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be one twenty-eighth part of the diameter of the Earth, which is six thousand and fifty-two miles. The other property is, that it is more veiled by the rays of the Sun than any other star. And these two properties are in Dialectics; for Dialectics are less in body than any Science; since in them is perfectly compiled and bounded as much doctrine as is found in ancient and modern Art; and it is more veiled than any Science, inasmuch as it proceeds by more sophistic and probable arguments than any other."

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For the influences of Mercury, see Canto VI. Note 114.

10. Burns, The Vision:

"I saw thy pulse's maddening play
Wild send thee pleasure's devious way,
Misled by fancy's meteor ray,
By passion driven;
And yet the light that led astray
Was light from heaven."

24. Milton, Par. Lost, V. 235:

Happiness in his power left free to will,

Left to his own free will, his will though free, Yet mutable."

33. In illustration of this line, Venturi quotes the following epigram :

"This hospital a pious person built,

But first he made the poor wherewith to fill't."

And Biagioli this :

"C'est un homme d'honneur, de piété profonde, Et qui veut rendre à Dieu ce qu'il a au monde."

52. That which is sacrificed, or of which an offering is made.

57. Without the permission of Holy Church, symbolized by the two keys; the silver key of Knowledge, and the golden key of Authority. See Purg, IX. 118:

"One was of gold, and the other was of silver;

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be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt-offering.. And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances; and she was his only child : besides her he had neither son nor daughter." 69. Agamemnon.

70. Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, I. 1, Buckley's Tr. :

"O thou who rulest over this Grecian expedition, Agamemnon, thou wilt not lead forth thy ships from the ports of this land, before Diana shall receive thy daughter Iphigenia as a victim; for thou didst vow to sacrifice to the light-bearing Goddess whatsoever the year should bring forth most beautiful. Now your wife Clytemnestra has brought forth a daughter in your house, referring to me the title of the most beautiful, whom thou must needs sacrifice. And so, by the arts of Ulysses, they drew me from my. mother under pretence of being wedded to Achilles. But I wretched coming to Aulis, being seized and raised aloft above the pyre, would have been slain by the sword; but Diana, giving to the Greeks a stag in my stead, stole me away, and, sending me through the clear ether, she settled me in this land of the Tauri, where barbarian Thoas rules the land."

80. Dante, Convito, I. 11: "These should be called sheep, and not men; for if one sheep should throw itself down a precipice of a thousand feet, all the others would follow, and if one sheep, in passing along the road, leaps from any cause, all the others leap, though seeing no cause for it.

And I once saw several leap into a well, on account of one that had leaped in, thinking perhaps it was leaping over a wall; notwithstanding that the shepherd, weeping and wailing, opposed them with arms and breast."

82. Lucretius, Nature of Things, IL 324, Good's Tr. :

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87. Towards the Sun, where the heaven is brightest.

95. The Heaven of Mercury.

97. Brunetto Latini, Tresor, I., Ch. 3, says, the planet Mercury "is easily moved according to the goodness or malice of the planets to which it is joined." Dante here represents himself as being of a peculiarly mercurial temperament.

108. The joy of spirits in Paradise is shown by greater brightness.

121. The spirit of Justinian.

129. Mercury is the planet nearest the Sun, and being thus "veiled with alien rays," is only visible to the naked eye at the time of its greatest elongation, and

then but for a few minutes.

Dante, Convito, II. 14, says, that Mercury "is more veiled by the rays of the Sun than any other star." And yet it will be observed that in his planetary system he places Venus between Mercury and the Sun.

133. Milton, Par. Lost, III. 380:"Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear, Yet dazzle heaven.'

And again, V. 598 :—

"A flaming mount, whose top Brightness had made invisible."

CANTO VI.

1. The Heaven of Mercury continued. In the year 330, Constantine, after his conversion and baptism by Sylvester (Inf. XXVII. Note 94), removed the seat of empire from Rome to Byzantium, which received from him its more modern name of Constantinople. He called it also New Rome; and, having promised to the Senators and their families that they should soon tread again on Roman soil, he had the streets of Constantinople strewn with earth which he had brought from Rome in ships.

