Cicero, Vision of Scipio, Edmonds’s Tr., p. 294:—
“Now the place my father spoke of was a radiant circle of dazzling brightness amid the flaming bodies, which you, as you have learned from the Greeks, term the Milky Way; from which position all other objects seemed to me, as I surveyed them, marvellous and glorious. There were stars which we never saw from this place, and their magnitudes were such as we never imagined; the smallest of which was that which, placed upon the extremity of the heavens, but nearest to the earth, shone with borrowed light. But the globular bodies of the stars greatly exceeded the magnitude of the earth, which now to me appeared so small, that I was grieved to see our empire contracted, as it were, into a very point. …
“Which as I was gazing at in amazement, I said, as I recovered myself, from whence proceed these sounds so strong, and yet so sweet, that fill my ears? ‘The melody,’ replies he, ‘which you hear, and which, though composed in unequal time, is nevertheless divided into regular harmony, is effected by the impulse and motion of the spheres themselves, which, by a happy temper of sharp and grave notes, regularly produces various harmonic effects. Now it is impossible that such prodigious movements should pass in silence; and nature teaches that the sounds which the spheres at one extremity utter must be sharp, and those on the other extremity must be grave; on which account that highest revolution of the star-studded heaven, whose motion is more rapid, is carried on with a sharp and quick sound; whereas this of the moon, which is situated the lowest, and at the other extremity, moves with the gravest sound. For the earth, the ninth sphere, remaining motionless, abides invariably in the innermost position, occupying the central spot in the universe.
“ ‘Now these eight directions, two of which have the same powers, effect seven sounds, differing in their modulations, which number is the connecting principle of almost all things. Some learned men, by imitating this harmony with strings and vocal melodies, have opened a way for their return to this place; as all others have done, who, endued with preeminent qualities, have cultivated in their mortal life the pursuits of heaven.
“ ‘The ears of mankind, filled with these sounds, have become deaf, for of all your senses it is the most blunted. Thus the people who live near the place where the Nile rushes down from very high mountains to the parts which are called Catadupa, are destitute of the sense of hearing, by reason of the greatness of the noise. Now this sound, which is effected by the rapid rotation of the whole system of nature, is so powerful, that human hearing cannot comprehend it, just as you cannot look directly upon the sun, because your sight and sense are overcome by his beams.’ ”
Also Milton, Paradise Lost, II 1051:—
“And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendent world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.”
The Moon, called in heaven Diana, on earth Luna, and in the infernal regions Proserpina; as in the curious Latin distich:—
“Terret, lustrat, agit, Proserpina, Luna, Diana,
Ima, suprema, feras, sceptro, fulgore, sagittâ.”
See Canto II 59:—
“And I: ‘What seems to us up here diverse,
Is caused, I think, by bodies rare and dense.’ ”
The Sun. ↩
Mercury, son of Maia, and Venus, daughter of Dione. ↩
The temperate planet Jupiter, between Mars and Saturn. In Canto XVIII 68, Dante calls it “the temperate star”; and in the Convito, II 14, quoting the opinion of Ptolemy:—
“Jupiter is a star of a temperate complexion, midway between the coldness of Saturn and the heat of Mars.”
Bryant, “Song of the Stars”:—
“Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar,
In the infinite azure, star after star,
How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass!
How the verdure runs o’er each rolling mass!
And the path of the gentle winds is seen,
Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean.“And see, where the brighter day-beams pour,
How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower;
And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues,
Shift o’er the bright planets and shed their dews;
And ’twixt them both, o’er the teeming ground,
With her shadowy cone the night goes round!”
The threshing-floor, or little area of our earth. The word ajuola would also bear the rendering of garden-plot; but to Dante this world was rather a threshing-floor than a flower bed. The word occurs again in Canto XXVII 86, and in its Latin form in the Monarcbia, III:—
“Ut scilicet in areola mortalium libere cum pace vivatur.”
Perhaps Dante uses it to signify in general any small enclosure.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, II Prosa 7, Ridpath’s Tr.:—
“You have learned from astronomy that this globe of earth is but as a point in respect to the vast extent of the heavens; that is, the immensity of the celestial sphere is such that ours, when compared with it, is as nothing, and vanishes. You know likewise, from the proofs that Ptolemy adduces, there is only one fourth part of this earth, which is of itself so small a portion of the universe, inhabited by creatures known to us. If from this fourth you deduct the space occupied by the seas and lakes, and the vast sandy regions which
