[760] Athamas: Married to a sister of Semele, was made insane by the angry Juno, with the result described in the text.
[761] Hecuba: Wife of Priam, king of Troy, and mother of Polyxena and Polydorus. While she was lamenting the death of her daughter, slain as an offering on the tomb of Achilles, she found the corpse of her son, slain by the king of Thrace, to whose keeping she had committed him (Ovid, Metam. xiii.).
[762] Trojan fury, etc.: It was by the agency of a Fury that Athamas was put out of his mind; but the Trojan and Theban furies here meant are the frenzies of Athamas and Hecuba, wild with which one of them slew his son, and the other scratched out the eyes of the Thracian king.
[763] Capocchio: See close of the preceding Canto. Here as elsewhere sinners are made ministers of vengeance on one another.
[764] The Aretine: Griffolino, who boasted he could fly; already represented as trembling (Inf. xxix. 97).
[765] Gianni Schicchi: Giovanni Schicchi, one of the Cavalcanti of Florence.
[766] Myrrha: This is a striking example of Dante’s detestation of what may be called heartless sins. It is covered by the classification of Canto xi. Yet it is almost with a shock that we find Myrrha here for personation, and not rather condemned to some other circle for another sin.
[767] Buoso Donati: Introduced as a thief in the Seventh Bolgia (Inf. xxv. 140). Buoso was possessed of a peerless mare, known as the Lady of the herd. To make some amends for his unscrupulous acquisition of wealth, he made a will bequeathing legacies to various religious communities. When he died his nephew Simon kept the fact concealed long enough to procure a personation of him as if on his death-bed by Gianni Schicchi, who had great powers of mimicry. Acting in the character of Buoso, the rogue professed his wish to make a new disposition of his means, and after specifying some trifling charitable bequests the better to maintain his assumed character, named Simon as general legatee, and bequeathed Buoso’s mare to himself.
[768] O ye, etc.: The speaker has heard and noted Virgil’s words of explanation given in the previous Canto, line 94.
[769] Master Adam: Adam of Brescia, an accomplished worker in metals, was induced by the Counts Guidi of Romena in the Casentino, the upland district of the upper Arno, to counterfeit the gold coin of Florence. This false coin is mentioned in a Chronicle as having been in circulation in 1281. It must therefore have been somewhat later that Master Adam was burned, as he was by sentence of the Republic, upon the road which led from Romena to Florence. A cairn still existing near the ruined castle bears the name of the ‘dead man’s cairn.’