v. 109. At war ’twixt will and will not.] Che si, e no nel capo mi tenzona. So Boccaccio, Ninf. Fiesol. st. 233.
Il si e il no nel capo gli contende.
The words I have adopted as a translation, are Shakespeare’s,
Measure for Measure. a. ii. s. 1.
v. 122. This their insolence, not new.] Virgil assures our poet, that these evil spirits had formerly shown the same insolence when our Savior descended into hell. They attempted to prevent him from entering at the gate, over which Dante had read the fatal inscription. “That gate which,” says the Roman poet, “an angel has just passed, by whose aid we shall overcome this opposition, and gain admittance into the city.”
CANTO IX
v. 1. The hue.] Virgil, perceiving that Dante was pale with fear, restrained those outward tokens of displeasure which his own countenance had betrayed.
v. 23. Erictho.] Erictho, a Thessalian sorceress, according to Lucan, Pharsal. l. vi. was employed by Sextus, son of Pompey the Great, to conjure up a spirit, who should inform him of the issue of the civil wars between his father and Caesar.
v. 25. No long space my flesh
Was naked of me.]
Quae corpus complexa animae tam fortis inane.
Ovid. Met. l. xiii f. 2
Dante appears to have fallen into a strange anachronism. Virgil’s
death did not happen till long after this period.