Fig. 40. The Zodiac and the Months.
Dante seems to have connected any season of the year with the sun’s path in the zodiac as readily as with the name of a month. The sun’s yearly course through the signs is shown diagrammatically in [figure 40], and a glance at this will make clear a number of allusions without any explanation.
Starting from the first point of Aries at the spring equinox, which in Dante’s time fell in the middle of March, and taking one-twelfth of the year to traverse each sign, it is evident that during the end of March and beginning of April the sun was in Aries; he entered Cancer and reached the summer solstice in June, the autumnal equinox in Libra in September, and the winter solstice when he entered Capricornus in December. The six signs above the horizontal line are northern, the six below are southern.
The following are a few typical examples.
When Dante wishes to express the transition of his feelings from despondency to courage, at seeing the stern and troubled face of his guide melt suddenly to a smile, he compares himself to a poor shepherd who wakes early and sees the fields covered, as he thinks, with snow, but in a short time finds that it is only hoar-frost which has put on the semblance of her white sister, and seeing the face of the world changed he gladly leads out his sheep to pasture. The time at which this may happen is
“Quella parte del giovinetto anno, Che il sole i crin sotto l’Aquario tempra, E già le notti al mezzodì sen vanno.”[225]
That part of the youthful year when the sun cools his locks beneath Aquarius is clearly the end of January or beginning of February, but the last line may bear one of two meanings. If we translate “mezzodì” as “half the day” it means that the nights are growing shorter, and very soon (in March) when the sun will have reached the equinox, they will be just twelve hours long. If we take “mezzodì” as meaning “the south,” we must interpret the passage in the light of others in the Divine Comedy where Night is personified, and considered as circling in the zodiac always opposite to the sun. For instance in Purg. ii. 1-6 (a passage which will be more fully explained later) Night is described as circling opposite to the sun, “La notte, che opposita a lui cerchia,”[226] and as the sun at that time was in Aries, Night was in Libra, “le Bilance.” Henceforth for six months the sun will be in the northern signs, and the days longer than the nights, but as soon as Night begins to assert her supremacy, and the nights begin to be longer than the days, the sun enters Libra and then it is not visible all night. This is the meaning of
“le Bilance, Che le caggion di man quando soverchia.”[227]