• The moon setting in the sea west of Seville. In the Italian popular tradition to which Dante again alludes. Paradiso II 51, the Man in the Moon is Cain with his Thorns. This belief seems to have been current too in England, Midsummer Night’s Dream , III 1:⁠— “Or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a lantern, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present, the person of moonshine.” And again, V , 1:⁠— “The man should be put into the lantern. How is it else the man i’ the moon?⁠ ⁠… All that I have to say is to tell you, that the lantern is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.” The time here indicated is an hour after sunrise on Saturday morning. ↩
• The Fifth Bolgia, and the punishment of Barrators, or “Judges who take bribes for giving judgment.” ↩
• Having spoken in the preceding Canto of Virgil’s “lofty Tragedy,” Dante here speaks of his own Comedy, as if to prepare the reader for the scenes which are to follow, and for which he apologizes in Canto XXII 14, by repeating the proverb, “In the church With saints, and in the tavern with carousers.” ↩