v. 73. The beautiful Trinaeria.] Sicily, so called from its three promontories, of which Pachynus and Pelorus, here mentioned, are two.
v. 14 Typhaeus.] The giant whom Jupiter is fabled to have overwhelmed under the mountain Aetna from whence he vomits forth smoke and flame.
v. 77. Sprang through me from Charles and Rodolph.] “Sicily would be still ruled by a race of monarchs, descended through me from Charles I and Rodolph I the former my grandfather king of Naples and Sicily; the latter emperor of Germany, my father-in-law; “both celebrated in the Purgatory Canto, Vll.
v. 78. Had not ill lording.] “If the ill conduct of our governors in Sicily had not excited the resentment and hatred of the people and stimulated them to that dreadful massacre at the Sicilian vespers;” in consequence of which the kingdom fell into the hands of Peter III of Arragon, in 1282
v. 81. My brother’s foresight.] He seems to tax his brother Robert with employing necessitous and greedy Catalonians to administer the affairs of his kingdom.
v. 99. How bitter can spring up.] “How a covetous son can spring from a liberal father.” Yet that father has himself been accused of avarice in the Purgatory Canto XX. v. 78; though his general character was that of a bounteous prince.
v. 125. Consult your teacher.] Aristole. [GREEK HERE] De Rep. 1. iii. c. 4. “Since a state is made up of members differing from one another, (for even as an animal, in the first instance, consists of soul and body, and the soul, of reason and desire; and a family, of man and woman, and property of master and slave; in like manner a state consists both of all these and besides these of other dissimilar kinds,) it necessarily follows that the excellence of all the members of the state cannot be one and the same.”
v. 136. Esau.] Genesis c. xxv. 22.
v. 137. Quirinus.] Romulus, born of so obscure a father, that his parentage was attributed to Mars.