In the first Canto, which is introductory to the whole _Commedia_, he mentions the time at which he assumes that his vision began. It was “nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,”[445] which may mean simply that he was middle-aged, or comparing it with the passage in the _Convivio_ quoted earlier (see p. 347), we may suppose it to mean that he was exactly in his 35th year. The season was spring—“la dolce stagione,”[446] and when night was over the sun rose among those stars which were with him at the Creation, which was believed to have taken place at the vernal equinox some sixty-five centuries before. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [445] “Midway in the journey of our life.” _Inf._ i. 1. [446] “The sweet season.” _Inf._ i. 43. “Il Sol montava su con quelle stelle Ch’ eran con lui quando l’Amor Divino Mosse da prima quelle cose belle.”[447] [447] “Aloft the sun ascended with those stars That with him rose when Love Divine first moved Those its fair works.” _Inf._ i. 38-40. (_Carey_). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: Fig. 45. The Universe of Dante.] The expression “quelle stelle,”[448] however, shows us that Dante does not intend to be pedantically accurate, which would indeed be inartistic in a poem. He speaks several times of the supposed slow motion of the star sphere,[449] and although he never mentions its effect in shifting the place of the equinox continually among the stars, we can hardly imagine that he failed to understand this. He knew quite well, therefore, that the stars which accompanied the sun in that first springtime of the world could not be the same stars which rose with him now. But astronomers had agreed to call the part of the sky which contains the vernal equinox by its old name, and it would be exceedingly tiresome if he were to distinguish, every time he mentioned them, between the zodiacal constellations and the zodiacal signs; there shall be no occasion, therefore, to stop and consider which he means, and no ambiguity: he assumes once for all that they always have been and always are identical, that the “first point of Aries” or vernal equinox is now and always at the beginning of the constellation Aries. To this assumption he is consistent throughout. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [448] “Those stars.” [449] _Purg._ xi. 108; _Conv._ II. xv. 12-14. ------------------------------------------------------------------------