• Aeneid , VI :⁠— “Here too you might have seen Tityus, the fosterchild of all-bearing earth, whose body is extended over nine whole acres; and a huge vulture, with her hooked beak, pecking at his immortal liver.” Also Odyssey , XI , in similar words. Typhoeus was a giant with a hundred heads, like a dragon’s, who made war upon the gods as soon as he was born. He was the father of Geryon and Cerberus. ↩
• The battle between Hercules and Antaeus is described by Lucan, Pharsalia , IV :⁠— “Bright in Olympic oil Alcides shone, Antaeus with his mother’s dust is strown, And seeks her friendly force to aid his own.” ↩
• One of the leaning towers of Bologna, which Eustace, Classical Tour , I 167, thinks are “remarkable only for their unmeaning elevation and dangerous deviation from the perpendicular.” ↩
• In this Canto begins the Ninth and last Circle of the Inferno, where Traitors are punished. “Hence in the smallest circle, at the point Of all the Universe, where Dis is seated, Whoe’er betrays forever is consumed.” ↩
• The word thrust is here used in its architectural sense, as the thrust of a bridge against its abutments, and the like. ↩
• Still using the babble of childhood. ↩