42. This is the doctrine of Empedocles and other old philosophers. See Ritter, History of Ancient Philosophy, Book V., Chap. vi. The following passages are from Mr. Morrison's translation :-

ments of rock torn from the sides of the 39. Christ's descent into Limbo, neighbouring mountains by an earth- and the earthquake at the Crucifixquake, or perhaps by their own unsup- ion. ported weight, and hurled down into the plains below. They spread over the whole valley, and in some places contract the road to a very narrow space. A few firs and cypresses scattered in the intervals, or sometimes rising out of the crevices of the rocks, cast a partial and melancholy shade amid the surrounding nakedness and desolation. This scene of ruin seems to have made a deep impression upon the wild imagination of Dante, as he has introduced it into the twelfth canto of the Inferno, in order to give the reader an adequate idea of one of his infernal ramparts.'

12. The Minotaur, half bull, half man. See the infamous story in all the classical dictionaries.

18. The Duke of Athens is Theseus. Chaucer gives him the same title in The Knightes Tale:-

"Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,

Ther was a duk that highte Theseus.
Of Athenes he was lord and governour,
That greter was ther non under the sonne.
Ful many a rich contree had he wonne.
What with his wisdom and his chevalrie,
He conquerd all the regne of Feminie,
That whilom was ycleped Scythia:
And wedded the freshe quene Ipolita,
And brought hire home with him to his

contree

With mochel glorie and great solempnitee,
And eke hire yonge suster Emelie.
And thus with victorie and with melodie
Let I this worthy duk to Athenes ride,
And all his host, in armes him beside.'

Shakespeare also, in the Midsummer
Night's Dream, calls him the Duke of

Athens.

20. Ariadne, who gave Theseus the silken thread to guide him back through the Cretan labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur. Hawthorne has beautifully told the old story in his Tanglewood Tales. "Ah, the bull - headed villain!" he says. “And O my good little people, you will perhaps see, one of these days, as I do now, that every human being who suffers anything evil to get into his nature, or to remain there, is a kind of Minotaur, an enemy of his fellow-creatures, and separated from all good companionship, as this poor mon

ster was.

'Empedocles proceeded from the Eleatic principle of the oneness of all truth. În its unity it resembles a ball; he calls it the sphere, wherein the an cients recognized the God of Empedocles.

"Into the unity of the sphere all elementary things are combined by love, without difference or distinction: within they lead a happy life, replete with holiness, and remote from discord :

"The actual separation of the elements one from another is produced by discord; for originally they were bound together in the sphere, and therein continued perfectly unmovable. Now in this Empedocles posits different periods and different conditions of the world; for, according to the above position, originally all is united in love, and then subsequently the elements and living essences are separated.

"His assertion of certain mundane periods was taken by the ancients liter. ally; for they tell us that, according to his theory, All was originally one by love, but afterwards many and at en mity with itself through discord.”

56. The Centaurs are set to guard this Circle, as symbolizing violence, with some form of which the classic poets usually associate them.

68. Chaucer, The Monkes Tale:

"A lemman had this noble champion,

That highte Deianire, as fresh as May;
And as thise clerkes maken mention,
She hath him sent a sherte fresh and gay:
Alas! this sherte, alas and wala wa 1
Envenimed was sotilly withalle,

That or that he had wered it half a day,
It made his flesh all from his bones falle."

Chiron was a son of Saturn; Pholus, of
Silenus; and Nessus, of Ixion and the
Cloud.

71. Homer, Iliad, XI. 832, "Whom Chiron instructed, the most just of the Centaurs." Hawthorne gives a humorous turn to the fable of Chiron, in the Tanglewood Tales, p. 273:

arrow before he can speak, is a thing that no mortal would ever have thought of, if he had not actually seen the Cen. taur do it. They might have com posed handsome bodies of men and horses in all possible ways, through a whole life of pseudo-idealism, and yet never dreamed of any such thing. But the real living Centaur actually trotted across Dante's brain, and he saw him do it."

