[2] A reference to the war which Boniface VIII. waged against the Colonnesi. See Inferno, Canto XXVII. [3] John XXII., who came to the Papacy in 1316, was a native of Cahors; his immediate predecessor, Clement V., 1305-1314, was a Gascon. The passage is one of those which shows that this portion of the poem was in hand during the last years of Dante's life. [4] In midwinter, when the sun is in Capricorn. Even as our air snows down flakes of frozen vapors, when the horn of the Goat of heaven touches the sun,[1] so, upward, I saw the aether become adorned, and flaked with the triumphant vapors[2] that had made sojourn there with us. My sight was following their semblances, and followed, till the intermediate space by its greatness pre. vented it from passing further onward. Whereon my Lady, who saw me disengaged from upward heeding, said to me, “Cast down thy sight, and look how thou hast revolved.” [1] The spirits. Since the hour when I had first looked, I saw that I had moved through the whole are which the first climate makes from its middle to its end;[1] so that I saw beyond Cadiz the mad track of Ulysses, and near on this side the shore[2] on which Europa became a sweet burden. And more of the site of this little threshing-floor would have been discovered to me, but the sun was proceeding beneath my feet, a sign and more removed.[3] [1] From Dante's first look downward from the Heavens, at the end of Canto XXII, to the present moment, he had moved over the arc which the first climate describes from its middle to its end. The old geographers divided the earth into seven zones, called climates, by circles parallel to the equator. The first climate extended twenty degrees to the north of the equator. The sign of the Gemini, in which Dante was revolving in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars, is in the zone of the Heavens corresponding to the first climate. As each climate extended on the habitable hemisphere for one hundred and eighty degrees, the arc from its middle to its end would be of ninety degrees, comprised between Jerusalem and Cadiz, and the time required for passing through it would be six hours, one fourth of the diurnal revolution of the Heavens. [2] The shore of Phoenicia, whence Europa was carried off by Jupiter. [3] The Sun in Aries was separated by Taurus from Gemini; hence not all of the hemisphere of the earth seen from Gemini was illuminated by the sun, which was some three hours in advance. My enamoured mind, that ever dallies with my Lady, was more than ever burning to bring back my eyes to her. And if nature has made bait in human flesh, or art in its paintings, to catch the eyes in order to possess the mind, all united would seem naught compared to the divine pleasure which shone upon me when I turned me to her smiling face. And the virtue with which the look indulged me, tore me from the fair nest of Leda,[1] and impelled me to the swiftest heaven.[2]