• Shakespeare, Love’s Labor Lost , III 1:⁠— “This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy; This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid; Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms, The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiterers and malcontents.” ↩
• Cupid in the semblance of Ascanius. Aeneid , I 718, Davidson’s Tr. :⁠— “She clings to him with her eyes, her whole soul, and sometimes fondles him in her lap, Dido not thinking what a powerful god is settling on her, hapless one. Meanwhile he, mindful of his Acidalian mother, begins insensibly to efface the memory of Sichaeus, and with a living flame tries to prepossess her languid affections, and her heart, chilled by long disuse.” ↩
• Venus, with whose name this canto begins. ↩
• Brunetto Latini, Tresor , I Ch. 3, says that Venus “always follows the sun, and is beautiful and gentle, and is called the Goddess of Love.” Dante says, it plays with or caresses the sun, “now behind, and now in front.” When it follows, it is Hesperus, the Evening Star; when it precedes, it is Phosphor, the Morning Star. ↩