Made weak by time and fate, but strong in suggests that, in giving Ulysses and

the last years of his life, and there he had been deceived in the election, and died and was buried.

41. The arms of Guido da Polenta, Lord of Ravenna, Dante's friend, and father (or nephew) of Francesca da Rimini, were an eagle half white in a field of azure, and half red in a field of gold. Cervia is a small town some twelve miles from Ravenna,

43. The city of Forlì, where Guido da Montefeltro defeated and slaughtered the French in 1282. See Canto XX. Note 118.

45. A Green Lion was the coat of arms of the Ordelaffi, then Lords of Forlì.

46. Malatesta, father and son, tyrants of Rimini, who murdered Montagna, a Ghibelline leader. Verrucchio was their castle, near the city. Of this family were the husband and lover of Francesca. Dante calls them mastiffs, because of their fierceness, making "wimbles of their teeth" in tearing and devouring.

49. The cities of Faenza on the Lamone, and Imola on the Santerno. They were ruled by Mainardo, surnamed "the Demon," whose coat of arms was a lion azure in a white field.

52. The city of Cesena.

were rebellious under the rule of Boniface. The Cardinals of the great Ghibelline house took no pains to conceal their ill-will toward the Guelf Pope. Boniface, indeed, accused them of plotting with his enemies for his overthrow. The Colonnas, finding Rome unsafe, had withdrawn to their strong town of Palestrina, whence they could issue forth at will for plunder, and where they could give shelter to those who shared in their hostility toward the Pope. On the other hand, Boniface, not trusting himself in Rome, withdrew to the secure height of Orvieto, and thence on the 14th of December, 1297, issued a terrible bull for a crusade against them, granting plenary indulgence to all (such was the Christian temper of the times, and so literally were the violent seizing upon the kingdom of heaven,) who would take up arms against these rebellious sons of the Church and march against their chief stronghold, their 'alto seggio' of Palestrina. They and their adherents had already been excommunicated and put under the ban of the Church; they had been stripped of all dignities and privileges; their property had been confiscated; and they were now by this bull placed in the position of ene.

67. Milton, Parad. Lost, III. 479-mies, not of the Pope alone, but of the

Church Universal. Troops gathered against them from all quarters of Papal Italy. Their lands were ravaged, and they themselves shut up within their stronghold; but for a long time they held out in their ancient high-walled moun tain-town. It was to gain Palestrina that Boniface had war near the Lateran.' The great church and palace of the Lateran, standing on the summit of the Coelian Hill, close to the city wall, overlooks the Campagna, which, in broken levels of brown and green and purple fields, reaches to the base of the encir. cling mountains. Twenty miles away, crowning the top and clinging to the side of one of the last heights of the Sa bine range, are the gray walls and roofs of Palestrina, It was a far more conspicuous place at the close of the thirteenth century than it is now; for the great columns of the famous temple of Fortune still rose above the town, and the ancient citadel kept watch over it

from its high rock. At length, in Sep-
tember, 1298, the Colonnas, reduced to
the hardest extremities, became ready
for peace.
Boniface promised largely.
The two Cardinals presented themselves
before him at Rieti, in coarse brown
dresses, and with ropes around their
necks, in token of their repentance and
submission. The Pope gave them not
only pardon and absolution, but hope of
being restored to their titles and posses-
sions. This was the lunga promessa
con l'attender corto;' for, while the Co-
lonnas were retained near him, and these
deceptive hopes held out to them, Boni-
face sent the Bishop of Orvieto to take
possession of Palestrina, and to destroy
it utterly, leaving only the church to
stand as a monument above its ruins.
The work was done thoroughly;-a
plough was drawn across the site of the
unhappy town, and salt scattered in the
furrow, that the land might thenceforth
be desolate. The inhabitants were re-
moved from the mountain to the plain,
and there forced to build new homes for
themselves, which, in their turn, two
years afterwards, were thrown down and
burned by order of the implacable Pope.
This last piece of malignity was accom-
plished in 1300, the year of the Jubilee,
the year in which Dante was in Rome,
and in which he saw Guy of Montefeltro,
the counsellor of Boniface in deceit,
burning in Hell.”

riot to the place where the bath was to be prepared, the mothers of these children threw themselves in his way with dishevelled hair, weeping, and crying aloud for mercy. Then Constantine was moved to tears, and he ordered his chariot to stop, and he said to his nobles and to his attendants who were around him, 'Far better is it that I should die, than cause the death of these innocents!' And then he commanded that the children should be restored to their mothers with great gifts, in recompense of what they had suffered; so they went away full of joy and gratitude, and the Emperor returned to his palace.

