5. THE PLANETS.
All the planets which were known before the days of the telescope are mentioned by Dante several times. Each has its peculiar beauty, but “la lucentissima stella di Venere”[323] is brighter and more beautiful than any other. He speaks of “la chiarezza del suo aspetto, ch ’è soavissima a vedere più che altra stella.”[324]
No reader of the Purgatorio can ever forget that matchless morning on which Dante, escaping at last from the murky gloom of the Inferno, sees the sky once more, pure blue even to its furthest limits, and the planet of love shining in the east.
Strange to say, the beginning of the above beautiful passage which conveys so direct and vivid an impression of blue sky and pure air, presents some difficulties when one comes to translate it word by word, especially as the texts offer more than one reading. By some commentators the “primo giro”[326] has been understood to mean the sphere of the moon,[327] or even the highest sphere (the Primum Mobile); but this is certainly inadmissible, as Dante supposed the atmosphere to reach only as far as the sphere of Fire, which came between it and the moon. The prime circle is here evidently the horizon, the fundamental circle of observers, the First Circle of the astrologers, from which they reckoned all the rest. It is here that the sky usually becomes pale and misty, however blue and clear it may be above. The colour was gathering and deepening,[328] especially in the east, where Dante was looking, as dawn began to appear in a perfectly cloudless sky; for during the darkness of the night it would have appeared almost black.
Dr. Moore thinks the authority better for a different reading, viz. “Dal mezzo”[329] instead of “Dell’ aer.”[330] In this case, we must take “mezzo puro” to mean mid-heaven, that is the zenith, “puro” being used as a noun, and meaning a cloudless sky (like “sereno” in Purg. v. 38); and “il sereno aspetto” must mean “the quiet scene.”
Venus appears again in the Purgatorio, shining upon the Mountain from the east before sunrise; and this time she is called Cytherea, after the island near which she was fabled to have risen from the sea, and in which she received a special worship.
The position of Venus in her course through the zodiac is indicated in the previous passage by the expression “velando i Pesci.”[332] The oscillating motion, by which she appears first on the morning and then on the evening side of the sun is referred to several times. In prose Dante speaks of her two apparitions, the morning and the evening: “la sua apparenza, or da mane, or da sera;”[333] in poetry, he describes her as wooing the sun, first following and then facing him:—
Mercury and Venus (called rather oddly after their mothers), are said both to move closely round the sun:—
“Quel bel pianeta di Mercuro”[336] keeps closest, for he is more hidden than any other in the rays of the sun. Here again the fact is expressed in simple prose in the Convivio:—
“Mercurio ... più va velata de’ raggi del sole che null’ altra stella.”[337]
which explains (if necessary) the more poetical language of the Paradiso:—
In the same way we may compare the descriptions of Mars in the Paradiso with a statement in the Convivio:—
“Questo fuoco,”[339] and “l’affocato riso della stella,”[340] and “Marte rosseggia,”[341] with
“Esso Marte ... il suo calore è simile a quello del fuoco; ... esso appare affocato di colore.”[342]
The famous occultation of Mars by the moon, seen by Aristotle, is quoted by Dante in Conv. II. iii. 59-65.
Jupiter is the “dolce stella”[343] and the “giovial facella.”[344] He is silvery white, the whitest of all the stars:—“Intra tutte le stelle bianca si mostra, quasi argentata.”[345]
Therefore when Dante saw the planet filled with brilliant spirits, he says: “Giove pareva argento lì d’ oro distinto.”[346] Comparisons between the colours of Jupiter and Mars are made in Par. xviii. 64-69, and xxvii. 13-15.
Finally Saturn is the slowest and the most distant of all the planets. These two characteristics are thus described in the Convivio:—
“L’una si è la tardezza del suo movimento per li dodici segni; chè ventinove anni e più, secondo le scritture degli astrologi, vuole di tempo lo suo cerchio: l’altra si è che esso è alto sopra tutti gli altri pianeti.”[347]
In the Paradiso Saturn is called a Mirror,[348] a Crystal,[349] a splendour;[350] his circling motion is alluded to, and his position at the time in the zodiac:—
Some of the most beautiful similes in the Divine Comedy are drawn from the planets. The angel-pilot of Purgatory, when first seen far off over the sea, is likened to the planet Mars, glowing red through morning mists, low in the west above the ocean floor;[353] and the angel that welcomes the poet to the second circle on the Mountain is beautiful as the Morning Star.
