Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/312

292 "I will tell of the sixth, a man most prudent and in valor the best, the seer, the mighty Amphiaraus. And through his mouth he gives utterance to this speech  'I, for my part, in very truth shall fatten this soil, seer as I am, buried beneath a hostile earth.

Statius, Thebaid, VIII. 47, Lewis's Tr.:—

40. The Theban soothsayer. Ovid, Met., III., Addison's Tr.:—

45. His beard. The word "plumes" is used by old English writers in this sense. Ford, Lady's Trial:—

See also Purg. I. 42.

46. An Etrurian soothsayer. Lucan, Pharsalia, I., Rowe's Tr.:—

Ruskin, Modern Painters, III. p. 246, says:—

"But in no part of the poem do we find allusion to mountains in any other than a stern light; nor the slightest evidence that Dante cared to look at them. From that hill of San Miniato, whose steps he knew so well, the eye commands, at the farther extremity of the Val d' Arno, the whole purple range of the mountains of Carrara, peaked and mighty, seen always against the sunset light in silent outline, the chief forms that rule the scene as twilight fades away. By this vision Dante seems to have been wholly unmoved, and, but for Lucan's mention of Aruns at Luna, would seemingly not have spoken of the Carrara hills in the whole course of his poem: when he does allude to them, he speaks of their white marble, and their command of stars and sea, but has evidently no regard for the hills themselves. There is not a single phrase or syllable throughout the poem