 |
 |
 |
The inscription like Dante’s refernce to ‘Traiano Imperadore e una vedovella’ in Purgatorio is in the vernacular rather than Latin. In the 1844 edition of Cary’s translation of Dante’s Purgatorio, a widow appealed to Trajan (Purgatory, Canto X, the line 73ff):
“Grant vengeance, Sire! for woe beshrew this heart,
My son is murder’d” He replying seem’d:
“Wait now till I return.” And she, as one
Made hasty by her grief: “O Sire! if thou
Dost not return?” - “Where I am, who then is,
May right thee” - “What to thee is other’s good
if thou neglect thy own? - Now comfort thee;”
At length he answers. “ It beseemeth well
My duty be perform’d, ere I move hence:
So justice wills; and pity bids me stay”
Perhaps as important to the iconographic scheme are other aspect of Trajan’s reputation. He killed Jews. He executed mutinous member of the Praetorian Guard, and like Augustus and Vespasian he imposed peace on the Empire, secured its borders, and undertook major building works in Rome. See Works. 33.216 on Ruskin’s view of the significance of Trajan in the Fifth Capital, in the Thirty-Sixth Capital, and in Dante.
|
|
|
[Version 0.05: May 2008]