• The Ottimo and Benvenuto both interpret the three faces as symbolizing Ignorance, Hatred, and Impotence. Others interpret them as signifying the three quarters of the then known world, Europe, Asia, and Africa. ↩
• Aethiopia; the region about the Cataracts of the Nile. ↩
• Milton, Paradise Lost , II 527:⁠— “At last his sail-broad vans He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke Uplifted spurns the ground.” ↩
• Landor in his Pentameron , 527, makes Petrarca say:⁠— “This is atrocious, not terrific nor grand. Alighieri is grand by his lights, not by his shadows; by his human affections, not by his infernal. As the minutest sands are the labors of some profound sea, or the spoils of some vast mountain, in like manner his horrid wastes and wearying minutenesses are the chafings of a turbulent spirit, grasping the loftiest things, and penetrating the deepest, and moving and moaning on the earth in loneliness and sadness.” ↩