The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (essential books to read TXT) 📕

CANTO X

v. 12. Josaphat.] It seems to have been a common opinion among the Jews, as well as among many Christians, that the general judgment will be held in the valley of Josaphat, or Jehoshaphat: “I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people, and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.” Joel, iii. 2.

v. 32. Farinata.] Farinata degli Uberti, a noble Florentine, was the leader of the Ghibelline faction, when they obtained a signal victory over the Guelfi at Montaperto, near the river Arbia. Macchiavelli calls him “a man of exalted soul, and great military talents.” Hist. of Flor. b. ii.

v. 52. A shade.] The spirit of Cavalcante Cavalcanti, a noble Florentine, of the Guelph party.

v. 59. My son.] Guido, the son of Cavalcante Cavalcanti; “he whom I call the first of my friends,” says Dante in his Vita Nuova, where the commencement of their friendship is related.

>From the character given of him by contemporary writers his temper was well formed to assimilate with that of our poet. “He was,” according to G. Villani, l. viii. c. 41. “of a philosophical and elegant mind, if he had not been too delicate and fastidious.” And Dino Compagni terms him “a young and noble knight, brave and courteous, but of a lofty scornful spirit, much addicted to solitude and study.” Muratori. Rer. Ital. Script t. 9

l. 1. p. 481. He died, either in exile at Serrazana, or soon after his return to Florence, December 1300, during the spring of which year the action of this poem is supposed to be passing.

v. 62. Guido thy son

Had in contempt.]

Guido Cavalcanti, being more given to philosophy than poetry, was perhaps no great admirer of Virgil. Some poetical compositions by Guido are, however, still extant; and his reputation for skill in the art was such as to eclipse that of his predecessor and namesake Guido Guinicelli, as we shall see in the Purgatory, Canto XI. His “Canzone sopra il Terreno Amore” was thought worthy of being illustrated by numerous and ample commentaries.

Crescimbeni Ist. della Volg. Poes. l. v.

For a playful sonnet which Dante addressed to him, and a spirited translation of it, see Hayley’s Essay on Epic Poetry, Notes to Ep. iii.

v. 66. Saidst thou he had?] In Aeschylus, the shade of Darius is represented as inquiring with similar anxiety after the fate of his son Xerxes.

[GREEK HERE]

Atossa: Xerxes astonish’d, desolate, alone—

Ghost of Dar: How will this end? Nay, pause not. Is he safe?

The Persians. Potter’s Translation.

v. 77. Not yet fifty times.] “Not fifty months shall be passed, before thou shalt learn, by woeful experience, the difficulty of returning from banishment to thy native city”

v.83. The slaughter.] “By means of Farinata degli Uberti, the Guelfi were conquered by the army of King Manfredi, near the river Arbia, with so great a slaughter, that those who escaped from that defeat took refuge not in Florence, which city they considered as lost to them, but in Lucca.” Macchiavelli. Hist.

of Flor. b 2.

v. 86. Such orisons.] This appears to allude to certain prayers which were offered up in the churches of Florence, for deliverance from the hostile attempts of the Uberti.

v. 90. Singly there I stood.] Guido Novello assembled a council of the Ghibellini at Empoli where it was agreed by all, that, in order to maintain the ascendancy of the Ghibelline party in Tuscany, it was necessary to destroy Florence, which could serve only (the people of that city beingvGuelfi) to enable the party attached to the church to recover its strength. This cruel sentence, passed upon so noble a city, met with no opposition from any of its citizens or friends, except Farinata degli Uberti, who openly and without reserve forbade the measure, affirming that he had endured so many hardships, and encountered so many dangers, with no other view than that of being able to pass his days in his own country. Macchiavelli. Hist. of Flor. b.

2.

v. 103. My fault.] Dante felt remorse for not having returned an immediate answer to the inquiry of Cavalcante, from which delay he was led to believe that his son Guido was no longer living.

v. 120. Frederick.] The Emperor Frederick the Second, who died in 1250. See Notes to Canto XIII.

v. 121. The Lord Cardinal.] Ottaviano Ubaldini, a Florentine, made Cardinal in 1245, and deceased about 1273. On account of his great influence, he was generally known by the appellation of “the Cardinal.” It is reported of him that he declared, if there were any such thing as a human soul, he had lost his for the Ghibellini.

v. 132. Her gracious beam.] Beatrice.

CANTO XI

v. 9. Pope Anastasius.] The commentators are not agreed concerning the identity of the person, who is here mentioned as a follower of the heretical Photinus. By some he is supposed to have been Anastasius the Second, by others, the Fourth of that name; while a third set, jealous of the integrity of the papal faith, contend that our poet has confounded him with Anastasius 1. Emperor of the East.

v. 17. My son.] The remainder of the present Canto may be considered as a syllabus of the whole of this part of the poem.

v. 48. And sorrows.] This fine moral, that not to enjoy our being is to be ungrateful to the Author of it, is well expressed in Spenser, F. Q. b. iv. c. viii. st. 15.

For he whose daies in wilful woe are worne The grace of his Creator doth despise, That will not use his gifts for thankless nigardise.

v. 53. Cahors.] A city in Guienne, much frequented by usurers v. 83. Thy ethic page.] He refers to Aristotle’s Ethics.

