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5 The Latin phrase translates roughly as “Then well and good” or “That’s fine with me.”

1 Garcilaso de la Vega, in his third eclogue.

2 The temple, also called the Pantheon, was in fact visited by Charles, who would walk through Rome in disguise; the anecdote told here does not appear in any other text, however, and may be an invention of Cervantes.

3 In this example of Sancho’s linguistic and historical confusions, the wordplay is based on the fact that in Spanish julio is the month of July, while Julio is the equivalent of Julius; agosto is the month of August, while Agosto is the equivalent of Augustus.

1 The line is from an old ballad, “El conde Claros” (“Count Claros”).

2 This statement is one of the best known in the novel, for it has been interpreted as meaning that Don Quixote and Sancho have “run into” the church in the sense of coming into dangerous conflict with the institution. The sentence is sometimes cited using another verb to underscore that meaning: topar (the verb used by Sancho just a few lines down) rather than dar. According to Martín de Riquer, this is overinterpretation, and the sentence means only what it says: the building is a church, not Dulcinea’s palace.

3 Sancho quotes a different version of the ballad of Roncesvalles.

1. Highborn ladies would receive visitors in a special room of the house that had lounging pillows.

2 Sancho misquotes the proverb.

3 The lines are from a ballad about Bernardo del Carpio.

5 In the weaving and embroidering of the raised design on brocade, fabric with three levels of handiwork was considered very valuable. Carried away by his fantasy, Sancho exaggerates.

6 Municipalities had community grazing lands for the use of residents.

1 This is a way to say, “Let’s behave sensibly and realistically.”

2 This may be a reference to a religious play of the same title (Las cortes de la muerte) by Lope de Vega; there was, in fact, a theatrical impresario named Angulo el Malo.

1 As Martín de Riquer points out, this kind of comparison was common in Spain, and a frequent subject for sermons, so it is not surprising that Sancho repeats it. Whenever Sancho shows signs of erudition—citing Latin words and phrases, for example—his knowledge, by dint of repetition, has its origin in the Church and consequently does not affect the believability of the character.

2 Two friendships celebrated in classical mythology, the first Roman, the second Greek.

3 The first citation is from a ballad; the second is a proverb that probably appeared in a song or ballad, as the verb “sung” suggests.

4 Pliny claimed that the ibis could administer an enema to itself by filling its neck with water and using its long beak as a nozzle.

5 A dog returning to its own vomit was cited as a symbol of a backsliding Christian who abandons a vice and then returns to it.

7 This was an early form of the guitar.

1 The reference is to the weathervane at the top of the tower called La Giralda.

2 Ancient Iberian stone sculptures of bulls discovered outside Guisando, in the province of Ávila.

3 There is a deep chasm close to Cabra, in the province of Córdoba.

4 These are paraphrased lines from Alonso de Ercilla’s epic poem La Araucana.

5 In religious brotherhoods, fines were paid in specific quantities of long wax candles.

1 The phrase means “in order to earn one’s bread.”

2 The phrase, “God is in us,” is by Ovid.

3 The reference is to the Satires of Horace.

5 The allusion is to the laurel.

1 As indicated in note 7, chapter XLIX of part I, Don Manuel de León (León is a province of Spain as well as the word that means “lion”) retrieved a glove from a lion’s cage at the request of a lady and then slapped her for needlessly endangering the life of a knight.

2 Certain fine swords had the image of a dog engraved on the blade.

1 These are verses from one of Garcilaso’s sonnets.

2 A creature who, like an