"On that same night, as he lay asleep, St. Peter and St. Paul appeared at his bedside: and they stretched their hands over him and said, 'Because thou hast feared to spill the innocent blood, Jesus Christ has sent us to bring thee good counsel. Send to Sylvester, who lies hidden among the mountains, and he shall show thee the pool in which, having washed three times, thou shalt be clean from thy leprosy; and henceforth thou shalt adore the God of the Christians, and thou shalt cease to persecute and to oppress them.' Then Constantine, awaking from this vision, sent his soldiers in search of Sylvester. when they took him, he supposed that it was to lead him to death; nevertheless he went cheerfully; and when he ap 94. The story of Sylvester and Con-peared before the Emperor, Constantine stantine is one of the legends of the Legenda Aurea. The part of it relating to the Emperor's baptism is thus condensed by Mrs. Jameson in her Sacred and Legendary Art, II. 313 :

And

arose and saluted him, and said, 'I would know of thee who are those two gods who appeared to me in the visions of the night?' And Sylvester replied, 'They were not gods, but the apostles of "Sylvester was born at Rome of vir- the Lord Jesus Christ.' Then Constantuous parents; and at a time when Con- tine desired that he would show him the stantine was still in the darkness of idola- effigies of these two apostles; and Syltry and persecuted the Christians, Sylvester sent for two pictures of St. Peter vester, who had been elected Bishop of Rome, fled from the persecution, and dwelt for some time in a cavern, near the summit of Monte Calvo. While he lay there concealed, the Emperor was attacked by a horrible leprosy and having called to him the priests of his false gods, they advised that he should bathe himself in a bath of children's blood, and three thousand children were collected for this purpose. And as he proceeded in his cha

and St. Paul, which were in the possession of certain pious Christians. Constantine, having beheld them, saw that they were the same who had appeared to him in his dream. Then Sylvester baptized him, and he came out of the font cured of his malady.'

Gower also, Confes. Amantis, II., tells the story at length 1

"And in the while it was begunne
A light, as though it were a sunne,

lay promiscuously on the field, as chance had thrown them together, either in the battle, or flight. Some, whom their wounds, being pinched by the morning cold, had roused from their posture, were put to death by the enemy, as they were

96. Montefeltro was in the Francis-rising up, all covered with blood, from can monastery at Assisi.

102. See Note 86 of this Canto. Dante calls the town Penestrino from its Latin name Præneste.

105. Pope Celestine V., who made "the great refusal," or abdication of the papacy. See Canto III. Note 59. 118.

Gower, Confes. Amantis, II. :"For shrifte stant of no value

To him, that woll him nought vertue,
To leve of vice the folie,

For worde is wind, but the maistrie
Is, that a man himself defende
Of thing whiche is nought to commende,
Wherof ben fewe now a day."

the midst of the heaps of carcasses. Some they found lying alive, with their thighs and hams cut, who, stripping their necks and throats, desired them to spill what remained of their blood. Some were found, with their heads buried in the earth, in holes which it appeared they had made for themselves, and covering their faces with earth thrown over them, had thus been suffocated. The attention of all was particularly attracted by a living Numidian with his nose and ears mangled, stretched under a dead Roman, who lay over him, and who, when his hands had been rendered unable to hold a weapon, his rage being exasperated to madness, had expired in the act of tear. are ing his antagonist with his teeth.'

a burden difficult to describe even with untrammelled words, or in plain prose, free from the fetters of rhyme.

9. Apulia, or La Puglia, is in the south-eastern part of Italy, "between the spur and the heel of the boot."

IO.

When Mago, son of Hamilcar, carried the news of the victory to Carthage, bur-"in confirmation of his joyful intelligence," says the same historian, XXIII. 12, "he ordered the gold rings taken from the Romans to be poured down in the porch of the senate-house, and of these there was so great a heap that, according to some writers, on being mea sured, they filled three pecks and a half; but the more general account, and likewise the more probable, is, that they amounted to no inore than one peck. He also explained to them, in order to show the greater extent of the slaughter, that none but those of equestrian rank, and of these only the principal, wore this ornament."

The people slain in the conquest of Apulia by the Romans. Of the battle of Maleventum, Livy, X. 15, says :

"Here likewise there was more of flight than of bloodshed. Two thousand of the Apulians were slain, and Decius, despising such an enemy, led his legions into Samnium."

II. Hannibal's famous battle at Cannæ, in the second Punic war. According to Livy, XXII. 49, "The number of the slain is computed at forty thousand foot, and two thousand seven hundred horse."

He continues, XXII. 51, Baker's Tr.: "On the day following, as soon as light appeared, his troops applied themselves to the collecting of the spoils, and view ing the carnage made, which was such as shocked even enemies; so many thousand Romans, horsemen and footmen,

14. Robert Guiscard, the renowned Norman conqueror of southern Italy. Dante places him in the Fifth Heaven of Paradise, in the planet Mars. For an account of his character and achievements see Gibbon, Ch. LVI. See also Parad. XVIII. Note 20.

Matthew Paris, Giles's Tr. I. 171, A. D. 1239, gives the following account of the manner in which he captured the monastery of Monte Cassino :

"In the same year, the monks of Monte Cassino (where St. Benedict had