2

The opening of "Io son venuto al punto de la rota" is well known as the first astronomical description in Dante's poetry:

      Io son venuto al punto de la rota 
che l'orizzonte, quando il sol si corca, 
ci partorisce il geminato cielo, 
  e la stella d'amor ci sta remota 
per Io raggio lucente che la 'nforca 
sì di traverso che le si fa velo; 
      e quel pianeta che conforta il gelo 
si mostra tutto a noi per lo grand'arco 
nel qual ciascun di sette fa poco ombra. 
           (1–9)

      I have come to the point of the wheel where the 
horizon gives birth at sunset to the twinned heaven, 
    and the star of love is kept from us by the sun's ray that 
straddles her so transversely that she is veiled;

     and that planet that strengthens the frost shows itself 
to us entirely, along the great arc where each of the 
seven casts little shadow . . .

Since astronomical positions involving three or more planets do not repeat themselves more than once every few hundred years, students of Dante realized early in this century that this description might permit the poem to be dated.^[12] Clearly the first three lines mean that when the sun sets, the sign (or constellation) of Gemini rises or becomes visible in the eastern sky. This places the date somewhere near the winter solstice, when the sun enters Capricorn (in Dante's time this occurred around December 14). Venus is said to be remote from us because of being "forked" or "straddled" by the rays of the sun, which must refer to a conjunction of Venus and the sun. One might suppose that the joining of the rays of Venus and the sun would strengthen the star of love, but the power of the sun is determined by the sign of the zodiac it is passing through, and it is midwinter. (Once the sun has set, of course, Venus, too, is below the horizon and so "remota" for this reason, too.)^[13]

The "planet that strengthens the frost" is almost certainly Saturn. Whether the moon or Saturn,^[14] it would have to be opposite the sun, or nearly so, in order to "show itself entirely to us along the great arc where each of the seven makes little shadow." The "great arc" must be the Tropic of Cancer, for in the winter night sky a planet at or near the Tropic of Cancer is at greatest visibility, rising early in the evening and crossing the meridian at or near its greatest possible angle above the horizon (at the latitude of Florence, a planet on the Tropic crosses the meridian 691/2 degrees above the horizon).^[15] Saturn is much more likely than the moon for several reasons. Most important, Dante is surely describing a particularly hard winter with a long period of cold weather, not merely a brief cold spell depending on a phase of the moon. Further, the moon makes the complete circle of the heavens every month, while Saturn, the slowest of the planets, takes almost thirty years to complete its circle around the zodiac, and its positions are therefore much more unusual. The full context of the poem, as we shall see, is full of references to Saturn.

We have, then, Venus and the sun in conjunction in or near Capricorn, and Saturn somewhere near the Tropic of Cancer. The precision of this description is indeed sufficient to date it: only once in Dante's lifetime did such a configuration occur—in December 1296. The exact date of the conjunction of Venus and the sun was December 24. So

much is generally agreed. Actually, the description implies a complete horoscope, and it is surprising that no one seems to have considered the possibility that Dante might have known and had in mind the positions of the other planets. And what exactly was the position of Saturn? Figure 2 shows the positions of all the planets on December 24, 1296, as seen from Florence an hour after sunset.^[16]

Several aspects of this configuration strike one immediately. First is the prominence held by Mars along with Saturn. Both in the eastern sky

Fig. 2.
Florence, December 24, 1296, 5:30 P.M.

at sunset, they will dominate the sky all night long. The very fact that Mars is in Taurus, a house of Venus, would signify to the astrologically minded a love beset by conflict.^[17] Mars in Taurus is closely related to the basic conception of the entire series of the petrose; once alerted by the actual astronomical position, we may notice many references to the god of war. Furthermore, both Saturn and Mars are retrograde, that is, they seem to be moving backward on the ecliptic (toward the west rather than the east),^[18] a motion that was thought to weaken the influence of beneficent planets but to be particularly threatening in the case of the malefic Mars and Saturn. One notes, furthermore, that except for Mars and Saturn all the planets, not only the sun and Venus (explicitly placed by the poem), are below the horizon, and their positive influence is therefore seriously weakened.^[19] The night belongs entirely to Mars and Saturn. Finally, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus are closely grouped around the sun, a configuration that in another sign would probably be thought extremely beneficent.

