[354] Jehoshaphat: ‘I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat’ (Joel iii. 2).
[355] Epicurus: The unbelief in a future life, or rather the indifference to everything but the calls of ambition and worldly pleasure, common among the nobles of Dante’s age and that preceding it, went by the name of Epicureanism. It is the most radical of heresies, because adverse to the first principles of all religions. Dante, in his treatment of heresy, dwells more on what affects conduct as does the denial of the Divine government—than on intellectual divergence from orthodox belief.
[356] As well as, etc.: The question is: ‘May they be seen?’ The wish is a desire to speak with them.
[357] Nor only now, etc.: Virgil has on previous occasions imposed silence on Dante, as, for instance, at Inf. iii. 51.
[358] Be pleased, etc.: From one of the sepulchres, to be imagined as a huge sarcophagus, come words similar to the Siste Viator! common on Roman tombs.
[359] Farinata: Of the great Florentine family of the Uberti, and, in the generation before Dante, leader of the Ghibeline or Imperialist party in Florence. His memory long survived among his fellow-townsmen as that of the typical noble, rough-mannered, unscrupulous, and arrogant; but yet, for one good action that he did, he at the same time ranked in the popular estimation as a patriot and a hero. Boccaccio, misled perhaps by the mention of Epicurus, says that he loved rich and delicate fare. It is because all his thoughts were worldly that he is condemned to the city of unbelief. Dante has already (Inf. vi. 79) inquired regarding his fate. He died in 1264.
[360] His brows: When Dante tells he is of the Alighieri, a Guelf family, Farinata shows some slight displeasure. Or, as a modern Florentine critic interprets the gesture, he has to think a moment before he can remember on which side the Alighieri ranged themselves—they being of the small gentry, while he was a great noble, But this gloss requires Dante to have been more free from pride of family than he really was.
[361] Twice disperse: The Alighieri shared in the exile of the Guelfs in 1248 and 1260.
[362] You: See also line 95. Dante never uses the plural form to a single person except when desirous of showing social as distinguished from, or over and above, moral respect.
[363] Guido: Farinata’s companion in the tomb is Cavalcante Cavalcanti, who, although a Guelf, was tainted with the more specially Ghibeline error of Epicureanism. When in order to allay party rancour some of the Guelf and Ghibeline families were forced to intermarry, his son Guido took a daughter of Farinata’s to wife. This was in 1267, so that Guido was much older than Dante. Yet they were very intimate, and, intellectually, had much in common. With him Dante exchanged poems of occasion, and he terms him more than once in the Vita Nuova his chief friend. The disdain of Virgil need not mean more than is on the surface. Guido died in 1301. He is the hero of the Decameron, vi. 9.