[1277] Orationes Philelphi, fol. 8.
[1278] Septimo Decretal. lib. v. tit. iii. cap. 8.
[1279] Ariosto, Orlando, vii. 61. Ridiculed in Orlandino, iv. 67, 68. Cariteo, a member of the Neapolitan Academy of Pontanus, uses the idea of the pre-existence of the soul in order to glorify the House of Aragon. Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, ii. 288.
[1280] Orelli, ad Cic. De Republ. l. vi. Comp. Lucan, Pharsalia, at the beginning.
[1281] Petrarca, Epp. Fam. iv. 3, iv. 6.
[1282] Fil. Villani, Vite, p. 15. This remarkable passage is as follows: ‘Che agli uomini fortissimi poichè hanno vinto le mostruose fatiche della terra, debitamente sieno date le stelle.’
[1283] Inferno, iv. 24 sqq. Comp. Purgatorio, vii. 28, xxii. 100.
[1284] This pagan heaven is referred to in the epitaph on the artist Niccolò dell’Arca:
‘Nunc te Praxiteles, Phidias, Polycletus adora
Miranturque tuas, o Nicolae, manus.’
In Bursellis, Ann. Bonon. Murat. xxiii. col. 912.