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Eclogues Audio clip

Dante’s eclogues (named Eclogae in Latin) are two and are both written in Latin language. Giovanni del Virgilio, a poetry teacher who lived in Bologna, wrote to Dante in order to persuade him to write poems in Latin language. Dante answered him with these two works, where he states that Italian language is better than Latin and is the one to be used in literature. Moreover he renew his hope to go back to Florence and his love for the town of his birth.

To get a full, free copy of the Eclogues, go to the Texts download area.

Quaestio de aqua et de terra Audio clip

It’s Dante’s last work and was written in 1320. It’s the demonstration that nowhere, in the world, the sea level exceeds earth level. So, that’s a physical dissertation about cosmology. It’s written in Latin and is based on a Dante’s oral speech he did in Verona.

To get a full, free copy of the Quaestio de aqua et de terra, go to the Texts download area.