Dante's Tomb
This isn't directly related to the ancient world, but I figured that as long as I was posting pictures from Ravenna, I might as well include some of the tomb of Dante, who eventually lived (and died) in Ravenna after having been exiled from Florence. I thought that since he took Vergil as a guide and since there's a fair amount of Latin in his tomb, we could slip him into the Campus.
3 comments:
eric, i whole-heartedly support your decision to post about dante here!
Transcribed with the rest of the text here.
James Russell Lowell commented:
He was buried at Ravenna under a monument built by his friend, Guido Novello. Dante is said to have dictated the following inscription for it on his death-bed:—
JVRA MONARCHIAE SVPEROS PHLEGETHONTA LACVSQVE
LVSTRANDO CECINI VOLVERVNT FATA QVOVSQVE
SED QVIA PARS CESSIT MELIORIBVS HOSPITA CASTRIS
AVCTOREMQVE SVVM PETIIT FELICIOR ASTRIS
HIC CLAVDOR DANTES PATRIIS EXTORRIS AB ORIS
QVEM GENVIT PARVI FLORENTIA MATER AMORIS.
Of which this rude paraphrase may serve as a translation:—
The rights of Monarchy, the Heavens, the Stream of Fire, the Pit,
In vision seen, I sang as far as to the Fates seemed fit;
But since my soul, an alien here, hath flown to nobler wars,
And, happier now, hath gone to seek its Maker 'mid the stars,
Here am I Dante shut, exiled from the ancestral shore,
Whom Florence, the of all least-loving mother, bore.
If these be not the words of Dante, what is internal evidence worth? The indomitably self-reliant man, loyal first of all to his most unpopular convictions (his very host, Guido, being a Guelph), puts his Ghibellinism
(jura monarchiae) in the front. The man whose whole life, like that of selected souls always, had been a war fare, calls heaven another camp,—a
better one, thank God! The wanderer of so many years speaks of his soul as a guest,—glad to be gone, doubtless. The exile, whose sharpest reproaches of Florence are always those of an outraged lover, finds it bitter that even his unconscious bones should lie in alien soil.
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