CANTO XXIX.
1. The Tenth and last "cloister of Malebolge," where
"Justice infallible
Punishes forgers,"
and falsifiers of all kinds. This Canto is devoted to the alchemists.
27. Geri del Bello was a disreputable member of the Alighieri family, and was murdered by one of the Sacchetti. His death was afterwards avenged by his brother, who in turn slew one of the Sacchetti at the door of his house.
29. Bertrand de Born.
35. Like the ghost of Ajax in the Odyssey, XI. " He answered me not at all, but went to Erebus amongst the other souls of the dead."
36. Dante seems to share the feeling of the Italian vendetta, which required retaliation from some member of the injured family.
"Among the Italians of this age," says Napier, Florentine Hist., I. Ch.VII., "and for centuries after, private offence was never forgotten until revenged, and generally involved a succession of mutual injuries; vengeance was not only considered lawful and just, but a positive duty, dishonorable to omit; and, as may be learned from ancient private journals, it was sometimes allowed to sleep for five-and-thirty years, and then suddenly struck a victim who perhaps had not yet seen the light when the original injury was inflicted."
46. The Val di Chiana, near Arezzo, was in Dante's time marshy and pestilential. Now, by the effect of drainage, it is one of the most beautiful and fruitful of the Tuscan valleys. The Maremma was and is notoriously unhealthy; see Canto XIII. Note 9, and Sardinia would seem to have shared its ill repute.
57. Forgers or falsifiers in a general sense. The "false semblaunt" of Gower, Confes. Amant., II.:—
"Of fals semblaunt if I shall telle,
Above all other it is the welle
Out of the which deceipte floweth."
They are registered here on earth to be punished hereafter.
59. The plague of Ægina is described by Ovid, Metamorph. VII., Stonestreet's Tr.:—
"Their black dry tongues are swelled, and scarce can move,
And short thick sighs from panting lungs are drove.
They gape for air, with flatt'ring hopes t' abate
Their raging flames, but that augments their heat.
No bed, no cov'ring can the wretches bear,
But on the ground, exposed to open air,
They lie, and hope to find a pleasing coolness there.
The suff'ring earth, with that oppression curst,
Returns the heat which they imparted first.
·····
"Here one, with fainting steps, does slowly creep
O'er heaps of dead, and straight augments the heap;
