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Necessity, not pleasure, leads him on.
One came from where the alleluiahs roll,
Who charged me with this office strange and new:
No robber he, nor mine a felon soul.90
But, by that Power which makes me to pursue
The rugged journey whereupon I fare,
Accord us one of thine to keep in view,
That he may show where lies the ford, and bear
This other on his back to yonder strand;
No spirit he, that he should cleave the air.’
Wheeled to the right then Chiron gave command
To Nessus: ‘Turn, and lead them, and take tent
They be not touched by any other band.’[407]
We with our trusty Escort forward went,100
Threading the margin of the boiling blood
Where they who seethed were raising loud lament.
People I saw up to the chin imbrued,
‘These all are tyrants,’ the great Centaur said,
‘Who blood and plunder for their trade pursued.
Here for their pitiless deeds tears now are shed
By Alexander,[408] and Dionysius fell,
Through whom in Sicily dolorous years were led.
The forehead with black hair so terrible
[Pg 89]
Is Ezzelino;[409] that one blond of hue,110
Obizzo[410] d’Este, whom, as rumours tell,
His stepson murdered, and report speaks true.’
I to the Poet turned, who gave command:
‘Regard thou chiefly him. I follow you.’
Ere long the Centaur halted on the strand,
Close to a people who, far as the throat,
Forth of that bulicamë[411] seemed to stand.
Thence a lone shade to us he pointed out
Saying: ‘In God’s house[412] ran he weapon through
[Pg 90]
The heart which still on Thames wins cult devout.’120
Then I saw people, some with heads in view,
And some their chests above the river bore;
And many of them I, beholding, knew.
And thus the blood went dwindling more and more,
Until at last it covered but the feet:
Here took we passage[413] to the other shore.
‘As on this hand thou seest still abate
In depth the volume of the boiling stream,’
The Centaur said, ‘so grows its depth more great,
Believe me, towards the opposite extreme,130
Until again its circling course attains
The place where tyrants must lament. Supreme
Justice upon that side involves in pains,
With Attila,[414] once of the world the pest,
Pyrrhus[415] and Sextus: and for ever drains
Tears out of Rinier of Corneto[416] pressed
And Rinier Pazzo[417] in that boiling mass,
Whose brigandage did so the roads infest.’
Then turned he back alone, the ford to pass.
Our descent: To the Seventh Circle.
[393]Adige: Different localities in the valley of the Adige have been fixed on as the scene of this landslip. The Lavini di Marco, about twenty miles south of Trent, seem best to answer to the description. They ‘consist of black blocks of stone and fragments of a landslip which, according to the Chronicle of Fulda, fell in the year 883 and overwhelmed the valley for four Italian miles’ (Gsell-Fels, Ober. Ital. i. 35).
[394]The Cretan Infamy: The Minotaur, the offspring of Pasiphaë; a half-bovine monster who inhabited the Cretan labyrinth, and to whom a human victim was offered once a year. He lies as guard upon the Seventh Circle—that of the violent (Inf. xi. 23, note)—and is set at the top of the rugged slope, itself the scene of a violent convulsion.
[395]Duke of Athens: Theseus, instructed by Ariadne, daughter of Pasiphaë and Minos, how to outwit the Minotaur, entered the labyrinth in the character of a victim, slew the monster, and then made his way out, guided by a thread he had unwound as he went in.
[396]The slippery waste: The word used here, scarco, means in modern Tuscan a place where earth or stones have been carelessly shot into a heap.
[397]The new weight: The slope had never before been trodden by mortal foot.
[398]The former time: When Virgil descended to evoke a shade from the Ninth Circle (Inf. ix. 22).
[399]Prey from Dis: The shades delivered from Limbo by Christ (Inf. iv. 53). The expression in the text is probably suggested by the words of the hymn Vexilla: Prædamque tulit Tartaris.
[400]To Chaos: The reference is to the theory of Empedocles, known to Dante through the refutation of it by Aristotle. The theory was one of periods of unity and division in nature, according as love or hatred prevailed.
[401]Another spot: See Inf. xxi. 112. The earthquake at the Crucifixion shook even Inferno to its base.
[402]The river of blood: Phlegethon, the ‘boiling river.’ Styx and Acheron have been already passed. Lethe, the fourth infernal river, is placed by Dante in Purgatory. The first round or circlet of the Seventh Circle is filled by Phlegethon.
