• Some editions read la penna , the pen, instead of la lingua , the tongue. ↩
• Gaville was a village in the Valdarno, where Guercio Cavalcanti was murdered. The family took vengeance upon the inhabitants in the old Italian style, thus causing Gaville to lament the murder. ↩
• The Eighth Bolgia, in which Fraudulent Counsellors are punished. ↩
• Of these five Florentine nobles, Cianfa Donati, Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, and Guercio Cavalcanti, nothing is known but what Dante tells us. Perhaps that is enough. ↩
• See Purgatorio IX 13:⁠— “Just at the hour when her sad lay begins The little swallow, near unto the morning, Perchance in memory of her former woes. And when the mind of man, a wanderer More from the flesh, and less by thought imprisoned, Almost prophetic in its visions is.” ↩