fully: and when he appeared before the Emperor, Constantine 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 the Lord Jesus Christ.' Then Constantine desired that he would show him the effigies of these two apostles; and Sylvester sent for two pictures of St. Peter 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:—
"And in the while it was begunne
A light, as though it were a sunne,
Fro heven Into the place come
Where that he toke his christendome,
And ever amonge the holy tales
Lich as they weren fisches scales
They fellen from him now and efte,
Till that there was nothing belefte
Of all this grete maladie."
96. Montefeltro was in the Franciscan 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."
CANTO XXVIII.
1. The Ninth Bolgia, in which are punished the Schismatics, and
"where is paid the fee
By those who sowing discord win their burden";
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 southeastern part of Italy, "between the spur and the heel of the boot."
10. 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."
11. 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
