• Dante seems to share the feeling of the Italian vendetta , which required retaliation from some member of the injured family. “Among the Italians of this age,” says Napier, Florentine History , I Ch. VII , “and for centuries after, private offence was never forgotten until revenged, and generally involved a succession of mutual injuries; vengeance was not only considered lawful and just, but a positive duty, dishonorable to omit; and, as may be learned from ancient private journals, it was sometimes allowed to sleep for five-and-thirty years, and then suddenly struck a victim who perhaps had not yet seen the light when the original injury was inflicted.” ↩
• The Val di Chiana, near Arezzo, was in Dante’s time marshy and pestilential. Now, by the effect of drainage, it is one of the most beautiful and fruitful of the Tuscan valleys. The Maremma was and is notoriously unhealthy; see note 181 , and Sardinia would seem to have shared its ill repute. ↩
• Forgers or falsifiers in a general sense. The “false semblaunt” of Gower, Confessio Amantis , II :⁠— “Of fals semblaunt if I shall telle, Above all other it is the welle Out of the which deceipte floweth.” They are registered here on earth to be punished hereafter. ↩