[215] See above, pp. [198–199] and [243].
[216] See above, pp. [174] sqq.
[217] In the year 1300 Milan occupied a territory scarcely larger than that of the neighboring states, but under the Visconti it conquered a number of towns, Pavia, Cremona, etc., and became, next to Venice, the most considerable state of northern Italy.
[218] A single example will suffice. Through intrigue and misrepresentation on the part of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the Marquis of Ferrara became so wildly jealous of his nephew that he beheaded the young man and his mother, then burned his own wife and hung a fourth member of the family.
[220] The translation of The Banquet in Morley's "Universal Library" is very poor, but that of Miss Hillard (London, 1889) is good and is supplied with helpful notes.
[221] See the close of the fourth canto of the Inferno.
[222] See above, pp. [271–272].
[223] Copies of the Æneid, of Horace's Satires, of certain of Cicero's Orations, of Ovid, Seneca, and a few other authors, were apparently by no means uncommon during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It seemed, however, to Petrarch, who had learned through the references of Cicero, St. Augustine, and others, something of the original extent of Latin literature, that treasures of inestimable value had been lost by the shameful indifference of the Middle Ages. "Each famous author of antiquity whom I recall," he indignantly exclaims, "places a new offense and another cause of dishonor to the charge of later generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through shameful neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage."
[224] Petrarch's own remarkable account of his life and studies, which he gives in his famous "Letter to Posterity," may be found in Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch, pp. 59–76.