry.

'HPRFULWXV

The Greek philosopher, of Aldera,

d.361 BC, who developed Leucippus’s

ideas of Atomism. Aristotle said that

‘they make all things number, and

produce them from numbers’,

indicating a quantitative theory which

did not require a ‘prime mover’. He

was influential in the development of

the theory of knowledge, and of ethics,

where he maintained a theory of the

harmony of well being of the ethical

man, who chooses ‘the goods of the

soul’. Dante regards him as having

1137

taught that the world arises from chance arrangements of atoms.

Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among the philosophers in Limbo.

'HPRSKR|Q

Phyllis, the daughter of the Thracian King Sithon (living near Mount

Rhodope in Thrace) was loved by

Demophoön, King of Melos,the son of

Theseus and Phaedra. He failed to keep his promise to return to her, and

when he did eventually return to find

her she had comitted suicide, but had

been transformed into an almond tree

by Athene. (See Burne-Jones painting

‘The Tree of Forgiveness’, Lever Art

Gallery, Port Sunlight, Merseyside,

England) See Ovid’s Heroides.

Paradiso Canto IX:67-126. He is mentioned.

1138

'LDQDVHH$UWHPLV

'LGR

The mythical Queen of Phoenician

Carthage, probably an incarnation of

Astarte the Great Goddess, who loved

Aeneas and committed suicide when

he deserted her. She broke faith with

the memory of her dead husband

Sychaeus for him. (See the Aeneid i of

Virgil, and Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage.)

Inferno Canto V:52-72. She is a carnal sinner in Limbo.

Inferno Canto V:70-142. Paolo and

Francesca are among her companions.

Purgatorio Canto XX:97-151. Her brother was Pygmalion, King of Tyre.

See Aeneid i 350 where he is the

murderer of Sychaeus.

Paradiso Canto VIII:1-30. Cupid sat in her lap disguised as Aeneas’s son, 1139

Ascanius, and inspired her with love for Aeneas. See Virgil’s Aeneid I 650.

Paradiso Canto IX:67-126. Her love of Aeneas wronged the memory of

Sichaeus and Aeneas’s wife Creüsa.

'LRJHQHV

The Cynic, Diogenes of Sinope d. 323

BC a follower of Antisthenes, who

was the founder of the School of the

Dog, and who taught in the

Gymnasium known as the Kynosarges.

He spent most of his life in Athens

after being banished and died in

Corinth. He called himself the Dog

and held up animal life as a model for

human beings, and the barbarians as

better than the civilised. His task was

the UHFRLQLQJ of values. He advocated

a positive asceticism in order to attain

freedom, and deliberately flouted

convention doing in public what

should be done in private. He called

1140

himself a FLWL]HQ RI WKH ZRUOG, and famously replied to Alexander’s

request as to what he needed ‘for you

to stand out of my light’.

Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among the philosophers in Limbo.

'LRQH

The daughter of Oceanus and Tethys,

or of Earth and Air, and the mother of

Venus-Aphrodite. Originally an oak-goddess at Dodona.

Paradiso Canto VIII:1-30. She is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto XXII:100-154. The mother of Venus-Aphrodite.

'LRPHGH

The Greek hero, the son of Tydeus,

King of Argos, and the companion of

Ulysses at Troy. See Homer, The Iliad, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses XIV, XV

et al.

1141

Inferno Canto XXVI:43-84. He is in the eighth circle, eighth chasm.

'LRQ\VLXV .LQJRI3RUWXJDO

King of Portugal (1279-1325).

Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. He is held as an example of poor kingship.

'LRQ\VLXVWKH$HURSDJLWH

See Acts vii, to whom were ascribed

certain mystical writings, especially

one on the &HOHVWLDO+LHUDUFK\ which

were possibly composed in the fifth or

sixth century.

Paradiso Canto X:100-129. He is in the fourth sphere of Prudence.

Paradiso Canto XXVIII:94-139. The mystical sixth century writings of the

pseudo-Dionysius were ascribed to the

Aeropagite, Saint Paul’s convert on Mars’s hill. Dionysius was supposed

to have learned of the hierarchies and

other matters from Saint Paul, who had

1142

seen them when rapt up into the third heaven.

