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

lying gods,” when the world was in peril of damnation for misbelief. Cypria, or Cyprigna, was a title of Venus, from the place of her birth, Cyprus. ↩

The third Epicycle, or that of Venus, the third planet, was its supposed motion from west to east, while the whole heavens were swept onward from east to west by the motion of the Primum Mobile.

In the Convito, II 4, Dante says:⁠—

“Upon the back of this circle (the Equatorial) in the Heaven of Venus, of which we are now treating, is a little sphere, which revolves of itself in this heaven, and whose orbit the astrologers call Epicycle.”

And again, II 7:⁠—

“All this heaven moves and revolves with its Epicycle from east to west, once every natural day; but whether this movement be by any Intelligence, or by the sweep of the Primum Mobile, God knoweth; in me it would be presumptuous to judge.”

Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII 72:⁠—

“From man or angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire; or, if they list to try
Conjecture, he his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes; perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter, when they come to model heaven
And calculate the stars; how they will wield
The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive,
To save appearances; how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.”

See also Nichol, Solar System, p. 7:⁠—

“Nothing in later times ought to obscure the glory of Hipparchus, and, as some think, the still greater Ptolemy. Amid the bewilderment of these planetary motions, what could they say, except that the ‘gods never act without design’; and thereon resolve to discern it? The motion of the Earth was concealed from them: nor was aught intelligible or explicable concerning the wanderings of the planets, except the grand revolution of the sky around the Earth. That Earth, small to us, they therefore, on the ground of phenomena, considered the centre of the Universe, thinking, perhaps, not more confinedly than persons in repute in modern days. Around that centre all motion seemed to pass in order the most regular; and if a few bodies appeared to interrupt the regularity of that order, why not conceive the existence of some arrangement by which they might be reconciled with it? It was a strange, but most ingenious idea. They could not tell how, by any simple system of circular and uniform motion, the ascertained courses of the planets, as directly observed, were to be accounted for; but they made a most artificial scheme, that still saved the immobility of the Earth. Suppose a person passing around a room holding a lamp, and all the while turning on his heel. If he turned round uniformly, there would be no actual interruption of the uniform circular motion both of the carrier and the carried; but the light, as seen by an observer in the interior, would make strange gyrations. Unable to account otherwise for the irregularities of the planets, they mounted them in this manner, on small circles, whose centres only revolved regularly around the Earth, but which, during their revolutionary motion, also revolved around their own centres. Styling these cycles and epicycles, the ancient learned men framed that grand system of the Heavens concerning which Ptolemy composed his ‘Syntax.’ ”

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Shakespeare, Love’s Labor Lost, III 1:⁠—

“This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents.”

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Cupid in the semblance of Ascanius. Aeneid, I 718, Davidson’s Tr.:⁠—

“She clings to him with her eyes, her whole soul, and sometimes fondles him in her lap, Dido not think ing what a powerful god is settling on her, hapless one. Meanwhile he, mindful of his Acidalian mother, begins insensibly to efface the memory of Sichaeus, and with a living flame tries to prepossess her languid affections, and her heart, chilled by long disuse.”

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Venus, with whose name this canto begins. ↩

Brunetto Latini, Tresor, I Ch. 3, says that Venus “always follows the sun, and is beautiful and gentle, and is called the Goddess of Love.”

Dante says, it plays with or caresses the sun, “now behind, and now in front.” When it follows, it is Hesperus, the Evening Star; when it precedes, it is Phosphor, the Morning Star. ↩

The rapidity of the motion of the spirits, as well as their brightness, is in proportion to their vision of God. Compare Canto XIV 40:⁠—

“Its brightness is proportioned to the ardor,
The ardor to the vision; and the vision
Equals what grace it has above its worth.”

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Made visible by mist and cloud-rack. ↩

Their motion originates in the Primum Mobile, whose Regents, or Intelligences, are the Seraphim. ↩

The Regents, or Intelligences, of Venus are the Principalities. ↩

This is the first line of the first canzone in the Convito, and in his commentary upon it, II 5, Dante says:⁠—

“In the first place, then, be it known, that the movers of this heaven are substances separate from matter, that is, Intelligences, which the common peo ple call Angels.”

And farther on, II 6:⁠—

“It is reasonable to believe that the motors of the Heaven of the Moon are of the order of the Angels; and those of Mercury are the Archangels; and those of Venus are the Thrones.”

It will be observed, however, that in line 34 he alludes to the Principalities as the Regents of Venus; and in Canto IX 61, speaks of the Thrones as reflecting the justice of God:⁠—

“Above us there are mirrors, Thrones you call them,
From which shines out on us God Judicant”;

thus referring