The transfer of the empire from west to east was turning the imperial eagle against the course of heaven, which it had followed in coming from Troy to Italy with Æneas, who married Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, and was the founder of the Roman Empire.

4. From 324, when the seat of empire was transferred to Constantinople by Constantine, to 527, when the reign of Justinian began.

5. The mountains of Asia, between Constantinople and the site of Troy. 10. Cæsar, or Kaiser, the general title of all the Roman Emperors.

The character of Justinian is thus sketched by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Ch. XLIII. :

"The Emperor was easy of access, patient of hearing, courteous and affable in discourse, and a master of the angry passions, which rage with such destructive violence in the breast of a despot. Procopius praises his temper to reproach him with calm and deliberate cruelty. but in the conspiracies which attacked his authority and person, a more candid judge will approve the justice or admire the clemency of Justinian. He excelled in the private virtues of chastity and temperance; but the impartial love of beauty would have been less mischievous than his conjugal tenderness for Theodora; and his abstemious diet was regu lated, not by the prudence of a philosopher, but the superstition of a monk. His repasts were short and frugal; on solemn fasts he contented himself with water and vegetables; and such was his strength as well as fervour, that he frequently passed two days, and as many nights, without tasting any food. The measure of his sleep was not less rigorous; after the repose of a single hour the body was awakened by the soul, and, to the astonishment of his chamberlain, Justinian walked or studied till the morning light. Such restless application prolonged his time for the acquisition of knowledge and the despatch of business; and he might seriously deserve the reproach of confounding, by minute and preposterous diligence, the general order of his administration. The Emperor professed himself a musician and architect, a poet and philosopher, a lawyer and theologian; and if he failed in the enterprise of reconciling the Christian sects, the review of the Roman jurispru dence is a noble monument of his spirit and industry. In the government of the empire he was less wise or less success ful: the age was unfortunate; the peopl

was oppressed and discontented; Theo-With the Bishop of Trebizond,' replied dora abused her power; a succession of the unawed ecclesiastic, when he has bad ministers disgraced his judgment; and returned to his diocese, and accepted the Justinian was neither beloved in his life, Council of Chalcedon and the letters of hor regretted at his death. The love of Leo.' The Emperor in a louder voice fime was deeply implanted in zis breast, commanded him to acknowledge the but he condescended to the poor ambition Bishop of Constantinople on pain of of titles, honours, and contemporary immediate exile. 'I came hither in my praise; and while he laboured to fix the old age to see, as I supposed, a religious admiration, he forfeited the esteem and and a Christian Emperor; I find a new affection of the Romans." Diocletian. But I fear not kings' me naces, I am ready to lay down my life for the truth.' The feeble mind of Justinian passed at once from the height of arrogance to admiration and respect; he listened to the charges advanced by Agapetus against the orthodoxy of Anthimus. In his turn the Bishop of Constantinople was summoned to render an account of his theology before the Emperor, convicted of Eutychianism, and degraded from the see.'

12. Of the reform of the Roman Laws, by which they were reduced from two thousand volumes to fifty, Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Ch. XLIV., says: "The vain titles of the victories of Justinian are crumbled into dust; but the name of the legislator is inscribed on a fair and everlasting monument. Under his reign, and by his care, the civil jurisprudence was digested in the immortal works of the CODE, the PANDECT, and the INSTITUTES; the public reason of the Romans has been silently or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions of Europe, and the laws of Justinian still command the respect or obedience of independent nations. Wise or fortunate is the prince who connects his own reputation with the honour and interest of a perpetual order of men.'

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This is what Dante alludes to, Purg. VI. 89:

"What boots it, that for thee Justinian

The bridle mend, if empty be the saddle?"

14. The heresy of Eutyches, who maintained that only the Divine nature existed in Christ, not the human; and consequently that the Christ crucified was not he real Christ, but a phantom.

16. Agapetus was Pope, or Bishop of Rome, in the year 515, and was compelled by King Theodotus the Ostrogoth, to go pon an embassy to the Emperor Justinian at Constantinople, where he refused to hold any communication with Anthimus, Bishop of Trebizond, who, against the canon of the Church, had been transferred from his own see to that of Constantinople. Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., I. 460, says: Agapetus, in a conference, condescended to satisfy the Emperor as to his own unimpeachable orthodoxy. Justinian sternly commanded him to communicate with Anthimus.

