v. 133. O Giocomo
Of
Sant’ Andrea!]
Jacopo da Sant’ Andrea, a Paduan, who, having
wasted his property in the most wanton acts of profusion,
killed himself in despair. v. 144. In that City.]
“I was an inhabitant of Florence, that city
which changed her first patron Mars for St. John the
Baptist, for which reason the vengeance of the deity
thus slighted will never be appeased: and, if
some remains of his status were not still visible
on the bridge over the Arno, she would have been already
leveled to the ground; and thus the citizens, who
raised her again from the ashes to which Attila had
reduced her, would have laboured in vain.”
See Paradise, Canto xvi. 44. The relic
of antiquity to which the superstition of Florence
attached so high an importance, was carried away by
a flood, that destroyed the bridge on which it stood,
in the year 1337, but without the ill effects that
were apprehended from the loss of their fancied Palladium.
v. 152. I slung the fatal noose.] We are not informed who this suicide was.
CANTO XIV
v. 15. By Cato’s foot.] See Lucan, Phars, l. 9.
v. 26. Dilated flakes of fire.] Compare Tasso. G. L. c. x. st. 61.
v. 28. As, in the torrid Indian clime.] Landino refers to Albertus Magnus for the circumstance here alluded to.
v. 53. In Mongibello.]
More
hot than Aetn’ or flaming Mongibell.
Spenser,
F. Q. b. ii. c. ix. st. 29.
See Virg. Aen. 1. viii. 416. and Berni.
Orl. Inn 1. i. c. xvi.
st. 21. It would be endless to refer to parallel
passages in the
Greek writers.
v. 64. This of the seven kings was one.] Compare Aesch. Seven Chiefs, 425. Euripides, Phoen. 1179 and Statius. Theb. l. x. 821.
v. 76. Bulicame.] A warm medicinal spring near Viterbo, the waters of which, as Landino and Vellutelli affirm, passed by a place of ill fame. Venturi, with less probability, conjectures that Dante would imply, that it was the scene of much licentious merriment among those who frequented its baths.
v. 91. Under whose monarch.]
Credo
pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam
In
terris.
Juv.
Satir. vi.
v. 102. His head.] Daniel, ch. ii. 32, 33.
v. 133. Whither.] On the other side of Purgatory.
CANTO XV
v. 10. Chiarentana.] A part of the Alps where the Brenta rises, which river is much swoln as soon as the snow begins to dissolve on the mountains.