“The threshing-floor that maketh us so proud, To me revolving with the eternal Twins, Was all apparent made from hill to harbour.” Par. xxii. 151-3. (Longfellow).
[508] Della Valle boldly assumes that they were over the same meridian, by a poetical licence, although at the same time the sun was in a different sign. Dante only mentions the latter fact, he thinks, in order to show that he was a few degrees north of the sun (Gemini being more northerly than Aries); therefore he could see over the edge, as it were, of the sun-lighted hemisphere of Earth. This is desperately subtle.
It is, however, the only way in which the passages can be reconciled with his further assumption, shared by some other commentators, that Dante, in his flight through the spheres, simply ascended without any movement in longitude except that he was carried round by the daily revolution of the spheres. All the planets, therefore, were ranged one above the other, in the sign of Gemini, and it was always noon on the earth below his feet, since that was the hour at which he ascended from the Earthly Paradise, and his movement was the same as the sun’s. (Here Della Valle is inconsistent, however, for he maintains that the ascent was made in the early morning.) But this is a very artificial conceit, and not indicated by Dante. He implies that Beatrice, in leading him to each sphere, chose the part of it which he was to enter (see Par. xxvii. 102), and he tells us that Saturn was in Leo, Venus in Pisces, and the sun in Aries.
[509] Il Paradiso di Dante dichiarato ai giovani, by Angelo de Gubernatis.
[510] “From the hills to the river-mouths.”
[511] “Love which moves the sun and the other stars.” Par. last line.
[512] Alfraganus, as we saw, gives the daily movement of the sun eastward in the zodiac as about 59 minutes of arc. (A degree contains 60 minutes).
[513] Purg. xxv. 2, 3.
[514] Inf. xi. 113; Purg. i. 21, xix. 4-6.