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25. Belisarius, the famous general, to whom Justinian gave the leadership of his armies in Africa and Italy. In his old age he was suspected of conspiring against the Emperor's life; but the accusation was not proved. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Ch. XLI., speaks of him thus: "The Africanus of new Rome was born, and perhaps educated, among the Thracian peasants, without any of those advantages which had formed the virtues of the elder and the younger Scipio,--a noble origin, liberal studies, and the emulation of a free state. The silence of a loquacious secretary may be admitted, to prove that the youth of Belisarius could not afford any subject of praise: he served, most assuredly with valour and reputation among the private guards of Justinian; and when his patron became Emperor, the domestic was promoted to military command."

And of his last years as follows, Ch. XLIII.: "Capricious pardon and arbi trary punishment embittered the irksome ness and discontent of a long reign; a conspiracy was formed in the palace, and, unless we are deceived by the names of Marcellus and Sergius, the most virtuous and the most profligate of the courtiers were associated in the same designs. They had fixed the time of the execution; their rank gave them access to the royal banquet, and their black slaves were

36. The son of Evander, sent to assist Eneas, and slain by Turnus. Virgil, Æneid, X., Davidson's Tr.: “Turnus,

ened steel. darts it at Pallas, and thus speaks: See whether ours be not the more penetrating dart. He said; and with a quivering stroke the point pierces through the mid-shield, through so many plates of iron, so many of brass, while the bull's hide so many times encompasses it, and through the corslet's cumbrous folds transfixes his breast with a hideous gash. He in vain wrenches out the reeking weapon from the wound; at one and the same passage the blood and soul issue forth. Down on his wound he falls : over him his armour gave a clang; and in death with bloody jaws he bites the hostile ground."

37. In Alba Longa, built by Ascanius, son of Æneas, on the borders of the Alban Lake. The period of three hundred years is traditionary, not historic.

stationed in the vestibule and porticoes obtained credit, or rather favour, as a to announce the death of the tyrant, and strange example of the vicissitudes of to excite a sedition in the capital. But fortune." the indiscretion of an accomplice saved the poor remnant of the days of Justinian. The conspirators were detected and seized, with daggers hidden under their gar-long poising a javelin tipped with sharpments; Marcellus died by his own hand, and Sergius was dragged from the sanctuary. Pressed by remorse, or tempted by the hopes of safety, he accused two officers of the household of Belisarius; and torture forced them to declare that they had acted according to the secret instructions of their patron. Posterity will not hastily believe that a hero who, in the vigour of life, had disdained the fairest offers of ambition and revenge, should stoop to the murder of his prince, whom he could not long expect to survive. His followers were impatient to fly; but flight must have been supported by rebellion, and he had lived enough for nature and for glory. Belisarius appeared before the council with less fear than indignation; after forty years' service, the Emperor had prejudged his guilt; and injustice was sanctified by the presence and authority of the patriarch. The life of Belisarius was graciously spared; but his fortunes were sequestered, and from December to July he was guarded as a prisoner in his own palace. At length his innocence was acknowledged; his freedom and honours were restored; and death, which might be hastened by resentment and grief, removed him from the world about eight months after his deliverance. The name of Belisarius can never die; but instead of the funeral, the monuments, the statues, so justly due to his memory, I only read that his treasures, the spoils of the Goths and Vandals, were immediately confiscated for the Emperor. Some decent portion was reserved, however, for the use of his widow; and as Antonina had much to repent, she devoted the last remains of her life and fortune to the foundation of a convent. Such is the simple and genuine narrative of the fall of Belisarius and the ingratitude of Justinian. That he was deprived of his eyes, and reduced by envy to beg his bread, 'Give a penny to Belisarius the general!' – is a fiction of later times, which has

39. The Horatii and Curatii. 40. From the rape of the Sabine women, in the days of Romulus, the first of the seven kings of Rome, down to the violence done to Lucretia by Tarquinius Superbus, the last of them.

