CANTO I
Verse 1. In the midway.] That the era of the Poem is intended by these words to be fixed to the thirty fifth year of the poet’s age, A.D. 1300, will appear more plainly in Canto XXI. where that date is explicitly marked.
v. 16. That planet’s beam.] The sun.
v. 29. The hinder foot.] It is to be remembered, that in ascending a hill the weight of the body rests on the hinder foot.
v. 30. A panther.] Pleasure or luxury.
v. 36. With those stars.] The sun was in Aries, in which sign he supposes it to have begun its course at the creation.
v. 43. A lion.] Pride or ambition.
v. 45. A she wolf.] Avarice.
v. 56. Where the sun in silence rests.] Hence Milton appears to have taken his idea in the Samson Agonistes:
The sun to me is dark
And silent as the moon, &c
The same metaphor will recur, Canto V. v. 29.
Into a place I came
Where light was silent all.
v. 65. When the power of Julius.] This is explained by the commentators to mean “Although it was rather late with respect to my birth before Julius Caesar assumed the supreme authority, and made himself perpetual dictator.”
v. 98. That greyhound.] This passage is intended as an eulogium on the liberal spirit of his Veronese patron Can Grande della Scala.
v. 102. ’Twizt either Feltro.] Verona, the country of Can della Scala, is situated between Feltro, a city in the Marca Trivigiana, and Monte Feltro, a city in the territory of Urbino.
v. 103. Italia’s plains.] “Umile Italia,” from Virgil, Aen lib.
iii. 522.
Humilemque videmus
Italiam.
v. 115. Content in fire.] The spirits in Purgatory.
v. 118. A spirit worthier.] Beatrice, who conducts the Poet through Paradise.
v. 130. Saint Peter’s gate.] The gate of Purgatory, which the Poet feigns to be guarded by an angel placed on that station by St. Peter.