Although any of the planets when rising just before the sun may be called a morning star, Venus is probably intended here, as also where St. Bernard, in his devotion to the Virgin, is compared with the Morning Star which takes its beauty from the sun:—
All the seven planets (that is, including sun and moon), are occasionally mentioned together, “tutti e sette,”[356] and their movement in the ecliptic is referred to in Par. x, 14: “L’obbliquo cerchio che i pianeti porta.”[357] In the 14th and 15th chapters of the second treatise of the Convivio, already so often quoted, Dante draws an elaborate comparison between the seven planets and the seven sciences of the Trivium and Quadrivium. The moon is Grammar, Mercury Dialectic, Venus Rhetoric, the Sun Arithmetic, Mars Music, Jupiter Geometry, and Saturn Astrology. The reasons given for the latter are the slow movement and the height (i.e. distance from Earth) of Saturn, which Dante compares with the length of the time taken in learning astronomy, and the loftiness of its subject.
In the same way the star sphere is said to resemble Physics and Metaphysics, the Primum Mobile Ethics, and the Empyrean Theology. The argument is very fanciful, but just what would appeal to readers of Dante’s day, who loved to find allegories everywhere; and it gives him an opportunity of instructing them very simply in his beloved science.
He sometimes uses the planetary periods as divisions of time (as Plato said they should be used), for computing earthly events, and in him this does not seem affectation, as it would with almost anyone else. It seems quite natural that Cacciaguida, when speaking in the heaven of Mars, and answering a question regarding the date of his birth, should count the time not by solar but by Martian years, saying that from the beginning of the Christian Era to the day of his birth, Mars had returned to his Lion (the constellation of Leo) five hundred and eighty times.[358] The length of the Martian year according to Alfraganus is 1 Persian year, 10 months, and 22 days nearly. The Persian year (as he tells us in the first chapter of the Elementa) consists of 12 months of 30 days each plus 5 extra days, making 365 days exactly (not 365¼ days like the Roman), so the Martian year is 687 days (the modern estimate is 686·9). 687 days × 580 gives us 1091 a.d. as the date of Cacciaguida’s birth. This is consistent with the date of his death, for he had just told Dante that he fell in the Crusade to which he followed the Emperor Conrad, and we know that this was fought in the year 1147.
Some commentators think that Dante did not intend the Martian year to be taken so precisely, but only as approximately two solar years, since he gave it thus in Conv. II. xv. 145. But there he specially states that he is quoting an approximate figure only (“uno anno quasi”[359] is half the period of Mars) whereas in the Paradiso it is used to fix a date. Since by taking 580 × 2 years we get 1160, an impossible date of birth for a man who died in 1147, the only way to support this theory that Dante was speaking loosely here is to adopt another reading of the passage, and substitute “tre” for “trenta.”[360] Then 553 (instead of 580) × 2 years would give the date 1106; but the reading is not supported by good authority.
The period of Venus is used with equal appropriateness when Dante is relating how love for the Gentil Donna found a way to his heart, coming on the rays of Venus,[361] the star of love.
“La stella di Venere due fiate ere rivolta in quello suo cerchio che la fa parere serotina e mattutina, secondo i due diversi tempi, appresso lo transpassamento di quella Beatrice beata, che vive in cielo con gli angioli e in terra colla mia anima, quando quella Gentil Donna, di cui feci menzione nella fine della Vita Nuova, apparve primamente accompagnata d’Amore agli occhi miei, e prese alcuno luogo nella mia mente.”[362]
Venus runs through her changes, appearing first as Evening and then as Morning star, in 584 days; and, as the reader will remember, this movement was ascribed by Ptolemy to her epicycle (“quello suo cerchio,” “that circle of hers”). Dante would find 584 days given for it in his Alfraganus.[363] Twice 584 is 1168 days, or three years and a little more than 2 months. Therefore, since we know from V. N. xxx. that Beatrice died in June 1290, Dante wishes to say that he first saw the Lady of Pity in August 1293.
The period has been taken by some modern commentators to refer to the 225 days in which Venus revolves round the sun, but this period has no place in the Ptolemaic system. We cannot here discuss Dante’s allegory of the Gentle Lady and Philosophy, but in this passage he has stated without ambiguity or uncertainty the date of her first appearance.[364]