• A Trojan hero slain at the sack of Troy. Aeneid , II 426:⁠— “Ripheus also falls, the most just among the Trojans, and most observant of the right.” Venturi thinks that, if Dante must needs introduce a Pagan into Paradise, he would have done better to have chosen Aeneas, who was the hero of his master, Virgil, and, moreover, the founder of the Roman empire. ↩
• The word “expatiate” is here used in the sense given it by Milton in the following passage, Paradise Lost , I 768:⁠— “As bees, In spring-time when the sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they, among fresh dews and flowers, Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer Their state-affairs.” Landor, Pentameron , p. 92, says:⁠— “All the verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark. In the first of them, do not you see the twinkling of her wings against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my heart (like hers) contented.” ↩
• In scholastic language the quiddity of a thing is its essence, or that by which it is what it is. ↩