As readers versed in astrology would recognize, stanzas 2–5 of "Io son venuto" refer to events that are not only characteristic of winter but were thought to be due to the influence of Saturn, the father and destroyer of all earthly beings, who presides over the sowing of crops and the reproduction of animals (including man) in his benign phase and determines their senescence and death in his harmful one. As the outermost planet, Saturn sets the limits of all things (cf. termine, line 40). The coldest and slowest of the planets, Saturn is associated with earth, water, and lead; he governs rain (stanza 2) and floods (stanza 5) and is particularly likely to cause both when on the cusp between two signs—as in December 1296. It is this planet's influence that causes human beings to be lustful.^[20]

The poem is filled with references to the lore of Saturn's influence on both mind and body. The themes—basic to the poem—of the paradoxical combination in the lover of cold and fire and of his hardness and tenacity of mind are traditionally associated with Saturn.^[21] The references to the earth, to flood, to water and air trapped under ground, derive from the lore of melancholic sexuality and the influence of Saturn, for the slow steadiness of Saturn was supposed to influence the strong vital spirits of the melancholic, who were thought to be particularly subject to lust because of the large amount of air combined with blood in their sperm. The related association of orgasm with the eruption of underground waters mixed with vapors, which we find in stanza 5, derives from Aristotelian physiology.^[22]

The position of Saturn in Figure 2 requires further comment. It is indeed near the Tropic of Cancer; it has just entered Gemini, Dante's natal sign, on the very day of the conjunction of Venus and the sun. To appreciate how unusual and how meaningful this event may have seemed to Dante, one must consider that the slowness of Saturn means that it lingers for a long time in each sign of the zodiac, but also that once it has left a sign it does not return for almost thirty years. The presence of Saturn in Dante's natal sign was no doubt of great significance in his eyes, and the horoscope of December 24, 1296, on this ground alone, would seem to have a special relation to his natal horoscope. But before turning in this direction, we need to substantiate more fully our claim that Dante's natal horoscope is relevant to "Io son venuto."

First of all, as we have seen, the poem refers directly both to the idea of birth and to what we know Dante claimed was his natal sign, Gemini. Critics seem not to have paid much attention to the odd fact that, although there is no question that the "wheel" of the first line is, among other things, the zodiac, Dante says that he, rather than the sun, has reached the point of the wheel:

      Io son venuto al punto de la rota 
che l'orizzonte, quando il sol si corca, 
ci partorisce il geminato cielo

There is an implicit reference to the traditional notion of the wheel of Fortune, whose iconography portrayed individuals carried on the wheel as if fixed to it,^[23] traditionally associated with the turning of the heavens and thus with time. If we take the wheel as referring to the heavens themselves (one of its main references), at which point on the wheel are we to place the speaker? Perhaps near the sun—an important suggestion of the lines, however, is that the horizon is giving birth not only to Gemini, but also in some sense to Dante himself.

It may also seem odd that Dante identifies the season by the sign in or near which night, not the sun, is rising.^[24] This is actually one of the keys to the poem as a whole: the reference is inverted. Inversion is a major idea governing the entire poem, which begins with allusion to birth and ends with allusion to death. At another level, the poem ends with the mention of orgasm, which initiates gestation, and in a line that refers to Dante's natal sign, begins with birth, which ends gestation. In embodying cold instead of the warmth that is natural to her youth, the lady is herself one of the most important instances of inversion. But the most explicit reference to the idea appears in the congedo, where the

astrological situation of the winter is imagined as reversed: in the springtime, instead of cold, warmth rains down from all the heavens: but that is the season of Dante's birth.

In the analogy between the year and a human life, the winter solstice would correspond to death. If in the macrocosm Saturn, Mars, and Capricorn cause an unusually severe winter with heavy flooding, for the microcosm of the speaker they might produce a cataclysm. Thus the solstitial inversion, the speaker's resistance to the season, the unnaturalness of a lady stony in youth, the analogy of the year and the life cycle—these themes are parallel to the idea of death as an inversion of birth. Now Saturn, the planet that sets the limits for all things, including the moment of their death, is, as Manilius points out, the planet governing inversions: his locus is the imum coeli because he has been cast down from his former eminence.^[25] And of course the feast of Saturn, the Saturnalia, took place just before the winter solstice, as Dante could have known from Macrobius.^[26] All the systems of inversion in "Io son venuto," then, including the insistent syntactic inversion, require us to see the astrological situation it describes as an inversion of the situation at Dante's birth.

