Death, its trunk reaching to heaven, and its boughs spread over the whole universe. At its foot, in the kingdom of Death, sit three Nornas or Fates, the Past, the Present, and the Future, watering its roots from the sacred well. Compare ch. xxii. 2, 14,19. Virgil, addressing Dante at the completion of the ascent of the Purgatorial Mount, says :
‘¢ That apple sweet, which through so many branches The care of mortals goeth in pursuit of, To-day shall put in peace thy hungerings.” ‘¢ Purgatorio,” xxvii., 115-117.
Paradise. See on Luke xxiii. 43. Omit in the midst of. TlapdSevcos Paradise “passes through a series of meanings, each one higher than the last. From any garden of delight, which is its first meaning, it comes to be predominantly ap- plied to the garden of Eden, then to the resting-place of separate souls in joy and felicity, and lastly to the very heaven itself ; and we see eminently in it, what we see indeed in so many words, how revealed religion assumes them into her ser- vice, and makes them vehicles of far higher truth than any which they knew at first, transforming and transfiguring them, as in this case, from glory to glory ” (Trench).
8. Smyrna. Lying a little north of Ephesus, on a gulf of thesamename. The original city was destroyed about B.c. 627, and was deserted and in ruins for four hundred years. Alex- ander the Great contemplated its restoration, and his design was carried out after his death. The new city was built a short distance south of the ancient one, and became the finest in Asia Minor, being known as the glory of Asia. It was one of the cities which claimed the honor of being Homer’s birth- place. A splendid temple was erected by the Smyrnaeans to his memory, and a cave in the neighborhood of the city was shown where he was said to have composed his poems. Smyr- na’s fine harbor made it a commercial centre; but it was also distinguished for its schools of rhetoric and philosophy. Poly- carp was the first bishop of its church, which suffered much from persecution, and he was said to have suffered martyrdom