nd on this Song, that it ask permission of this
Lady to speak of her; whereby one may infer that a man ought not to be
presumptuous in praising another, ought not to take it for granted in
his own mind that it is pleasing to the person praised, because often,
when some one believes he is bestowing praise, it is taken as blame,
either through defect of the speaker or through defect of him who
hears. Wherefore it is requisite to have much discretion in this
matter; which discretion is tantamount to asking permission, in the
way in which I say that this Song or Poem should ask for it.

And thus ends the whole Literal meaning of this treatise; wherefore
the order of the work now requires the Allegorical exposition,
following the Truth, to be proceeded with.

CHAPTER XI.

Returning now, as the order requires, to the beginning of the Song, I
say that this Lady is that Lady of the Intellect who is called
Philosophy. But naturally praise excites a desire to know the person
praised; and to know the thing may be to know what it is considered to
be in itself, and in all that pertains to it, as the Philosopher says
in the beginning of the book On Physics; and the name may reveal this
when it bears some meaning, as he says in the fourth chapter of the
Metaphysics, where it is said that the definition is that reason which
the name signifies. Here, therefore, it is necessary, before
proceeding farther with her praises, to prove and to say what this is
that is called Philosophy, what this name signifies; and when this has
been demonstrated, the present Allegory will be more efficaciously
discussed. And first of all I will state who first gave this name;
then I shall proceed to its signification.

I say, then, that anciently in Italy, almost from the beginning of the
foundation of Rome, which was seven hundred and fifty years, a little
more or less, before the advent of the Saviour, according as Paul
Orosius writes, about the time of Numa Pompilius, second king of the
Romans, there lived a most noble Philosopher, who was named
Pythagoras. And that he might be living about that time appears from
something to which Titus Livius alludes incidentally in the first part
of his History. And before him they were called the followers of
Science, not Philosophers but Wise Men such as were those Seven most
ancient Wise Men, who still live in popular fame. The first of them
had the name of Solon, the second Chilon, the third Periander,