[GREEK HERE]

“In the next place, entering, on another division of the subject, let it be defined. that respecting morals there are three sorts of things to be avoided, malice, incontinence, and brutishness.”

v. 104. Her laws.] Aristotle’s Physics. [GREEK

HERE] “Art imitates nature.” —See the Coltivazione of Alamanni, l. i.

-I’arte umana, &c.

v. 111. Creation’s holy book.] Genesis, c. iii. v. 19. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.”

v. 119. The wain.] The constellation Bootes, or Charles’s wain.

CANTO XII

v. 17. The king of Athens.] Theseus, who was enabled, by the instructions of Ariadne, the sister of the Minotaur, to destroy that monster.

v. 21. Like to a bull.] [GREEK HERE] Homer Il. xvii 522

As when some vig’rous youth with sharpen’d axe A pastur’d bullock smites behind the horns And hews the muscle through; he, at the stroke Springs forth and falls.

Cowper’s Translation.

v. 36. He arriv’d.] Our Saviour, who, according to Dante, when he ascended from hell, carried with him the souls of the patriarchs, and other just men, out of the first circle. See Canto IV.

v. 96. Nessus.] Our poet was probably induced, by the following line in Ovid, to assign to Nessus the task of conducting them over the ford:

Nessus edit membrisque valens scitusque vadorum.

Metam, l. ix.

And Ovid’s authority was Sophocles, who says of this Centaur—

[GREEK HERE] Trach.570

He in his arms, Evenus’ stream Deep flowing, bore the passenger for hire Without or sail or billow cleaving oar.

v. 110. Ezzolino.] Ezzolino, or Azzolino di Romano, a most cruel tyrant in the Marca Trivigiana, Lord of Padua, Vicenza, Verona, and Brescia, who died in 1260. His atrocities form the subject of a Latin tragedy, called Eccerinis, by Albertino Mussato, of Padua, the contemporary of Dante, and the most elegant writer of Latin verse of that age. See also the Paradise, Canto IX. Berni Orl. Inn. l ii c. xxv. st. 50. Ariosto.

Orl. Fur. c. iii. st. 33. and Tassoni Secchia Rapita, c. viii.

st 11.

v. 111. Obizzo’ of Este.] Marquis of Ferrara and of the Marca d’Ancona, was murdered by his own son (whom, for the most unnatural act Dante calls his step-son), for the sake of the treasures which his rapacity had amassed. See Ariosto. Orl. Fur.

c. iii. st 32. He died in 1293 according to Gibbon. Ant. of the House of Brunswick. Posth. Works, v. ii. 4to.

v. 119. He.] “Henrie, the brother of this Edmund, and son to the foresaid king of Almaine (Richard, brother of Henry III. of England) as he returned from Affrike, where he had been with Prince Edward, was slain at Viterbo in Italy (whither he was come about business which he had to do with the Pope) by the hand of Guy de Montfort, the son of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in revenge of the same Simon’s death. The murther was committed afore the high altar, as the same Henrie kneeled there to hear divine service.” A.D. 1272, Holinshed’s chronicles p 275. See also Giov. Villani Hist. I. vii. c. 40.

v. 135. On Sextus and on Pyrrhus.] Sextus either the son of Tarquin the Proud, or of Pompey the Great: or as Vellutelli conjectures, Sextus Claudius Nero, and Pyrrhus king of Epirus.

v. 137.

The Rinieri, of Corneto this, Pazzo the other named.]

Two noted marauders, by whose depredations the public ways in Italy were infested. The latter was of the noble family of Pazzi in Florence.

CANTO XIII

v. 10. Betwixt Corneto and Cecina’s stream.] A wild and woody tract of country, abounding in deer, goats, and wild boars.

Cecina is a river not far to the south of Leghorn, Corneto, a small city on the same coast in the patrimony of the church.

v. 12. The Strophades.] See Virg. Aen. l. iii. 210.

v. 14. Broad are their pennons.] From Virg. Aen. l. iii. 216.

v. 48. In my verse described.] The commentators explain this, “If he could have believed, in consequence of my assurances alone, that of which he hath now had ocular proof, he would not have stretched forth his hand against thee.” But I am of opinion that Dante makes Virgil allude to his own story of Polydorus in the third book of the Aeneid.

v. 56. That pleasant word of thine.] “Since you have inveigled me to speak my holding forth so gratifying an expectation, let it not displease you if I am as it were detained in the snare you have spread for me, so as to be somewhat prolix in my answer.”

v. 60. I it was.] Pietro delle Vigne, a native of Capua, who, from a low condition, raised himself by his eloquence and legal knowledge to the office of Chancellor to the Emperor Frederick II. whose confidence in him was such, that his influence in the empire became unbounded. The courtiers, envious of his exalted situation, contrived, by means of forged letters, to make Frederick believe that he held a secret and traitorous intercourse with the Pope, who was then at enmity with the Emperor. In consequence of this supposed crime he was cruelly condemned by his too credulous sovereign to lose his eyes, and, being driven to despair by his unmerited calamity and disgrace, he put an end to his life by dashing out his brains against the walls of a church, in the year 1245. Both Frederick and Pietro delle Vigne composed verses in the Sicilian dialect which are yet extant.

v. 67. The harlot.] Envy. Chaucer alludes to this in the Prologue to the Legende of Good women.

Envie is lavender to the court alway, For she ne parteth