[760] Athamas: Married to a sister of Semele, was made insane by the angry Juno, with the result described in the text.

[761] Hecuba: Wife of Priam, king of Troy, and mother of Polyxena and Polydorus. While she was lamenting the death of her daughter, slain as an offering on the tomb of Achilles, she found the corpse of her son, slain by the king of Thrace, to whose keeping she had committed him (Ovid, Metam. xiii.).

[762] Trojan fury, etc.: It was by the agency of a Fury that Athamas was put out of his mind; but the Trojan and Theban furies here meant are the frenzies of Athamas and Hecuba, wild with which one of them slew his son, and the other scratched out the eyes of the Thracian king.

[763] Capocchio: See close of the preceding Canto. Here as elsewhere sinners are made ministers of vengeance on one another.

[764] The Aretine: Griffolino, who boasted he could fly; already represented as trembling (Inf. xxix. 97).

[765] Gianni Schicchi: Giovanni Schicchi, one of the Cavalcanti of Florence.

[766] Myrrha: This is a striking example of Dante’s detestation of what may be called heartless sins. It is covered by the classification of Canto xi. Yet it is almost with a shock that we find Myrrha here for personation, and not rather condemned to some other circle for another sin.

[767] Buoso Donati: Introduced as a thief in the Seventh Bolgia (Inf. xxv. 140). Buoso was possessed of a peerless mare, known as the Lady of the herd. To make some amends for his unscrupulous acquisition of wealth, he made a will bequeathing legacies to various religious communities. When he died his nephew Simon kept the fact concealed long enough to procure a personation of him as if on his death-bed by Gianni Schicchi, who had great powers of mimicry. Acting in the character of Buoso, the rogue professed his wish to make a new disposition of his means, and after specifying some trifling charitable bequests the better to maintain his assumed character, named Simon as general legatee, and bequeathed Buoso’s mare to himself.

[768] O ye, etc.: The speaker has heard and noted Virgil’s words of explanation given in the previous Canto, line 94.

[769] Master Adam: Adam of Brescia, an accomplished worker in metals, was induced by the Counts Guidi of Romena in the Casentino, the upland district of the upper Arno, to counterfeit the gold coin of Florence. This false coin is mentioned in a Chronicle as having been in circulation in 1281. It must therefore have been somewhat later that Master Adam was burned, as he was by sentence of the Republic, upon the road which led from Romena to Florence. A cairn still existing near the ruined castle bears the name of the ‘dead man’s cairn.’

[770] The money coined, etc.: The gold florin, afterwards adopted in so many countries, was first struck in 1252; ‘which florins weighed eight to the ounce, and bore the lily on the one side, and on the other Saint John.’—(Villani, vi. 54.) The piece was thus of about the weight of our half-sovereign. The gold was of twenty-four carats; that is, it had no alloy. The coin soon passed into wide circulation, and to maintain its purity became for the Florentines a matter of the first importance. Villani, in the chapter above cited, tells how the King of Tunis finding the florin to be of pure gold sent for some of the Pisans, then the chief traders in his ports, and asked who were the Florentines that they coined such money. ‘Only our Arabs,’ was the answer; meaning that they were rough country folk, dependent on Pisa. ‘Then what is your coin like?’ he asked. A Florentine of Oltrarno named Pera Balducci, who was present, took the opportunity of informing him how great Florence was compared with Pisa, as was shown by that city having no gold coinage of its own; whereupon the King made the Florentines free of Tunis, and allowed them to have a factory there. ‘And this,’ adds Villani, who had himself been agent abroad for a great Florentine house of business, ‘we had at first hand from the aforesaid Pera, a man worthy of credit, and with whom we were associated in the Priorate.’

[771] Guido, etc.: The Guidi of Romena were a branch of the great family of the Counts Guidi. The father of the three brothers in the text was grandson of the old Guido that married the Good Gualdrada, and cousin of the Guidoguerra met by Dante in the Seventh Circle (Inf. xvi. 38). How the third brother was called is not settled, nor which of the three was already dead in the beginning of 1300. The Alexander of Romena, who for some time was captain of the banished Florentine Whites, was, most probably, he of the text. A letter is extant professing to be written by Dante
to two of Alexander’s nephews
on the occasion of his death, in which the poet excuses himself for absence from the funeral on the plea of poverty. By the time he wrote the Inferno he may, owing to their shifty politics, have lost all liking for the family, yet it seems harsh measure that is here dealt to former friends and patrons.

[772] Fonte Branda: A celebrated fountain in the city of Siena. Near Romena is a spring which is also named Fonte Branda; and this, according to the view now most in favour, was meant by Master Adam. But was it so named in Dante’s time? Or was it not so called only when the Comedy had begun to awaken a natural interest in the old coiner, which local ingenuity did its best to meet? The early commentators know nothing of the Casentino Fonte Branda, and, though it is found mentioned under the date of 1539, that does not take us far enough back. In favour of the Sienese fountain is the consideration that it was the richest of any in the Tuscan cities; that it was a great architectural as well as engineering work; and that, although now more than half a century old, it was still the subject of curiosity with people far and near. Besides, Adam has already recalled the brooks of Casentino, and so the mention of the paltry spring at Romena would introduce no fresh idea like that of the abundant waters of the great fountain which daily quenched the thirst of thousands.

[773] Eleven miles: It will be remembered that the previous Bolgia was twenty-two miles in circumference.

[774] Three carats: Three carats in twenty-four being of some foreign substance.

[775] Who smoke, etc.: This description of sufferers from high fever, like that of Master Adam with his tympanitis, has the merit, such as it is, of being true to the life.

[776] One, etc.: Potiphar’s wife.

[777] Sinon: Called of Troy, as being known through his conduct at the siege. He pretended to have deserted from the Greeks, and by a false story persuaded the Trojans to admit the fatal wooden horse.

[778] When Trojans, etc.: When King Priam sought to know for what purpose the wooden horse was really constructed.

[779] Narcissus’ mirror: The pool in which Narcissus saw his form reflected.

[780] ’Tis shame: Dante knows that Virgil would have scorned to portray such a scene of low life as this, but he must allow himself a wider licence and here as elsewhere refuses nothing, even in the way of mean detail, calculated to convey to his readers ‘a full experience of the Inferno’ as he conceived of it—the place ‘where all the vileness of the world is cast.’