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Glossary
Aristotle
One of the greatest ancient Greek philosophers, born in Stagira in about 384 b.C., had been a Plato’s disciple. His main works are about metaphysic, logic (under the name of Organon) and aesthetic and art (Poetics). In logic he introduced the syllogism; he defined art as imitation of the nature. In astronomy, he proposed a conception of the Universe as a finite sphere, with the Earth in its center and the stars around it. This conception will be later improved by Ptolemy and will be commonly accepted until about the XV century. Dante’s cosmology is basically from Aristotle.
Auctoritas
Latin noun (the plural is auctoritates), literally meaning "authority". Referring to the Middle Ages, this terms is used to mean those people whose ideas and culture were considered perfect and untouchable, as supreme undiscussable models. In the Middle Ages, the political auctoritas was the Emperor and the religious auctoritas was the Pope. Culturally, the auctoritates were the Bible and the work of Aristotle.
Boccaccio, Giovanni
He’s one of the greatest Italian writer of the XIV century, together with Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarca. He was born in Florence in 1313 and died in Certaldo (near Florence) in 1375. His masterpiece is the Decameron, a collection of short stories written in prose. With Boccaccio, the Medieval culture, typically represented by Dante, is almost died out, substituted by the emerging Humanistic culture of the Renaissance. He was one of the first commentator and esteemer of Dante’s Divina Commedia.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
Roman writer, statesman and orator. He was born in 106 BC and died in 43 BC. He is one of the best-known and most eclectic prose writer of ancient Rome. Politically speaking, he was a moderate conservative member of the Senate. His most renowned works are the large number of orations, especially the four against Catiline and the fourteen against Antony (called Philippics) and several philosophical works and treatise, such as De re publica ("On the Republic", which contains also the Somnium Scipionis ("Scipio’s Dream")), De legibus ("On the Laws"), De natura deorum ("On the Nature of the Gods"), De senectute ("On Old Age") and De amicitia ("On Friendship"). For more info about Cicero’s influence on Dante, see the Cicero and Dante page.
Language
In Dante’s historical period, there was no linguistic unity in Italy. This means that in different parts of the country were spoken different kinds of dialects (better called vernacular languages), although they all derived from Latin language. So, when you read Italian language in the text, it always means the vernacular language Dante wrote with, that is the Florentine dialect. We can say that modern Italian is derived fairly directly from this dialect, even thanks to its use in literature. See also the De vulgari eloquentia.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Italian philosopher and theologian, lived in the XIII century, one of the greatest in Scholastic medieval philosophy. He tried to melt Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy, in order to build up an organic knowledge system. He had strong influences also from patristic philosophy, especially St. Augustine. His main work is the monumental Summa Theologica.
Virgil (also spelled Vergil)
Roman Latin poet, lived in the I century b.C., one of the greatest classical literary authors who had a very strong influence on later European writers. His main works are the Eclogues (or Bucolics), which are pastoral poems, the Georgics, which are a poem about life in the country and the Aeneid, his masterpiece. The Aeneid is an epic poem composed by twelve books, about Aeneas’s escape from Troy (at the end of the war of Troy) and his arriving in Italy, where he founds Rome. It’s the celebration of the Roma caput mundi (Rome capital of the World) pacified by August. In the VI book, there’s the description of Aeneas’s descent into Hell, where he meets his father Anchises and he sees his destiny (to become the founder of a great civilization). This book is one of Dante’s main models in his writing the Commedia.