Note 283 — CANTO VI.

The boorish party: la parte selvaggia. The Whites; but what is exactly meant by selvaggia is not clear. Literally it is ‘woodland,’ and some say it refers to the Cerchi having originally come from a well-wooded district; which is absurd. Nor, taking the word in its secondary meaning of savage, does it apply better to one party than another—not so well, perhaps, to the Whites as to the Blacks. Villani also terms the Cerchi salvatichi (viii. 39), and in a connection where it may mean rude, ill-mannered. I take it that Dante here indulges in a gibe at the party to which he once belonged, but which, ere he began the Comedy, he had quite broken with. In Parad. xvii. 62 he terms the members of it ‘wicked and stupid.’ The sneer in the text would come well enough from the witty and soft-living Ciacco.