v. 29. Orestes] Alluding to his friendship with Pylades
v. 32. Love ye those have wrong’d you.] Matt. c. v. 44.
v. 33. The scourge.] “The chastisement of envy consists in hearing examples of the opposite virtue, charity. As a curb and restraint on this vice, you will presently hear very different sounds, those of threatening and punishment.”
v. 87. Citizens Of one true city.] “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek to come.” Heb. C. xiii. 14.
v. 101. Sapia.] A lady of Sienna, who, living in exile at Colle, was so overjoyed at a defeat which her countrymen sustained near that place that she declared nothing more was wanting to make her die contented.
v. 114. The merlin.] The story of the merlin is that having been induced by a gleam of fine weather in the winter to escape from his master, he was soon oppressed by the rigour of the season.
v. 119. The hermit Piero.] Piero Pettinagno, a holy hermit of Florence.
v. 141. That vain multitude.] The Siennese. See Hell, Canto XXIX. 117. “Their acquisition of Telamone, a seaport on the confines of the Maremma, has led them to conceive hopes of becoming a naval power: but this scheme will prove as chimerical as their former plan for the discovery of a subterraneous stream under their city.” Why they gave the appellation of Diana to the imagined stream, Venturi says he leaves it to the antiquaries of Sienna to conjecture.
CANTO XIV
v. 34. Maim’d of Pelorus.] Virg. Aen. 1. iii. 414.