107. Alexander of Thessaly and Dionysius of Syracuse.

"I have sometimes suspected that Master Chiron was not really very different from other people, but that, being a kind-hearted and merry old fellow, he was in the habit of making believe that he was a horse, and scram- IIO. Azzolino, or Ezzolino di Ro bling about the school-room on all fours, mano, tyrant of Padua, nicknamed the and letting the little boys ride upon Son of the Devil. Ariosto, Orlando his back. And so, when his scholars Furioso, III. 33, describes him as had grown up, and grown old, and "Fierce Ezelin, that most inhuman lord, were trotting their grandchildren on Who shall be deemed by men a child of hell.' their knees, they told them about the sports of their school days; and these His story may be found in Sismondi's young folks took the idea that their Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, Chap. grandfathers had been taught their let-XIX. He so outraged the religious ters by a Centaur, half man and half horse..

sense of the people by his cruelties, that a crusade was preached against him, and he died a prisoner in 1259, tearing the bandages from his wounds, and fierce and defiant to the last.

"Be that as it may, it has always been told for a fact, (and always will be told, as long as the world lasts,) that Chiron, with the head of a school- "Ezzolino was small of stature," says master, had the body and legs of a horse. Sismondi, "but the whole aspect of his Just imagine the grave old gentleman person, all his movements, indicated clattering and stamping into the school- the soldier. His language was bitter, room on his four hoofs, perhaps tread- his countenance proud; and by a single ing on some little fellow's toes, flou-look, he made the boldest tremble. rishing his switch tail instead of a rod, His soul, so greedy of all crimes, felt and, now and then, trotting out of doors to eat a mouthful of grass!"

77. Mr. Ruskin refers to this line in confirmation of his theory that "all great art represents something that it sees or believes in; nothing unseen or uncredited." The passage is as follows, Modern Painters, III. 83 :

no attraction for sensual pleasures. Never had Ezzolino loved women; and this perhaps is the reason why in his punishments he was as pitiless against them as against men. He was in his sixty-sixth year when he died; and his reign of blood had lasted thirty-four years."

Many glimpses of him are given in the Cento Novelle Antiche, as if his memory long haunted the minds of men. Here are two of them, from Novella 83.

"And just because it is always something that it sees or believes in, there is the peculiar character above noted, almost unmistakable, in all high and true ideals, of having been as it were studied from the life, and involving "Once upon a time Messer Azzolino pieces of sudden familiarity, and close da Romano made proclamation, through specific painting which never would his own territories and elsewhere, that have been admitted or even thought he wished to do a great charity, and of, had not the painter drawn either from the bodily life or from the life of faith. For instance, Dante's Centaur, Chiron, dividing his beard with his

therefore that all the beggars, both men and women, should assemble in his meadow, on a certain day, and to each he would give a new gown, and abun

dance of food. The news spread among proceedings Prince Henry, while tak the servants on all hands. When the ing the sacrament in the church of San day of assembling came, his seneschals Silvestro at Viterbo, was stabbed to went among them with the gowns and the heart by his own cousin, Guy de the food, and made them strip naked Montfort, in revenge for the Earl of one by one, and then clothed them with Leicester's death, although Henry was new clothes, and fed them. They then endeavouring to procure his par asked for their old rags, but it was all don. This sacrilegious act threw Vi in vain; for he put them into a heap terbo into confusion, but Montfort had and set fire to them. Afterwards he many supporters, one of whom asked found there so much gold and silver him what he had done. 'I have taken melted, that it more than paid the ex-my revenge,' said he. ‘But your father's pense, and then he dismissed them with his blessing.

"To tell you how much he was feared, would be a long story, and many people know it. But I will recall how he, being one day with the Emperor on horseback, with all their people, they laid a wager as to which of them bad the most beautiful sword. The Emperor drew from its sheath his own, which was wonderfully garnished with gold and precious stones. Then said Messer Azzolino: 'It is very beautiful; but mine, without any great ornament, is far more beautiful;'-and he drew it forth. Then six hundred knights, who were with him, all drew theirs. When the Emperor beheld this cloud of swords, he said: "Yours is the most beautiful." "

119. Guido di Monforte, who murdered Prince Henry of England "in the bosom of God," that is, in the church, at Viterbo, The event is thus narrated by Napier, Florentine History, I. 283:

"Another instance of this revengeful spirit occurred in the year 1271 at Viterbo, where the cardinals had assembled to elect a successor to Clement the Fourth, about whom they had been long disputing: Charles of Anjou and Philip of France, with Edward and Henry, sons of Richard, Duke of Cornwall, had repaired there, the two first to hasten the election, which they finally accomplished by the elevation of Gregory the Tenth. During these

body was trailed!' At this reproach, De Montfort instantly re-entered the church, walked straight to the altar, and, seizing Henry's body by the hair, dragged through the aisle, and left it, still bleeding, in the open street: he then retired unmolested to the castle of his father-in-law, Count Rosso of the Maremma, and there remained in security!"

