• Aeneid , VI , Davidson’s Tr. :⁠— “But father Anchises, deep in a verdant dale, was surveying with studious care the souls there enclosed, who were to revisit the light above; and happened to be reviewing the whole number of his race, his dear descendants, their fates and fortunes, their manners and achievements. As soon as he beheld Aeneas advancing toward him across the meads, he joyfully stretched out both his hands, and tears poured down his cheeks, and these words dropped from his mouth: Are you come at length, and has that piety experienced by your sire surmounted the arduous journey?” ↩
• Biagioli and Fraticelli think that this ancestor of Dante, Cacciaguida, who is speaking, makes use of the Latin language because it was the language of his day in Italy. It certainly gives to the passage a certain gravity and tinge of antiquity, which is in keeping with this antique spirit and with what he afterwards says. His words may be thus translated:⁠— “O blood of mine! O grace of God infused Superlative! To whom as unto thee Were ever twice the gates of heaven unclosed.” ↩
• His longing to see Dante. ↩
• The mighty volume of the Divine Mind, in which the dark or written parts are not changed by erasures, nor the white spaces by interlineations. ↩