The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

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His arms crossed upon his breast. ↩

Ampère, Voyage Dantesque, 255:⁠—

“Who was this unhappy and perhaps guilty woman? The commentators say that she was of the family of Tolomei, illustrious at Siena. Among the different versions of her story there is one truly terrible. The outraged husband led his wife to an isolated castle in the Maremma of Siena, and there shut himself up with his victim, waiting his vengeance from the poisoned atmosphere of this solitude. Breathing with her the air which was killing her, he saw her slowly perish. This funeral tête-à-tête found him always impassive, until, according to the expression of Dante, the Maremma had unmade what he had once loved. This melancholy story might well have no other foundation than the enigma of Dante’s lines, and the terror with which this enigma may have struck the imaginations of his contemporaries.

“However this may be, one cannot prevent an involuntary shudder, when, showing you a pretty little brick palace [at Siena], they say, ‘That is the house of the Pia.’ ”

Benvenuto da Imola gives a different version of the story, and says that by command of the husband she was thrown from the window of her palace into the street, and died of the fall.

Bandello, the Italian Novelist, Pt. I Nov. 12, says that the narrative is true, and gives minutely the story of the lovers, with such embellishments as his imagination suggested.

Ugo Foscolo, Edinb. Review, XXIX 458, speaks thus:⁠—

“Shakespeare unfolds the character of his persons, and presents them under all the variety of forms which they can naturally assume. He surrounds them with all the splendor of his imagination, and bestows on them that full and minute reality which his creative genius could alone confer. Of all tragic poets, he most amply develops character. On the other hand, Dante, if compared not only to Virgil, the most sober of poets, but even to Tacitus, will be found never to employ more than a stroke or two of his pencil, which he aims at imprinting almost insensibly on the hearts of his readers. Virgil has related the story of Eurydice in two hundred verses; Dante, in sixty verses, has finished his masterpiece⁠—the tale of Francesca da Rimini. The history of Desdemona has a parallel in the following passage of Dante. Nello della Pietra had espoused a lady of noble family at Sienna, named Madonna Pia. Her beauty was the admiration of Tuscany, and excited in the heart of her husband a jealousy, which, exasperated by false reports and groundless suspicions, at length drove him to the desperate resolution of Othello. It is difficult to decide whether the lady was quite innocent; but so Dante represents her. Her husband brought her into the Maremma, which, then as now, was a district destructive to health. He never told his unfortunate wife the reason of her banishment to so dangerous a country. He did not deign to utter complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in cold silence, without answering her questions, or listening to her remonstrances. He patiently waited till the pestilential air should destroy the health of this young lady. In a few months she died. Some chroniclers, indeed, tell us, that Nello used the dagger to hasten her death. It is certain that he survived her, plunged in sadness and perpetual silence. Dante had, in this incident, all the materials of an ample and very poetical narrative. But he bestows on it only four verses.”

For a description of the Maremma, see Note 181.

Also Rogers, Italy, near the end:⁠—

“Where the path
Is lost in rank luxuriance, and to breathe
Is to inhale distemper, if not death;
Where the wild-boar retreats, when hunters chafe,
And, when the day-star flames, the buffalo-herd
Afflicted plunge into the stagnant pool,
Nothing discerned amid the water-leaves,
Save here and there the likeness of a head,
Savage, uncouth; where none in human shape
Come, save the herdsman, levelling his length
Of lance with many a cry, or Tartar-like
Urging his steed along the distant hill,
As from a danger.”

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Zara was a game of chance, played with three dice. ↩

Messer Benincasa of Arezzo, who, while Vicario del Podestà, or Judge, in Siena, sentenced to death a brother and a nephew of Ghino di Tacco for highway robbery. He was afterwards an Auditor of the Ruota in Rome, where, says Benvenuto:⁠—

“one day as he sat in the tribunal, in the midst of a thousand people, Ghino di Tacco appeared like Scaevola, terrible and nothing daunted; and having seized Benincasa, he plunged his dagger into his heart, leaped from the balcony, and disappeared in the midst of the crowd stupefied with terror,”

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This terrible Ghino di Tacco was a nobleman of Asinalunga in the territory of Siena; one of those splendid fellows, who, from some real or imaginary wrong done them, take to the mountains and highways to avenge themselves on society. He is the true type of the traditionary stage bandit, the magnanimous melodramatic hero, who utters such noble sentiments and commits such atrocious deeds.

Benvenuto is evidently dazzled and fascinated by him, and has to throw two Romans into the scale to do him justice. His account is as follows:⁠—

“Reader, I would have thee know that Ghino was not, as some write, so infamous as to be a great assassin and highway robber. For this Ghino di Tacco was a wonderful man, tall, muscular, black-haired, and strong; as agile as Scsvola, as prudent and liberal as Papirius Cursor. He was of the nobles of La Fratta, in the county of Siena; who, being forcibly banished by the Counts of Santafiore, held the noble castle of Radicofani against the Pope. With his marauders he made many and great prizes, so that no one could go safely to Rome or elsewhere through those regions. Yet hardly any one fell into his hands, who did not go away contented, and love and praise