"was

"The body of the Prince," says Barlow, Study of Dante, p. 125, brought to England, and interred at Hayles, in Gloucestershire, in the Abbey which his father had there built for monks of the Cistercian order; but his heart was put into a golden vase, and placed on the tomb of Edward the Confessor, in Westminster Abbey; most probably, as stated by some writers, in the hands of a statue."

123. Violence in all its forms was common enough in Florence in the age

of Dante.

134. Attila, the Scourge of God. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Chap. 39, describes him thus:

Attila, the son of Mundzuk, deduced his noble, perhaps his regal, descent from the ancient Huns, who had formerly contended with the monarchs of China. His features, according to the observation of a Gothic historian, bore the stamp of his national origin; and the portrait of Attila exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuk; a large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short, square body, of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form. The haughty step and demeanour of the King of the Huns expressed the

consciousness of his superiority above Pliny's time the climate was pestilen. the rest of mankind; and he had a tial. The Lombards gave it a new as custom of fiercely rolling his eyes, aspect of misery. Wherever they found if he wished to enjoy the terror which culture they built castles, and to each he inspired."

135. Which Pyrrhus and which Sextus, the commentators cannot determine; but incline to Pyrrhus of Epirus, and Sextus Pompey, the corsair of the Mediterranean.

137. Nothing more is known of these nighwaymen than that the first infested the Roman sea-shore, and that the second was of a noble family of Florence.

CANTO XIII.

1. In this Canto is described the punishment of those who had laid violent hands on themselves or their pro

perty.

2. Chaucer, Knightes Tale, 1977:

First on the wall was peinted a forest,

In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best,
With knotty knarry barrein trees old
Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to behold;
In which there ran a romble and a swough

As though a storme shuld bresten every
bough."

9. The Cecina is a small river running into the Mediterranean not many miles south of Leghorn; Corneto, a village in the Papai States, north of Civita Vecchia. The country is wild and thinly peopled, and studded with thickets, the haunts of the deer and the wild boar. This region is the fatal Maremma, thus described by Forsyth, Italy, p. 156:

castle they allotted a 'bandita' or mili tary fief. Hence baronial wars which have left so many picturesque ruins on the hills, and such desolation round them. Whenever a baron was conquered, his vassals escaped to the cities, and the vacant fief was annexed to the victorious. Thus stripped of men, the lands returned into a state of nature: some were flooded by the rivers, others grew into horrible forests, which enclose and concentrate the pestilence of the lakes and marshes.

"In some parts the water is brackish, and lies lower than the sea: in others it oozes full of tartar from beds of traver

A

tine. At the bottom or on the sides of
hills are a multitude of hot springs,
which form pools, called Lagoni.
few of these are said to produce borax:
some, which are called fumache, exhale
sulphur; others, called bulicami, boil
with a mephitic gas. The very air
above is only a pool of vapours, which
sometimes undulate, but seldom flow off.
It draws corruption from a rank, un-
shorn, rotting vegetation, from reptiles
and fish both living and dead.

"All nature conspires to drive man away from this fatal region; but man will ever return to his bane, if it be well baited. The Casentine peasants still migrate hither in the winter to feed their cattle: and here they sow corn, make charcoal, saw wood, cut hoops, and peel cork. When summer returns they decamp, but often too late; for many leave their corpses on the road, or bring home the Maremmian disease.' 11. Eneid, III., Davidson's Tr. :"The shores of the Strophades first receive me rescued from the waves. The Strophades, so called by a Greek name, are islands situated in the great Ionian Sea; which direful Celano and the other Harpies inhabit, from what time Phineus' palace was closed against Sylla threw this maritime part of them, and they were frighted from his Tuscany into enormous latifundia for table, which they formerly haunted. his disbanded soldiers. Similar distri- No monster more fell than they, no butions continued to lessen its popula- plague and scourge of the gods more tion during the Empire. In the younger cruel, ever issued from the Stygian

"Farther south is the Maremma, a region which, though now worse than a desert, is supposed to have been anciently both fertile and healthy. The Maremma certainly formed part of that Etruria which was called from its harvests the annonaria. Old Roman cisterms may still be traced, and the ruins of Populonium are still visible in the worst part of this tract: yet both nature and man seem to have conspired against it.

