• Boccaccio confesses that he does not know where Dante found this tradition of Alexander. Benvenuto da Imola says it is in a letter which Alex’ ander wrote to Aristotle. He quotes the passage as follows:⁠— “In India ignited vapors fell from heaven like snow. I commanded my soldiers to trample them under foot.” Dante perhaps took the incident from the old metrical Romance of Alexander , which in some form or other was current in his time. In the English version of it, published by the Roxburghe Club, we find the rain of fire, and a fall of snow; but it is the snow, and not the fire, that the soldiers trample down. So likewise in the French version. The English runs as follows, line 4164:⁠— “Than fandis he furth as I finde five and twenti days, Come to a velanus vale thare was a vile cheele, Quare flaggis of the fell snawe fell fra the heven, That was a brade, sais the buke, as battes ere of wolle. Than bett he many brigt fire and lest it bin nold, And made his folk with thaire feete as florcs it to trede. ⋮ Than fell ther fra the firmament as it ware fell sparkes, Ropand doune o rede fire, than any rayne thikir.” ↩
• Canto VIII 83. ↩
• Mount Etna, under which, with his Cyclops, Vulcan forged the thunderbolts of Jove. ↩