and had remained behind when Christ and the Virgin Mary ascended. ↩

Till his sight could follow them no more, on account of the exceeding vastness of the space between. ↩

Canto XXII 133. ↩

The first climate is the torrid zone, the first from the equator. From midst to end, is from the meridian to the horizon. Dante had been, then, six hours in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars; for, as Milton says, Paradise Lost , V 580:⁠—