CANTO V.
In the Second Circle are found the souls of carnal sinners, whose punishment is
"To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world."
2. The circles grow smaller and smaller as they descend.
4. Minos, the king of Crete, so renowned for justice as to be called the Favorite of the Gods, and after death made Supreme Judge in the Infernal Regions. Dante furnishes him with a tail, thus converting him, after the mediæval fashion, into a Christian demon.
21. Thou, too, as well as Charon, to whom Virgil has already made the same reply. Canto VI. 22.
28. In Canto I. 60, the sun is silent; here the light is dumb.
51. Gower, Confessio Amantis, VIII., gives a similar list "of gentil folke that whilom were lovers," seen by him as he lay in a swound and listened to the music
"Of bombarde and of clarionne
With cornemuse and shalmele."
61. Queen Dido.
65. Achilles, being in love with Polyxena, a daughter of Priam, went unarmed to the temple of Apollo, where he was put to death by Paris.
Gower, Confessio Amantis, IV., says:—
"For I have herde tell also
Achilles left his armes so,
Both of himself and of his men,
At Troie for Polixenen
Upon her love when he felle,
That for no chaunce that befelle
Among the Grekes or up or down
He wolde nought ayen the town
Ben armed for the love of her."
"I know not how," says Bacon in his Essay on Love, "but martial men are given to love; I think it is but as they are given to wine; for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasure."
67. Paris of Troy, of whom Spenser says, Faerie Queene. III, ix. 34:—
"Most famous Worthy of the world, by whome
That warre was kindled which did Troy inflame
And stately towres of Ilion whilome
Brought unto baleflill ruine, was by name
Sir Paris, far renown'd through noble fame."
Tristan is the Sir Tristram of the Romances of Chivalry. See his adventures in the Mort d' Arthure. Also Thomas of Ercildoune's Sir Tristram, a Metrical Romance. His amours with Yseult or Ysonde bring him to this circle of the Inferno.
71. Shakespeare, Sonnet CVI.:—
"When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights."
See also the "wives and daughters of chieftains" that appear to Ulysses, in the Odyssey, Book XI.
Also Milton, Paradise Regained, II. 357:—
