Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/334

314 : and when he appeared before the Emperor, Constantine arose and saluted him, and said, 'I would know of thee who are those two gods who appeared to me in the visions of the night?' And Sylvester replied, 'They were not gods, but the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ.' Then Constantine desired that he would show him the effigies of these two apostles; and Sylvester sent for two pictures of St. Peter and St. Paul, which were in the possession of certain pious Christians. Constantine, having beheld them, saw that they were the same who had appeared to him in his dream. Then Sylvester baptized him, and he came out of the font cured of his malady."

Gower also, Confes. Amantis, II., tells the story at length:—

96. Montefeltro was in the Franciscan monastery at.

102. See Note 86 of this Canto. Dante calls the town Penestrino from its Latin name Præneste.

105. ., who made "the great refusal," or abdication of the papacy. See Canto III. Note 59.

118. Gower, Confes. Amantis, II.:—

1. The Ninth Bolgia, in which are punished the Schismatics, and

a burden difficult to describe even with untrammelled words, or in plain prose, free from the fetters of rhyme.

9., or La Puglia, is in the southeastern part of Italy, "between the spur and the heel of the boot."

10. The people slain in the conquest of Apulia by the Romans. Of the battle of Maleventum, Livy, X. 15, says:—

"Here likewise there was more of flight than of bloodshed. Two thousand of the Apulians were slain, and Decius, despising such an enemy, led his legions into Samnium."

11. Hannibal's famous battle at Cannæ, in the. According to Livy, XXII. 49, "The number of the slain is computed at forty thousand foot, and two thousand seven hundred horse."

He continues, XXII. 51, Baker's Tr.: "On the day following, as soon as light appeared, his troops applied