Resuming their downward journey with lighter hearts, yet some of them no doubt a little fluttered already by the anticipation of an encounter (as Dante confesses to have been on the morning of the battle),[347] they would ride past the ill-omened mound which still gives to a neighbouring hamlet, the grim name of Ommorto or _Omo Morto_, the spot where Adamo of Brescia[348] was burned alive (as some think only a year before—1288) for counterfeiting the coinage of Florence at the instigation of the Conti Guidi of Romena. And but a little way further on that same Castle of Romena would burst upon their view—the fortress with the seven-fold circle of defensive walls which were to suggest to the poet, in his sojourn of some fourteen years later, the _nobile castello_[349] of Limbo, wherein the spirits of the just and illustrious pagans lived their dignified life—_senza martiri_,[350] but also _senza speme_.[351] The ruins that can be visited to-day shew but the vague outlines of its former grandeur; yet one may see the green-carpeted _cortile_ where the great spirits walked to and fro _sopra il verde smalto_,[352] and fragments at least of the very walls within whose shelter the poet probably elaborated this and much else of the Inferno: and within the outer circle of defences, the famous Fonte Branda[353] whose cool waters were recalled to mind by poor Adamo in his torment—waters sipped to-day by the devout Dantist pilgrim almost as though it were indeed a holy well.[354] We hear of no assault made upon the Castle in passing. Probably the place was too strong and the work before the Guelf Army needed haste. On the other hand the force within, thinned to strengthen the Ghibelline host below, was no doubt too weak to attempt an effective onslaught upon the cavalcade; though, as Dino implies, the Florentines were passing through awkward country, wherein “if they had been found of the foe, they had received no small damage.”[355] The armies faced one another in the valley’s bottom, on that level stretch of alluvial land which lies to the north of the rock on which stands the Castle and the town of Poppi. North and south the field was commanded by a Guidi fortress; it stretched like a vast “lizza” or tilting-ground between Poppi and Romena.