[20] Filostrato, Greek φίλος, loving, and στρατὸς, army, met. strife, war, i.e. one who loves strife. This name appears to be a reminiscence of Boccaccio's poem (Il Filostrato, well known through its translation by Chaucer and the Senechal d'Anjou) upon the subject of the loves of Troilus and Cressida and to be in this instance used by him as a synonym for an unhappy lover, whom no rebuffs, no treachery can divert from his ill-starred passion. Such a lover may well be said to be in love with strife, and that the Filostrato of the Decameron sufficiently answers to this description we learn later on from his own lips.
[21] Dioneo, a name probably coined from the Greek Διωνη, one of the agnomina of Venus (properly her mother's name) and intended to denote the amorous temperament of his personage, to which, indeed, the erotic character of most of the stories told by him bears sufficient witness.
[22] e prima mandato là dove, etc. This passage is obscure and may be read to mean "and having first despatched mandato is a copyist's error for mandata, in which case the meaning would be as in the text.
[23] Or balconies (loggie).
[24] i.e. Nine o'clock a.m. Boccaccio's habit of measuring time by the canonical hours has been a sore stumbling-block to the ordinary English and French translator, who is generally terribly at sea as to his meaning, inclining to render tierce three, sexte six o'clock and none noon and making shots of the same wild kind at the other hours. The monasterial rule (which before the general introduction of clocks was commonly followed by the mediæval public in the computation of time) divided the twenty-four hours of the day and night into seven parts (six of three hours each and one of six), the inception of which was denoted by the sound of the bells that summoned the clergy to the performance of the seven canonical offices i.e. Matins at 3 a.m., Prime at 6 a.m., Tierce at 9 a.m., Sexte or Noonsong at noon, None at 3 p.m., Vespers or Evensong at 6 p.m. and Complines or Nightsong at 9 p.m., and at the same time served the laity as a clock.
[25] The table of Boccaccio's time was a mere board upon trestles, which when not in actual use, was stowed away, for room's sake, against the wall.
[26] i.e. to take the siesta or midday nap common in hot countries.
[27] i.e. three o'clock p.m.
[28] i.e. backgammon.
[29] Or procurators.