“Vie pui bello e il tacerle, che il favellarne.”
Gli. Asol. lib. 1.
v. 117. Electra.] The daughter of Atlas, and mother of Dardanus the founder of Troy. See Virg. Aen. b. viii. 134. as referred to by Dante in treatise “De Monarchia,” lib. ii. “Electra, scilicet, nata magni nombris regis Atlantis, ut de ambobus testimonium reddit poeta noster in octavo ubi Aeneas ad Avandrum sic ait “Dardanus Iliacae,” &c.
v. 125. Julia.] The daughter of Julius Caesar, and wife of Pompey.
v. 126. The Soldan fierce.] Saladin or Salaheddin, the rival of Richard coeur de lion. See D’Herbelot, Bibl. Orient. and Knolles’s Hist. of the Turks p. 57 to 73 and the Life of Saladin, by Bohao’edin Ebn Shedad, published by Albert Schultens, with a Latin translation. He is introduced by Petrarch in the Triumph of Fame, c. ii
v. 128. The master of the sapient throng.]
Maestro di color che sanno.
Aristotle—Petrarch assigns the first place to Plato. See Triumph
of Fame, c. iii.
Pulci, in his Morgante Maggiore, c. xviii. says,
Tu se’il maestro di color che sanno.
v. 132. Democritus Who sets the world at chance.] Democritus,who maintained the world to have been formed by the fortuitous concourse of atoms.
v. 140. Avicen.] See D’Herbelot Bibl. Orient. article Sina. He died in 1050. Pulci here again imitates our poet: