Turpin says there were seven, &c.
Stanza xl. line 2.
“The fabulous history of these wars (Charlemagne’s) was written probably towards the close of the eleventh century, by a monk, who thinking it would add dignity to his work to embellish it with a cotemporary name, boldly ascribed it to Turpin, who was archbishop of Rheims about the year 773. This is the book so frequently quoted by Ariosto.”—Ellis’s preface to Way’s Fabliaux.
The noble-mmded Isabel, &c.
Stanza lix. line 5.
Isabella, a lady eminent for her many virtues, daughter of Hercules, duke of Ferrara, sister of Alfonso and Ippolito, and wife of Francisco Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, the city situated on the Mincius ‘of Ocnus, mother hight,’ to wit of Manto, the daughter of Tiresias, otherwise called Bianor, who, after the destruction of Thebes, is said to have fled to Italy, and established herself among the swamps of the Mincius, a place which she found favourable to the prosecution of the arts, in which she had been initiated by her father. Here her son Ocnus is said, after his mother’s death, to have founded a small city which he called Mantua, in honour of her memory.
Dante’s account of the wanderings and settlement of Manto, which, however, says nothing of Ocnus, and makes Manto a virgin, affords so good a specimen of his powers of precise and picturesque local description that I willingly profit by this opportunity to assign it a place among my notes.
Dante meets a female phantom in hell, and Virgil informs him that this
Manto fu, che cercò per terre molte,
Poscia si pose là dove nacqui io:
Onde un poco mi place, che m’ ascolte.