44. Brennus was the king of the Gauls, who, entering Rome unopposed, found the city deserted, and the Senators seated in their ivory chairs in the Forum, so silent and motionless that his soldiers took them for the statues of gods. He burned the city and laid siege to the Capitol, whither the people had fled for safety, and which was preserved from surprise by the cackling of the sacred geese in the Temple of Juno. Finally Brennus and his army were routed by Camillus, and tradition says that not one escaped.

Pyrrhus was a king of Epirus, who boasted his descent from Achilles, and whom Hannibal called "the greatest of commanders." He was nevertheless driven out of Italy by Curius, his army of eighty thousand being routed by thirty thousand Romans; whereupon he said that, "if he had soldiers like the Romans, or if he Romans had him for a general,

he would leave no corner of the earth unseen, and no nation unconquered."

46. Titus Manlius, surnamed Torquatus, from the collar (torques) which he took from a fallen foe; and Quinctius, surnamed Cincinnatus, or "the curly haired."

47. Three of the Decii, father, son, and grandson, sacrificed their lives in battle at different times for their country. The Fabii also rendered signal services to the state, but are chiefly known in history through one of their number, Quinctius Maximus, surnamed Cunctator, or the Delayer, from whom we have "the Fabian policy."

53. The hill of Fiesole, overlooking Florence, where Dante was born. Fiesole was destroyed by the Romans for giving refuge to Catiline and his fellow conspirators.

55. The birth of Christ. Milton, Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, 3, 4:

"But he, her fears to cease,

Sent down the meek-eyed Peace :

when Cæsar took from him the kingdom of Egypt, and gave it to Cleopatra.

70. Juba, king of Numidia, who protected Pompey, Cato, and Scipio after the battle of Pharsalia. Being conquered by Cæsar, his realm became a Roman province, of which Sallust the historian was the first governor.

Milton, Sams. Agon., 1695:His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads."* "But as an eagle

71. Towards Spain, where some remnants of Pompey's army still remained under his two sons. When these were subdued the civil war was at an end.

73. Octavius Augustus, nephew of Julius Cæsar. At the battle of Philippi he defeated Brutus and Cassius, and established the Empire.

75. On account of the great slaughter made by Augustus in his battles with Mark Antony and his brother Lucius, in the neighbourhood of these cities.

81. Augustus closed the gates of the temple of Janus as a sign of universal

She, crowned with olive-green, came softly peace, in the year of Christ's birth.

sliding

Down through the turning sphere,

His ready harbinger,

86. Tiberius Cæsar.

90. The crucifixion of Christ, in which

With turtie wing the amorous clouds di- the Romans took part in the person of

viding;

And, waving wide her myrtle wand,

Pontius Pilate.

92. The destruction of Jerusalem under

She strikes a universal peace through sea and Titus, which avenged the crucifixion.

land.

"No war or battle's sound

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high up
hung:

The hooked chariot stood
Unstained with hostile blood;

eye,

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was
by."

65. Durazzo in Macedonia, and Pharsalia in Thessaly.

66. Gower, Conf. Amant., II. :—

"That one sleeth, and that other sterveth,
But aboven all his prise deserveth
This knightly Romain; where he rode
His dedly swerd no man abode,
Ayen the which was no defence:
Egipte fledde in his presence."

67. Antandros, a city, and Simois, river, near Troy, whence came the Roman eagle with Æneas into Italy.

69. It was an evil hour for Ptolemy,

94. When the Church was assailed by the Lombards, who were subdued by Charlemagne.

98. Referring back to line 31 :

"In order that thou see with how great reason Men move against the standard sacrosanct, Both who appropriate and who oppose it."

100. The Golden Lily, or Fleur-de-lis French, opposed the Ghibellines, who of France. The Guelfs, uniting with the had appropriated the imperial standard to their own party purposes.

106. Charles II. of Apulia, son of Charles of Anjou.

III. Change the imperial eagle for the lilies of France.

112. Mercury is the smallest of the planets, with the exception of the Aste aroids, being sixteen times smaller than the Earth.

114. Speaking of the planet Mercury, Buti says: "We are now to consider the

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