• The Serchio flows near Lucca. Shelley, in a poem called “The Boat, on the Serchio,” describes it as a “torrent fierce,” “Which fervid from its mountain source, Shallow, smooth, and strong, doth come; Swift as fire, tempestuously It sweeps into the affrighted sea. In morning’s smile its eddies coil, Its billows sparkle, toss, and boil, Torturing all its quiet light Into columns fierce and bright.” ↩
• Canto IX 22:⁠— “True is it once before I here below Was conjured by that pitiless Erictho, Who summoned back the shades unto their bodies.” ↩
• A fortified town on the Arno, in the Pisan territory. It was besieged by the troops of Florence and Lucca in 1289, and capitulated. As the garrison marched out under safeguard, they were terrified by the shouts of the crowd, crying: “Hang them! hang them!” In this crowd was Dante, “a youth of twenty-five,” says Benvenuto da Imola. ↩
• Along the circular dike that separates one Bolgia from another. ↩
• This is a falsehood, as all the bridges over the next Bolgia are broken. See Canto XXIII 140. ↩