'LRQ\VLXVWKH7\UDQWRI6\UDFXVH

The Elder, tyrant of Syracuse (405-

367BC). He led the Greek cities of

Sicily in resistance to the

Carthaginians.

Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is in the seventh circle, the first ring.

'LRVFRULGHV

The Greek physician and author of a

work on 0DWHULD 0HGLFD particularly

botany, who lived about 50AD.

Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among the group of wise men in

Limbo.

'LVVHH 6DWDQ

1143

'ROFLQR)ULDU

A native of Novara, he became head of

the sect of The Apostolic Brothers,

after the death of its founder Segarelli

in 1300. They were purists, but were

accused of heresies, such as the

treating of women and goods as

common. Clement V ordered a crusade against the sect in 1305, and they fled

to the hills between Novara and

Vercelli, but were forced into

surrender. Dolcino and Margaret of

Trent, held to be his mistress, were

burned alive at Vercelli in June 1307.

Inferno Canto XXVIII:55-90. He is in the ninth chasm as a sower of dissent.

'RPLQLF6DLQW

Saint Dominic (Guzman) (1170-1221)

the founder of the Order of Preachers,

called Dominican or Black Friars. He

was born at Calahorra in Spain of

noble parentage. As a young man he

1144

became a canon and preached against heresy. He was active among the

Albigensians, trying to convert by

persuasion, as Simon de Montfort was

perpetrating

his massacres. He

preached throughout Europe and died

in Bologna.

Paradiso Canto X:64-99. He is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto XI:1-42. He is mentioned. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican.

Paradiso Canto XI:118-139. He is mentioned.

Paradiso Canto XII:37-105. His

mother Giovanna Guzman dreamed before his birth that she was whelping

a dog with a burning torch in his

mouth that would set the world on fire.

His godmother had a dream in which

she saw a star on his forehead

illuminating the earth. He founded the

Order at of Dominicans or Friars

1145

Preachers at Toulouse in 1215. He tried to convert the Albigensian

heretics, and stimulated the study of

theology in the universities.

'RPLWLDQ

The Roman Emperor (81-96AD) who

completed the conquest of Britain. His

initially benevolent rule became

despotic (he claimed the title 'RPLQXV

HW 'HXV, Master and God) and led to

his murder after a palace conspiracy.

He took action (for ‘atheism and

Jewish sympathies’ says Dio) against

Titus Flavius Clemens, consul in 95,

and his wife Domitilla whom the

fourth century Christian tradition

counted as a Christian. Domitian was

accused by Eusebius and Tertullian of

Christian persecution, but there is little

or no evidence extant.

Purgatorio Canto XXII:55-93. He is mentioned, adversely.

1146

'RQDWL%XRVR

A noble Florentine, and a thief.

Inferno Canto XXV:79-151.

mutates into a serpent. See Blake’s

Watercolour ‘Buoso Donati attacked

by the Serpent’, Tate Gallery, London.

(It may be Buoso degh Abati who is intended.)

Inferno Canto XXX:1-48. His son Simone caused Gianni Schicci to impersonate his father, Buoso, and

forge a will.

'RQDWL&LDQID

A Florentine noble, and a thief.

Inferno Canto XXV:34-78. He appears as a six-footed serpent.

'RQDWL&RUVR

See

Purgatorio Canto XXIV:34-99 . Forese

and

Inferno Canto VI:64-93 for an indirect reference.

1147

Donati, his brother, predicts his end.

Corso was Podestà of Bologna, in

1283 and 1288, and of Pistoia, in

1289, and leader of the Florentine

Neri. He went to Rome in 1300, and

induced Boniface

to bring in

Charles de Valois to broker a peace in Florence between the exiled factions.

Charles favoured the Blacks, and

Corso then tried to gain supreme

power. Suspected of intrigue with his

father-in-law Ugucione della

Faggiuola the Ghibelline captain, and

the papal legate Napoleone Orsini, to

overthrow the government, and

become lord of Florence, he was

condemned to death when the plot was

discovered (on October 6th 1308). He

fled through the Porta Santa Croce but

was overtaken and killed by Catalan

mercenaries in the service of the King

of Naples. He was said to have thrown

1148

himself from his horse and been lanced to death on the ground. Dante

develops this.