In considering what idea Dante may have had of his natal horoscope there is naturally a large element of uncertainty. In Paradiso 22, in a passage we will consider in the next section, he says that he was born with the sun in Gemini; according to Boccaccio's testimony, which there is no real reason to doubt, Dante told a Ravenna friend shortly before his death that he had been born in the month of May.^[27] It is reasonable to conclude that Dante's birthday fell—or that he supposed (or even pretended) that it fell—between May 14, 1265 (when the sun entered Gemini), and the end of the month.^[28] But there is no way of determining more closely on what day or at what time of day he was born.^[29] This means that we cannot know the position of the moon or the ascendant, both of which were considered of major significance in any horoscope. We do not know whether Dante knew the actual positions of the planets at his birth (though the combined evidence, we believe, strongly suggests that he did: it was common for well-to-do families to have horoscopes cast for the newborn; or Dante may have cast his own horoscope retrospectively, using such an almanac as the one by Prophatius, which he probably used for the Commedia ).^[30]

It might seem otiose to consider the question, except for one further important fact: leaving the moon out of consideration, during the time when the sun was passing through Gemini in May 1265, the positions of

the other planets changed very little because the faster-moving planets, Mercury and Venus, were alternating between direct and retrograde motion (Mercury, for instance, remained for the entire period within the limits of 70.15 and 63.38 degrees longitude).^[31] Thus, although the ascendant, and therefore the positions of the planets in the various hour-houses of Dante's natal horoscope, cannot be known, much else can be.

If the theme of astronomical inversion in "Io son venuto" invites us to consider whether December 1296 is an inversion of the position of Dante's natal horoscope, we already know the most conspicuous element of that inversion, the position of the sun: in December 1296, near winter solstice; in May 1265, something more than half a sign away from summer solstice (this is the "altro / dolce tempo novello," when love rains down from all the heavens). The inversion would be more complete if Dante's horoscope were cast for dawn or shortly after (as opposed to sunset in "Io son venuto"). Are there other elements of inversion? We give two charts for the latter part of May, as seen from Florence an hour after sunrise (the hour is chosen for its symmetry with that in "Io son venuto"). The choice of dates is not entirely arbitrary: Dante arrives in Gemini in Paradiso 22; he leaves it in Paradiso 27. We find it plausible that the numbers are significant; in other words, we suspect that Dante's birthday falls on May 22 or 27, or else in between. Figure 3 gives positions for May 22, 1265; Figure 4 for May 27, 1265. We incline toward May 27 as the date Dante knew or supposed to be his birthday,^[32] but in any case both charts are offered as examples only.

What is most striking about the configuration in both charts (and this aspect changed virtually not at all during the entire period from May 14 to June 14) is that Saturn is in Gemini, not far from its position in December 1296; but in 1265 it is close to conjunction with the sun, whereas in 1296 it is in opposition to it. It must be stressed that the positions of Saturn recur at large intervals: during Dante's entire lifetime Saturn was in Gemini during only two periods, 1265–67 and 1294–96,^[33] a fact that is surely most significant for the interpretation of "Io son venuto." On May 27, 1265 (Figure 4), not only is Saturn close to conjunction with the sun, but it is also in conjunction with Mercury (in Gemini, the night house of Mercury) and in orbal conjunction with Jupiter in Taurus (and Jupiter is close to orbal conjunction with the 1266 position of Venus, if Dante made his Prophatius mistake here), whereas in December 1296 the sun is in a house of Saturn and in

Fig. 3.
Florence, May 22, 1265, 6:15 A.M.

Fig. 4.
Florence, May 27, 1265, 6:00 A.M.

conjunction with Venus, Mercury, and Jupiter, and all four are in opposition to Saturn. In both 1265 charts, the possible harmful influence of Saturn is strongly counteracted by the conjunction (or near conjunction) with a whole group of beneficent planets in strong phases, but in 1296 the beneficent planets are canceled out and the harmful ones unusually strengthened. In the relation between December 1296 and May 1265, then, we find a whole system of astrological inversion involving Saturn, the very planet of inversion;^[34] the inversion is especially pronounced if May 27 is taken as the contrast, but it is still very much in evidence on May 22, or indeed on any Gemini chart for 1265.^[35] Seen in relation to Dante's natal horoscope, "Io son venuto" represents something much more serious than merely an unusually severe winter. Dante would have been on very firm ground in interpreting December 1296 as extremely threatening for a Gemini of 1265.^[36]

