Commentary Par XXII 151

The word 'aiuola,' frequently translated as 'threshing floor,' is almost without a doubt, as Scott (Scot.2003.1) has argued, without the biblical resonance of Matthew 3:12 and Luke 3:17 that is heard by some from the nineteenth century into our own time.  Scott also believes that the word reflects its presence in a phrase found in Boethius's De consolatione (II.7[pr]), angustissima... area.  Scott cites Kay (Kay.1998.1), p. 317, n. 22, glossing Monarchia (Mon.III.xvi.11), where Dante uses the Latin equivalent of 'aiuola': 'Latin areola is a diminutive form of area, and hence is "a little space"' (see also Pasquini [Pasq.1988.1], p. 439).  (For the long-standing but frequently overlooked knowledge of the reference to Boethius, see first Pietro di Dante [DDP Pietro1.Par.XXII.145-150] and then Francesco da Buti [DDP Buti.Par.XXII.149-154], who are joined by several later practitioners, including Landino, Daniello, and Tommaseo.  Longfellow [DDP Longfellow.Par.XXII.151] gets the Boethius right, but is responsible [according to Scott] for the invention of 'threshing floor' in his translation.)  Although this rendering of the word has had a long run, it may in fact still require winnowing.  Scott continues: 'Dante uses it here in this general, etymological sense, although often both areola and its Italian calc aiuola are used for specific small spaces, e.g. a flowerbed, seedbed, open courtyard, threshing floor, or even a blank space on a page […].  Dante probably had in mind Boethius’s description of the inhabitable world as an 'angustissimum [sic]… area' (Cons. II.7[pr].3), which Dante echoed in Epist.VII.15]: "in angustissima mundi area" [in such a narrow corner of the world].'

See Dante's second use of aiuola at [Par XXVII 86].

However, for a biblical use of area to mean 'threshing floor,' see Daniel 2:35: 'aestivae areae': 'Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found.  But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.'  This is the stuff of Dante's vision of the Old Man of Crete in Inferno XIV. One can understand the temptation to read this passage in light of that one.  And see Carroll (DDP Carroll.Par.XXII.151-154), who is aware that the word area can mean other things, but argues here for the resonance of Jeremiah 51:33, where it clearly does mean 'threshing floor.'  However, on balance, the cooler heads of Kay and Scott should probably be allowed to regulate the overheated rhetorical enthusiasm that, as Scott argues, perhaps has its Anglo-Saxon origin in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Romantic view of this verse.

Gian Biagio Conte (Cont.1977.1) has suggested, adding to Alfonso Traina's observation ({Trai.1975.1}) that a line in the proem of Seneca's Naturales Quaestiones ('puntum... in quo bellatis, in quo regno disponitis') perhaps furnished the substance of this thought, his own sense that Lucan (Phars. IX.14*) supplied the phrasing for Dante's expression of his scorn for the affairs of this paltry earth.  However, it seems clear that, in this verse (which is what most directly concerns us here), Dante is closer to Boethius than to Seneca.