• Pinamonte dei Buonacossi, a bold, ambitious man, persuaded Alberto, Count of Casalodi and Lord of Mantua, to banish to their estates the chief nobles of the city, and then, stirring up a popular tumult, fell upon the rest, laying waste their houses, and sending them into exile or to prison, and thus greatly depopulating the city. ↩
• Iliad , I 69:⁠— “And Calchas, the son of Thestor, arose, the best of augurs, a man who knew the present, the future, and the past, and who had guided the ships of the Achsans to Ilium, by that power of prophecy which Phoebus Apollo gave him.” ↩
• Aeneid , II 114:⁠— “In suspense we send Eurypylus to consult the oracle of Apollo, and he brings back from the shrine these mournful words: ‘O Greeks, ye appeased the winds with blood and a virgin slain, when first yc came to the Trojan shores; your return is to be sought by blood, and atonement made by a Grecian life.’ ” Dante calls Virgil’s poem a Tragedy, to mark its sustained and lofty style, in contrast with that of his own Comedy, of which he has already spoken once. Canto XVI 138, and speaks again. Canto XXI 2; as if he wished the reader to bear in mind that he is wearing the sock, and not the buskin. ↩