The poet's war with the stars is a very real one, then, and we begin to have some insight into the prominence of Mars in the horoscope. It is particularly striking to find that Mars was retrograde^[37] in December 1296; the fact provides a major confirmation of the traditional dating of the poem, because the climactic expression of the poet's determination, in stanza 5, unmistakably refers to it: "e io de la mia guerra / non son tomato un passo a retro."^[38] There could hardly be a more emphatic way of differentiating the poet from the astrological influences that threaten him: though the very planet of war may turn back—retrograde—with whatever defeat or weakening that event may seem to promise, the lover will not do so. His love does not derive from the turnings of time and will not be defeated by them.

But other important aspects of Dante's natal horoscope have a close relation with the horoscope of December, especially the prominence of both the planet Mercury and his "house," the sign Gemini. Dante probably considered Mercury the "lord" of his horoscope, that is, the most dominant influence, sufficiently so for him to consider himself a "child" of the planet (see Hauber 1916). Since we do not know what he thought his ascendant to be or the position of his moon, we cannot be completely sure,^[39] but he clearly ascribed major importance to the influence of Gemini, both in this poem and in Paradiso 22.^[40]

Gemini is one of the two houses of Mercury, in which the planet was said to "rejoice"—the other being Virgo.^[41] These two signs have the distinction of being the only ones that represent human beings rather than animals or objects. This fact was traditionally interpreted to mean

that the natives of these two signs are particularly suited for the intellectual professions,^[42] and the children of Mercury were well known as scholars, writers, and interpreters.^[43] As Benvenuto da Imola says, Gemini "facit homines literatos et ingeniosos" ("makes people learned and clever"—cited by Sapegno ad Paradiso 22).

The Twins of Gemini were variously identified in antiquity.^[44] In the most common view they are the mythical Castor and Pollux, sons of Leda, the former by Leda's mortal husband, Tyndareus, the latter by Jupiter. As Dante knew, Castor and Pollux were among the deities most popular in ancient Rome and had a close relation to Mars, the patron of Rome's founding; they were thought to appear in battle to help Rome, and their myth is of course inherently warlike.^[45] Dante would have found references to them in the works of countless writers.^[46] For him, the myth is connected with such major concerns, both moral and poetic, as the duality of human nature, the need for inner struggle, and the problematic of interpretation. In terms of the Commedia, of course, a pair of twins, one of whom gives up part of his immortality to save his mortal brother, is obviously the antitype of the fratricidal twins of the Earthly City (Romulus and Remus, Eteocles and Polynices),^[47] children of the baleful influence of Mars.^[48]

The astrological importance of Gemini, as well as the importance of Mercury as the patron of learning and literary creation, can be seen in a favorite medieval schoolbook, Martianus Capella's De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, which relates that the seven liberal arts were Mercury's wedding gift to his bride Philologia ("love of learning").^[49] The De nuptiis claims a continuity among the arts of language, the knowledge of the cosmos, and the Neoplatonic ascent to the ultimate Truth, a continuity expressed in two allegorical journeys (Mercury's and his bride's) from the world of sense—represented with elaborate cosmological symbolism—to the beyond. Martianus's sprightly book had enormous influence; it furnished the basic outline of the trivium and quadrivium in the schools of the Middle Ages and inspired such allegorical works as Bernard Silvester's Cosmographia and Alain of Lille's De planctu Naturae and Anticlaudianus. Although the astrological as such is veiled in the De nuptiis, it is quite important,^[50] and one striking passage clearly alludes to the conjunction of the sun and Mercury in Gemini at dawn (i.e., at the ascendant) in such a way as to suggest a horoscope.^[51] The particular appropriateness of Gemini is explained by Bernard Silvester, in his commentary on the De nuptiis,^[52] on the basis of an interpretation of the

myth of Castor and Pollux that treats them as representing body and spirit—parallel, in Bernard's view, to the relation between language (Philologia, originally mortal) and reason (Mercury)—thus an instance of the union of opposites in which the cosmic harmony consists.^[53] Commenting on a line from the opening hymn to Hymen, "complexuque sacro dissona nexa foves," he writes:

