XIII/4 The original drawing of the Veltro (cf. Canto 1/3) was, for the original etching of this picture, made into a rubber stamp in order to indicate the pack of hounds that pursue Lano and Jacopo. Perhaps in this there is some hint that any such King/Saviour as Dante hopes for would inevitably abuse his own power with a rubber-stamping bureaucracy and police to flush out dissidents with dogs. The stamp was pressed into a soft etching-ground with deliberate slitherings to represent the hounds in motion. In an echo of the wood-graining of the preceding image we see a representation of Mars (copied from a 19th Century book on astronomy) and the coin of Florence (the original of our florin) which will reappear in Canto XXXII/2. These recall the abandonment of Mars as the city deity and its adoption of the 'Baptist' (at least in the form of money) i. e. the old civic virtues replaced by greed for gold. The bush below represents the final anonymous speaker and its scattered leaves (cf.Canto XIV/2) are reminiscent of fragments of the emblematic lily. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.