[173] It is remarkable that several of the most impressive incidents in the Apocalyptic description of the Last Judgment are omitted from the present, as from most of the other mediæval visions; a circumstance which may cause us to hesitate before concluding positively that our author had as frequent recourse to the Book of Revelation as many analogies would suggest. [174] Mr. Whitley Stokes, in a note on this passage, aptly compares the Egyptian demon Apap, which devoured the souls of the wicked. He also cites an Old English homily, where a dragon swallows the wicked and discharges them into the Devil’s maw. The fertile mediæval literature on the subject furnishes several parallels, more or less close, both of a serious and comic nature. [175] This is probably one of the additions made to the Book of Enoch in Christian times, cp. Rev. xx. 4-5, where precedence is given to the martyrs, the other righteous not being permitted to live again until after the lapse of one thousand years. Herein we have another form of the doctrine of postponed redemption in certain cases, though not here, to allow time for the purgation of sins. [176] Cp. the similar fate of the flatterers (_Inf._ xviii. 113), and the stinking Stygian lake in which the violent are immured (_Inf._ vii. 110). [177] We have seen that in Persia, as in Ireland, the ‘black north’ was the region whence cold winds and malignant beings proceeded. It is a well-known fact that cold no less than heat entered into the Hell of the Irish, as of the Northern nations, wherein they are followed by Dante, who, indeed, makes the sufferings of the inmost circle, devoted to the worst of sinners, to consist in intense cold. Cp. Shakespeare, _Measure for Measure_, III. i.: ‘The delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice.’ So Milton: ‘In fierce heat and in ice.’ [178] ‘Senza riposo mai era la tresca Delle misere mani, or quindi or quinci Iscotendo da se l’arsura fresca’ (_Inf._ xiv. 40-42); and in _Inf._ xvii. 47-48: ‘Di quà di là soccorrien con le mani, Quando a’ vapor, e quando al caldo suolo.’ [179] _Inf._ v., where Dante couples with them the angels who abstained from taking either part on Satan’s revolt, but _per sè foro_. In like manner the Irish writers, as in the story of St. Brendan, extended their more merciful judgment to these spirits also. The popular traditions of modern times identify them with the _Daoine Sidhe_, but without agreeing as to their ultimate fate after the Judgment. [180] Cp. the devices to which Christian redactors of Pagan legends had recourse, in order to bring the national heroes within the pale of salvation: _e.g._ Cuchulainn, Concobar, Finn Mac Cumhal, Caoilte, Cormac Mac Áirt, Fintan, Tuan Mac Cairill, etc. The early Christian writers dealt in like manner with Seneca, Trajan, Statius, Lucan, etc.; to whom Dante, apparently on his own responsibility, added Rhipeus.