nexa, id est iuncta, complexu, proportione, sacro quia, ad tempus, divinum mortali ut, in eternum, mortale iungatur divino; quod tibi illud de Castore et Polluce apte figurat. Pollux enim "perditio," Castor vero "extremum malum" interpretatur. "Perditio" dicitur spiritus humanus quia sicut semina terre mandata primo moriuntur ut post modum vivant, sic anima corpori iuncta. Corpus autem "extremum malum" dicitur quia, ut super Virgilium diximus, partientibus anime quod est nil inferius humano corpore occurrit. . . . Et Pollux quidem dicitur deus quia est spiritus substantia rationalis et immortalis, Castor mortalis quia corpus substantia hebes et dissolubilis. Deus mortalem mortem recipit ut suam deitatem ei conferat, quia spiritus ad tempus moritur ut corpus in eternum vivat.
(Wetherbee 1972 267–268; Westra 1986 69)

Joined by a sacred bond; that is, united by proportion; for divine is united with mortal in temporal life just as mortal is united with divine in eternity. This is aptly illustrated by the story of Pollux and Castor. For Pollux means "perdition" and Castor "utmost evil." The human spirit is called "perdition" because, just as seeds consigned to the earth first die that they may later come to life, so does the soul when united with the body. And the body is called "utmost evil" because, as I explained in glossing Virgil, those who have classified all existence have encountered nothing lower than body. . . . And Pollux is called a god because spirit is a rational and immortal substance, while Castor is mortal because body is a substance weak and subject to decay. The god undergoes mortal death so as to confer his deity on him; for spirit dies temporally that the body may live eternally.
(Wetherbee 1972 114–115; translation slightly altered)

In another part of his commentary, Bernard again treats the myth as an instance of the reconciliation of divergent principles, identifying Pollux as the contemplative life, Castor the active life (saved from the degradation of pleasure by the other's vision).^[54] As we shall see, Dante's treatment of the Twins as a main symbol of human duality, both sides of which must be preserved, is interestingly close to Bernard's.^[55]

In strictly astronomical terms, Dante would have found that Gemini

Fig. 5.
Montpellier, April 8, 1300, 6:15 A.M. ( See discussion on p. 364 n. 63. )

possessed a number of peculiarities. As he read in al-Fargani's epitome of Ptolemy's Almagest, of the fifteen brightest stars in the sky, no fewer than four are associated with (i.e., rise and set with) Gemini: Capella, Betelgeuse, Rigel, and, the brightest of all, Sirius.^[56] As Martianus Capella, Macrobius, and Calcidius all point out, Gemini is the sign where the sun dwells longest (thirty-two days, as opposed to the average

thirty),^[57] and it is the only sign in which there can ordinarily be two successive new moons (as Macrobius puts it, where the moon can be born twice).^[58] Manilius observes that three zodiacal signs rise backwards or upside down: the successive signs Taurus, Gemini, and Cancer.^[59] The Twins appear feet first above the horizon, a fact with a clear relation to the two major themes of "Io son venuto": inversion (of astrological influences, of negative into positive) and birth.

Another peculiarity of the constellation Gemini is that it lies in the portion of the zodiac that crosses the Milky Way. The Twins' feet, along with the horns of the Bull, extend into one of the most thickly populated parts of the galaxy. On the opposite side, Sagittarius and Scorpio mark the other crossing of the galaxy.^[60] These, according to Martianus Capella's Astronomia (8.817), are two of the ten circles one must learn to distinguish in the sky, the others being the colures of the Equinoxes and Tropics; the parallels marking the Arctic, Antarctic, temperate, and tropical zones; and the equator. On a clear night Gemini is a magnificent spectacle, close to the Milky Way and accompanied by the bright stars of Taurus, Orion, and Canis Major. Thus the scene described in the first stanza of "Io son venuto" is one of extraordinary grandeur.

The prominence of Mercury and Gemini in Dante's natal horoscope, then, casts a different light on the prominence of Saturn. As the patron of science and meditation, Saturn can have an exceptionally strong positive influence.^[61] The conjunction or near conjunction of Saturn and Mercury in the night house of Mercury (our example shows conjunction, but it is only a guess), of course, would be especially appropriate for a philosophical poet. But it is clear that "Io son venuto al punto de la rota" represents Dante's effort to identify himself with the positive side of Saturn's, Mars's, and Mercury's influence—favoring moral struggle, philosophy and science, and the creation of poetry—as against the dangerous negative side.^[62] These aspects of his stars will enable him, he hopes, to confront and master what in both astrological and emotional terms is the most threatening situation of his lifetime, and to make it the occasion of growth and development.^[63]