'RQDWL)RUHVH

Dante’s friend, Forese di Simone

Donati, the brother of Corso and

Piccarda. He was nicknamed Bicci Novello, and died on July 28th1296.

He was a distant relative of Dante’s

wife Gemma Donati.

His own wife was Nella.

Purgatorio Canto XXIII:37-90. He is among the gluttonous.

'RQDWL3LFFDUGD

The daughter of Simone Donati, and

the sister of Forese Donati, Dante’s friend, and of Corso Donati.

Purgatorio Canto XXIV:1-33. She is mentioned, as being in Paradise.

Paradiso Canto III:34-60. She is in the sphere of the Moon, placed there for

1149

neglect of her vows. She had taken the habit of the Poor Clares in the convent at Florence, and was forcibly abducted

from there by Corso her brother in

1288 or thereabouts, and compelled to

marry Rosselino della Tosa, a

turbulent noble of the Black faction.

She died shortly afterwards.

'RQDWL8EHUWLQR

Ubertino Donati, the ancestor of

Dante’s wife Gemma, had married one

of the daughters of Bellincion Berti, a sister of Gualdrada, and strongly objected to his father-in-law giving the

hand of a third daughter to one of the

Adimari. A fourth daughter may have been the wife of Dante’s great-grandfather Alighiero I.

Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. His

Mentioned.

1150

'RQDWXV

Aelius Donatus wrote an elementary

Latin Grammar in the fourth century.

Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is in the Fourth Sphere of the Sun.

'RULD'¶2ULD%UDQFD

The son-in-law of Michel Zanche,

whom he murdered. He was a member

of the famous Ghibelline family from

Genoa, and the murder took place at a

banquet to which he had invited his

father-in-law. He was still alive in

1300, the date of the Vision.

Inferno Canto XXII:76-96. Zanche is in the eighth circle.

'UDJKLJQD]]RDGHPRQ

Inferno Canto XXI:97-139. A demon guarding the eighth circle, the fifth

chasm, of the barrators.

Inferno Canto XXII:31-75. He wants to torment Ciampolo.

1151

'XFD*XLGRGHO

A Ghibelline of Bertinoro, of the

Onesti family of Ravenna, who was

judge to the Podestà of Rimini in

1199. He was a follower of the

Ghibelline leader Pier Traversaro.

Pier, aided by the Mainardi of

Bertinoro, obtained power in Ravenna

and drove the Guelphs out. The

Guelphs then attacked Bertinoro,

destroyed the Mainardi houses, and

expelled Pier’s followers. Guido was

one, following Pier to Ravenna, and

still alive there in 1229.

Purgatorio Canto XIV:1-27. He is among the envious.

invective against Romagna.

'XHUD%XRVRGD

Bribed by the French, Buoso leader of

the Cremonese, treacherously allowed

1152

Charles of Anjou entry to Parma, in 1266, at the beginning of his campaign

against Manfred, who had organised its resistance.

Inferno Canto XXXII:70-123. He is in the Ninth Circle.

(FKR

A nymph who loved Narcissus, who was deprived of the ability to initiate

speech by Juno, and wasted away with unrequited love until she became a

mere voice repeating the last words

she heard uttered. See Ovid’s

Metamorphoses III 358-493.

Paradiso Canto XII:1-36. She is mentioned.

(GZDUG,.LQJRI(QJODQG

King of England (1272-1307) in 1300,

the date of the Vision.

Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. Dante refers to the wars against the Scots.

1153

Edward claimed the crown of Scotland and suppressed William Wallace’s

popular uprising. Later Scotland

obtained national independence under

Robert the Bruce, at Bannockburn, in

1314. Edward is held as an example of

poor kingship.

(JLGLXV*LOHV)ULDU

The third companion of Saint Francis.

His sayings were collected in the

9HUED$XUHD. He died in 1261.

