• Dante here translates Virgil’s own words, as he has done so many times before. Aeneid , IV 23:⁠— “Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.” ↩
• The Terrestrial Paradise lost by Eve. ↩
• Psalm 31:1, 8:⁠— “In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust⁠ ⁠… Thou hast set my feet in a large room.” ↩
• Aeneid , VI 180:⁠— “Down drop the firs; crashes, by axes felled, the ilex; and the ashen rafters and the yielding oaks are cleft by wedges.” And IX 87:⁠— “A wood⁠ ⁠… dark with gloomy firs, and rafters of the maple.” Denistoun, Mem. of the Duke of Urbino I 4, says:⁠— “On the summit grew those magnificent pines, which gave to the district of Massa the epithet of ‘Trabaria,’ from the beams which were carried thence for the palaces of Rome, and which are noticed by Dante as ‘The living rafters Upon the back of Italy.’ ” ↩
• Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale , IV 3:⁠— “The fanned snow That’s bolted by the northern blast twice o’er.” And Midsummer Night’s Dream :⁠— “High Taurus’ snow Fanned with the eastern wind.” ↩
• Which are formed in such lofty regions, that they are beyond human conception. ↩
• Beatrice died in 1290, at the age of twenty-five. ↩