The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (best classic books of all time txt) 📕

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I.e. the noblemen their patrons. ↩

Syn. penalties, punishments (pene). ↩

Virtù, in the old Roman sense of strength, vigour, energy. ↩

Old form of Margherita. ↩

I.e. the base or eatable part of the stem. ↩

I.e. that day. ↩

See note 17 in the Day 1 introduction. ↩

I.e. the terms of the limitation aforesaid. ↩

I.e. in the mirrored presentment of her own beauty. ↩

Ballatella, lit. little dancing song or song made to be sung as an accompaniment to a dance (from ballare, to dance). This is the origin of our word ballad. ↩

Or pretext (titolo). ↩

Or “having him punished,” lit. “causing give him ill luck” (fargli dar la mala ventura). This passage, like so many others of the Decameron, is ambiguous and may also be read “themseeming none other had a juster title to do him an ill turn.” ↩

Lit. a story striveth in (draweth) me to be told or to tell itself (a raccontarsi mi tira una novella). ↩

I.e. religious matters (cose cattoliche). ↩

I.e. take things by the first intention, without seeking to refine upon them, or, in English popular phrase, “I do not pretend to see farther through a stone wall than my neighbours.” ↩

I.e. the aforesaid orison. ↩

Or “ ’Twill have been opportunely done of thee.” ↩

I.e. our patron saint. ↩

I.e. whose teeth chattered as it were the clapping of a stork’s beak. ↩

I.e. after her bath. ↩

I.e. to be hanged or, in the equivalent English idiom, to dance upon nothing. ↩

I.e. usury? See post. One of the commentators ridiculously suggests that they were needlemakers, from ago, a needle. ↩

I.e. the thing is done and cannot be undone; there is no help for it. ↩

I.e. make her a solemn promise of marriage, formally plight her his troth. The ceremony of betrothal was formerly (and still is in certain countries) the most essential part of the marriage rite. ↩

I.e. cannot hope to tell a story presenting more extraordinary shifts from one to the other extreme of human fortune than that of Pampinea. ↩

The Genoese have the reputation in Italy of being thieves by nature. ↩

It seems doubtful whether la reggeva diritta should not rather be rendered “kept it upright.” Boccaccio has a knack, very trying to the translator, of constantly using words in an obscure or strained sense. ↩

I.e. for nothing. ↩

I.e. son of Pietro, as they still say in Lancashire and other northern provinces, “Tom o’ Dick” for “Thomas, son of Richard,” etc. ↩

I.e. ill hole. ↩

I.e. a member of the Guelph party, as against the Ghibellines or partisans of the Pope. ↩

Charles d’Anjou, afterwards King of Sicily. ↩

I.e. Frederick II of Germany. ↩

The reason was that she wished to keep him in play till late into the night, when all the folk should be asleep and she might the lightlier deal with him. ↩

I.e. Catalan Street. ↩

Charles d’Anjou. ↩

I.e. the Banished or the Expelled One. ↩

An island in the Gulf of Gaeta, about 70 miles from Naples. It is now inhabited, but appears in Boccaccio’s time to have been desert. ↩

I.e. wild she-goat. ↩

A river falling into the Gulf of Genoa between Carrara and Spezzia. ↩

More familiar to modern ears as Doria. ↩

The Ghibellines were the supporters of the Papal faction against the Guelphs or adherents of the Emperor Frederick II of Germany. The cardinal struggle between the two factions took place over the succession to the throne of Naples and Sicily, to which the Pope appointed Charles of Anjou, who overcame and killed the reigning sovereign Manfred, but was himself, through the machinations of the Ghibellines, expelled from Sicily by the celebrated popular rising known as the Sicilian Vespers. ↩

I.e. Beritola’s sons. ↩

I.e. to which general joy. ↩

Pedro of Arragon, son-in-law of Manfred, who, in consequence of the Sicilian Vespers, succeeded Charles d’Anjou as King of Sicily. ↩

Or (in modern phrase) putting himself at their disposition. ↩

I.e. Egypt, Cairo was known in the middle ages by the name of “Babylon of Egypt.” It need hardly be noted that the Babylon of the Bible was the city of that name on the Euphrates, the ancient capital of Chaldea (Irak Babili). The names Beminedab and Alatiel are purely imaginary. ↩

I.e. to his wish, to whom fortune was mostly favourable in his enterprises. ↩

Il Garbo, Arabic El Gherb or Gharb, الﻐرب, the West, a name given by the Arabs to several parts of the Muslim empire, but by which Boccaccio apparently means Algarve, the southernmost province of Portugal and the last part of that kingdom to succumb to the wave of Christian