Paradiso Canto XI:43-117. He is mentioned.

(OHDQRU ZLIH RI +HQU\ ,,, RI

(QJODQG

See Henry III.

(OHFWUD

The Pleiad, and mother by Zeus of

Dardanus founder of Troy. She was, in

one version, the seventh star of the

1154

Pleiades that was said to have disappeared in grief for the destruction

of Troy and the house of Dardanus.

The Palladium, or effigy of Pallas

Athene was cast down with Electra

from Olympus by Athene, when Zeus

had violated Electra and she had

defiled the statue with her touch.

Electra gave it to her son Dardanus.

Inferno Canto IV:106-129. She is among the heroes and heroines in

Limbo.

(OLDV

A name for Elijah, used in the Gospels.

Purgatorio Canto XXXII:64-99. At the Transfiguration, see Matthew xviii 1-8, Christ shone like the sun in white

raiment, and Moses and Elias appeared talking with him.

1155

(OLMDKWKH3URSKHW

The prophet, who opposed the cult of

Baal among the Israelites. He lived as

a hermit on Mount Carmel, according

to legend, and was regarded by the

Carmelites as a founder of their order.

He mounted to Heaven in a fiery

chariot. See Second Kings ii 11

Inferno Canto XXVI:1-42. He is mentioned.

(OLVHREURWKHURI&DFFLDJXLGD

Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. He is mentioned.

(OLVKD

The Old Testament prophet, who

witnessed Elijah’s ascension to Heaven. He was mocked by little

children near Beth-el, and cursed

them, and two she bears came out of

the wood and ate forty-two of them.

See Second Kings ii 23-24.

1156

Inferno Canto XXVI:1-42. He is mentioned.

(PSHGRFOHV

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a

citizen of Akragas, or Agrigentum, in

Sicily. He was alive in 443/44 BC, and

gave rise to a number of apocryphal

stories about his magical abilities as a

Pythagorean. He taught that matter is

indestructible, and invented the idea of

the four elements, earth, air, fire and

water. Objects are a mingling of the

four elements, but the elements

themselves are indestructible. He

taught the ideas of world-cycles, of the

war of opposites, or discord of the

elements, and the doctrine of the

transmigration of souls. His root forces

in nature, are Love and Hate, that

generate the discord of the elements.

(‘Empedocles has thrown all things

about.’ Yeats: ‘The Gyres’ line 6)

1157

Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among the philosophers in Limbo.

Inferno Canto XII:28-48. He taught that harmony, replacing discord,

among the elements would result in a

state of chaos.

(SKLDOWHV

The Giant son of Neptune, and his

brother Otus, warred against the gods,

and tried to pile Pelion on Ossa, and

both mountains on Olympus, but were

killed by Apollo.

Inferno Canto XXXI:82-96. He helps guard the central well.

(SLFXUXV

The Greek philospher of Samos (341-

270BC) founder of WKH*DUGHQ taught

that the true happiness was an absence

of pain, and gave a code of conduct for

avoidance of mental and physical pain,

concentrating on simple and moral

1158

essentials of the good life. The Epicureans were atomists, and denied

the evidence for divine intervention in

human affairs. Cicero was a student of the Epicurean Phaedrus. Dante

expounds his philosophy in Convitio

iv. 6:100-110.

The neo-Epicurean Catari and Paterini

heretics of the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries may have denied

the resurrection of the body and the

immortality of the soul. Epicurus

certainly concentrated on life in this

world, and like Buddha, Confucius,

and Lao-Tzu was reticent about the

afterlife.

Inferno Canto X:1-21. He and his followers are entombed in the Sixth

Circle. For the valley of Jehoshaphat

see the Bible, Joel iii 2.

1159

(ULFKWKR

A Thessalian sorceress mentioned by

Lucan in the Pharsalia vi 507-826, where she summons up the spirit of a

dead soldier for Sextus Pompeius

before the battle. Dante’s reference is

to some further unknown tradition

about her presence in the lowest

regions of Hell, the Giudecca (See

Inferno Canto XXXIV)

Inferno Canto IX:1-33. She had

previously sent Virgil to Hell proper to bring out a soul from the Giudecca, the

circle of Judas.