64

150

40. Chaucer, Knightes Tale, 2339:"And as it queinte, it made a whisteling As don these brondes wet in hir brenning, And at the brondes ende outran anon As it were blody dropes many on." See also Spenser, Faerie Queene, I. ii. 30. 58. Pietro della Vigna, Chancellor of the Emperor Frederick II. Napier's account of him is as follows, Florentine History, I. 197:—

waves. They are fowls with virgin with guilt thy pious hands: Troy faces, most loathsome is their bodily brought me forth no stranger to you; discharge, hands hooked, and looks nor is it from the trunk this blood Hither con- distils." " ever pale with famine. veyed, as soon as we entered the port, lo! we observe joyous herds of cattle roving up and down the plains, and flocks of goats along the meadows without a keeper. We rush upon them with our swords, and invoke the gods and Jove himself to share the booty. Then along the winding shore we raise the couches, and feast on the rich repast. But suddenly, with direful swoop, the Harpies are upon us from the mountains, shake their wings with loud din, prey upon our banquet, and defile everything with their touch: at the same time, together with a rank smell, hideous screams arise."

21. His words in the Eneid, III., Davidson's Tr. :

"The fate of his friend and minister, Piero delle Vigne of Capua, if truly told, would nevertheless impress us with an unfavourable idea of his mercy and Piero was sent with magnanimity : Taddeo di Sessa as Frederick's advocate and representative to the Council of Lyons, which was assembled by his friend Innocent the Fourth, nominally to reform the Church, but really to impart more force and solemnity to a fresh sentence of excommunication and deposition. There Taddeo spoke with force and boldness for his master; but Piero was silent; and hence he was accused of

Pope, not only to desert the Emperor, but to attempt his life; and whether he were really culpable, or the victim of court intrigue, is still doubtful. Fre derick, on apparently good evidence, condemned him to have his eyes burned out, and the sentence was executed at San Miniato al Tedesco: being afterwards sent on horseback to Pisa, where he was hated, as an object for popular derision, he died, as is conjectured, from the effects of a fall while thus cruelly exposed, and not by his own hand, as Dante believed and sung.'

"Near at hand there chanced to be a rising ground, on whose top were young cornel-trees, and a myrtle rough with thick, spear-like branches. I came up to it, and attempting to tear from the earth the verdant wood, that I might cover the altars with the leafy boughs, I observe a dreadful prodigy, and won-being, like several others, bribed by the drous to relate. For from that tree which first is torn from the soil, its rooted fibres being burst asunder, drops of black blood distil, and stain the ground with gore: cold terror shakes my limbs, and my chill blood is congealed with fear. I again essay to tear off a limber bough from another, and thoroughly explore the latent cause: and from the rind of that other the purple blood descends. Raising in my mind many an anxious thought, I with reverence besought the rural nymphs, and father Mars, who presides over the Thracian territories, kindly to prosper the vision and avert evil from the omen. But when I attempted the boughs a third time with a more vigorous effort, and on my knees struggled against the opposing mould, (shall I speak, or shall I forbear?) a piteous groan is heard from the bottom of the rising ground, and a voice sent forth reaches my ears: Eneas, why dost thou tear an unhappy wretch? Spare me, now that I am in my grave; forbear to pollute

Milman, Latin Christianity, V. 499, gives the story thus:

"Peter de Vineâ had been raised by the wise choice of Frederick to the All the highest rank and influence. acts of Frederick were attributed to his Chancellor. De Vineâ, like his master, was a poet; he was one of the coun sellors in his great scheme of legislation. Some rumours spread abroad that at the Council of Lyons, though Frederick had forbidden all his representatives from