Shooting stars were necessarily familiar to a lover of starry skies, and Dante has given us an exquisite description of the suddenness with which they startle quiet eyes, while their brilliancy and swiftness of flight provides him with two beautiful similes.
In the first he compares them, and also flashes of summer lightning, with messenger spirits in Purgatory hastening to bring their friends to him:—
“Vapori accesi non vid’ io sì tosto Di prima notte mai fender sereno, Nè, sol calando, nuvole d’agosto, Che color non tornasser suso in meno, E giunti là, con gli altri a noi dier volta.”[381]
The second illustrates the brightness and beauty, as well as the movement, of the star-like spirits in Mars:—
“Quale per li seren tranquilli e puri Discorre ad ora ad or subito foco, Movendo gli occhi che stavan sicuri, E pare stella che tramuti loco, Se non che dalla parte ond’ ei s’ accende Nulla sen perde, ed esso dura poco ...”[382]
8. THE SUN’S PATH IN THE SKY SEEN FROM
DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE EARTH.
We have now seen how familiar Dante was with the aspects of the skies above his head. His writings show also that he had pictured clearly to himself what they must be in other parts of the world—in regions far east or west, in the southern hemisphere, at the equator, and at either pole. Science could not tell him all that he would have liked to know about the stars, so that although he can speak of regions where Ursa Major passes overhead, and where it sinks out of sight below the horizon, he has to fall back upon his imagination and invent new constellations for the southern hemisphere.
But astronomy could tell him, and his habit of accurate thought, as well as his imagination, helped him to grasp how the sun would appear at any latitude on the earth, and what would be the results on the length of day and night, and on the seasons. A very interesting little disquisition on this subject is found in the Convivio, in illustration of some lines in one of his Odes, which speak of the sun circling the whole world. In order to understand this completely, Dante says, we must know exactly in what way the sun circles the world. The chief point to bear in mind while reading his description is that the sun, besides the simple daily motion in a circle, has a constant slow motion north or south, and therefore his path in the sky, as we see it day after day, is really spiral.
The passage is much too long to quote in full, but if the reader will follow me, taking his Convivio and opening it at chapter v. of Treatise III. and beginning at line 66, I will give a résumé which will form a running commentary on the text, and an explanation of any points which may not at once be clear.
We see the sky, says Dante, continually revolving round Earth as centre; and it has two fixed poles of revolution—the northern, which is visible to nearly all the land not covered by sea, and the southern, which is hidden from nearly all of it. And the circle which is equi-distant from these two poles [the celestial equator] is that part of the sky in which we see the sun when he is in Aries and in Libra.