• Avicenna, an Arabian physician of Ispahan in the eleventh century. Born 980, died 1036. ↩
• Averrhoës, an Arabian scholar of the twelfth century, who translated the works of Aristotle, and wrote a commentary upon them. He was born in Cordova in 1149, and died in Morocco, about 1200. He was the head of the Western School of philosophy, as Avicenna was of the Eastern. ↩
• In the Second Circle are found the souls of carnal sinners, whose punishment is “To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world.” ↩
• The circles grow smaller and smaller as they descend. ↩
• Minos, the king of Crete, so renowned for justice as to be called the Favorite of the Gods, and after death made Supreme Judge in the Infernal Regions. Dante furnishes him with a tail, thus converting him, after the medieval fashion, into a Christian demon. ↩
• Thou, too, as well as Charon, to whom Virgil has already made the same reply. Canto VI 22. ↩
• In Canto I 60, the sun is silent; here the light is dumb. ↩