[688] Consenting: See line 21.
[689] One that came: This is the fire-enveloped shade of Guido of Montefeltro, the colloquy with whom occupies the whole of the Canto.
[690] The Sicilian bull: Perillus, an Athenian, presented Phalaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum, with a brazen bull so constructed that when it was heated from below the cries of the victim it contained were converted into the bellowing of a bull. The first trial of the invention was made upon the artist.
[691] Accurst: Not in the original. ‘Rime in English hath such scarcity,’ as Chaucer says.
[692] As moved the tongue, etc.: The shade being enclosed in the hollow fire all his words are changed into a sound like the roaring of a flame. At last, when an opening has been worked through the crested point, the speech becomes articulate.
[693] Depart, etc.: One at least of the words quoted as having been used by Virgil is Lombard. There is something very quaint in making him use the Lombard dialect of Dante’s time.
[694] ’Tween springs, etc.: Montefeltro lies between Urbino and the mountain where the Tiber has its source.
[695] Already: Dante knew that Virgil would refer to him for an answer to Guido’s question, bearing as it did on modern Italian affairs.
[696] Romagna: The district of Italy lying on the Adriatic, south of the Po and east of Tuscany, of which Bologna and the cities named in the text were the principal towns. During the last quarter of the thirteenth century it was the scene of constant wars promoted in the interest of the Church, which claimed Romagna as the gift of the Emperor Rudolf, and in that of the great nobles of the district, who while using the Guelf and Ghibeline war-cries aimed at nothing but the lordship of the various cities. Foremost among these nobles was he with whose shade Dante speaks. Villani calls him ‘the most sagacious and accomplished warrior of his time in Italy’ (Cronica, vii. 80). He was possessed of lands of his own near Forlì and Cesena, and was lord in turn of many of the Romagnese cities. On the whole he appears to have remained true to his Ghibeline colours in spite of Papal fulminations, although once and again he was reconciled to the Church; on the last occasion in 1294. In the years immediately before this he had greatly distinguished himself as a wise governor and able general in the service of the Ghibeline Pisa—or rather as the paid lord of it.
[697] Ravenna: Ravenna and the neighbouring town of Cervia were in 1300 under the lordship of members of the Polenta family—the father and brothers of the ill-fated Francesca (Inf. v.). Their arms were an eagle, half white on an azure and half red on a gold field. It was in the court of the generous Guido, son of one of these brothers, that Dante was to find his last refuge and to die.