(ULQ\HVWKH)XULHV

The Eumenides or Kindly Ones, a

euphemism for the Erinyes, the three

sisters, the Furies, who live in Erebus.

They punish crimes by hounding the

wrongdoer, and acting as the

unremitting conscience. They are

crones with dog’s heads and bat’s

1160

wings, snakes for hair, and black bodies, and torment their victims.

Their names are Tisiphone, Alecto,

and Megaera. For Dante they

symbolise remorse, as Medusa

symbolises despair. The recollection of

past sins is a potential source of

despair, delaying penitence and

turning the soul back to wrongdoing.

Inferno Canto IX:34-63. They challenge the poets.

(ULSK\OH

The wife of Amphiaräus, who

betrayed him, bribed with the necklace

of Harmonia, and was killed by her

son Alcmaeon in retribution.

Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. She is mentioned.

(U\VLFKWKRQ

The son of the Thessalian King

Tropias. He committed sacrilege

1161

against the goddess Ceres by cutting down her sacred tree, and was

punished with an inappeasable hunger.

He consumed his own flesh until he

starved. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses

VIII 738-878.

Purgatorio Canto XXIII:1-36. He is mentioned.

(VDX

Jacob’s brother, the son of Isaac and

Rebeccah, a hunter, a man of the fields. The brothers’ rivalry was seen

as an analogy of Church and

Synagogue. Jacob deprived Esau of his

father Isaac’s blessing by guile, and

Esau, the man of Edom, sold Jacob his

birthright for ‘a mess of pottage’. See

Genesis xxv 19-34.

Paradiso Canto VIII:85-148. Jacob and Esau as contrasting types.

1162

(VWH$]]RGD

Azzo VIII of Este, Lord of Ferrara

(1293-1308) married Beatrice,

daughter of Charles II of Anjou and Naples, in 1305.

Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He was the son of Obizzo II whom he was said to have murdered.

Purgatorio Canto V:64-84. He ordered the murder of Jacopo del Cassero.

(VWH%HDWULFHGD

See Beatrice d’Este.

(VWH2EL]]RGD

Obizzo II of Este, fourth Marquis of

Ferrara and the March of Ancona

(from 1264-1293), the grandson of

Azzo VII called Azzo Novello, who

had led the Guelf crusaders against

Ezzelino. Obizzo, dying in 1293, was

said to have been murdered by his son

and successor Azzo VIII (from 1293-1163

1308), whom Dante calls his stepson in reference to the unnatural nature of

the crime. His daughter Beatrice

married Nino de’ Visconti of Pisa, then Galeazzo Visconti of Milan.

Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is placed in the seventh circle in the first

ring, of tyrants.

Inferno Canto XVIII:40-66. His follower Venedico Caccianimico, a

leading Guelph, exiled in 1289,

assisted him in his seduction of

Venedico’s own sister, Ghisola, who later married Niccolò de Fontana of

Ferrara in 1270.

(VWKHU

Ahasuerus, the Persian King, enriched

Haman, until he was accused by Esther of intending to take the life of

Mordecai. Haman was executed in Mordecai’s place. See Esther iii-viii.

1164

Purgatorio Canto XVII:1-39. He is mentioned.

(WHRFOHV

The son of Oedipus and Jocasta, and brother of Polynices. They fought over the succession, in the war of the Seven

against Thebes. Both brothers were

killed and, according to Statius in the Thebaid xii 429 et seq. the flames of

their funeral pyre itself were divided.

Inferno Canto XXVI:43-84. They are mentioned.

Purgatorio Canto XXII:55-93. They are indirectly mentioned.

(XFOLG

The Greek mathematician and founder

of geometry. He flourished c.300 BC.

Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among the group of wise men in

Limbo.

1165

Paradiso Canto XIII:91-142.Dante quotes an example from Euclid’s

(OHPHQWV.

Paradiso Canto XVII:1-99. A further geometric analogy.

(XULSLGHV

The Greek tragic playwright (480-

441BC).