[403]Centaurs: As this round is the abode of such as are guilty of violence against their neighbours, it is guarded by these brutal monsters, half-man and half-horse.
[404]Chiron: Called the most just of the Centaurs.
essus: Slain by Hercules with a poisoned arrow. When dying he gave Dejanira his blood-stained shirt, telling her it would insure the faithfulness to her of any whom she loved. Hercules wore it and died of the venom; and thus Nessus avenged himself.
[406]The natures: The part of the Centaur where the equine body is joined on to the human neck and head.
[407]Other band: Of Centaurs.
[408]Alexander: It is not known whether Alexander the Great or a petty Thessalian tyrant is here meant. Dionysius: The cruel tyrant of Syracuse.
[409]Ezzelino: Or Azzolino of Romano, the greatest Lombard Ghibeline of his time. He was son-in-law of Frederick II., and was Imperial Vicar of the Trevisian Mark. Towards the close of Fredrick’s life, and for some years after, he exercised almost independent power in Vicenza, Padua, and Verona. Cruelty, erected into a system, was his chief instrument of government, and ‘in his dungeons men found something worse than death.’ For Italians, says Burckhardt, he was the most impressive political personage of the thirteenth century; and around his memory, as around Frederick’s, there gathered strange legends. He died in 1259, of a wound received in battle. When urged to confess his sins by the monk who came to shrive him, he declared that the only sin on his conscience was negligence in revenge. But this may be mythical, as may also be the long black hair between his eyebrows, which rose up stiff and terrible as his anger waxed.
[410]Obizzo: The second Marquis of Este of that name. He was lord of Ferrara. There seems little, if any, evidence extant of his being specially cruel. As a strong Guelf he took sides with Charles of Anjou against Manfred. He died in 1293, smothered, it was believed, by a son, here called a stepson for his unnatural conduct. But though Dante vouches for the truth of the rumour it seems to have been an invention.
[411]That bulicamë: The stream of boiling blood is probably named from the bulicamë, or hot spring, best known to Dante—that near Viterbo (see Inf. xiv. 79). And it may be that the mention of the bulicamë suggests the reference at line 119.
[412]In God’s house: Literally, ‘In the bosom of God.’ The shade is that of Guy, son of Simon of Montfort and Vicar in Tuscany of Charles of Anjou. In 1271 he stabbed, in the Cathedral of Viterbo, Henry, son of Richard of Cornwall and cousin of Edward I. of England. The motive of the murder was to revenge the death of his father, Simon, at Evesham. The body of the young prince was conveyed to England, and the heart was placed in a vase upon the tomb of the Confessor. The shade of Guy stands up to the chin in blood among the worst of the tyrants, and alone, because of the enormity of his crime.
[413]Here took we passage: Dante on Nessus’ back. Virgil has fallen behind to allow the Centaur to act as guide; and how he crosses the stream Dante does not see.
[414]Attila: King of the Huns, who invaded part of Italy in the fifth century; and who, according to the mistaken belief of Dante’s age, was the devastator of Florence.
[415]Pyrrhus: King of Epirus. Sextus: Son of Pompey; a great sea-captain who fought against the Triumvirs. The crime of the first, in Dante’s eyes, is that he fought with Rome; of the second, that he opposed Augustus.
[416]Rinier of Corneto: Who in Dante’s time disturbed the coast of the States of the Church by his robberies and violence.
[417]Rinier Pazzo: Of the great family of the Pazzi of Val d’Arno, was excommunicated in 1269 for robbing ecclesiastics.
CANTO XIII.
Ere Nessus landed on the other shore
We for our part within a forest[418] drew,
Which of no pathway any traces bore.
Not green the foliage, but of dusky hue;
Not smooth the boughs, but gnarled and twisted round;
For apples, poisonous thorns upon them grew.
No rougher brakes or matted worse are found
Where savage beasts betwixt Corneto[419] roam
And Cecina,[419] abhorring cultured ground.
The loathsome Harpies[420] nestle here at home,10
Who from the Strophades the Trojans chased
With dire predictions of a woe to come.[Pg 92]
Great winged are they, but human necked and faced,
With feathered belly, and with claw for toe;
They shriek upon the bushes wild and waste.
‘Ere passing further, I would have thee know,’
The worthy Master thus began to say,
‘Thou’rt in the second round, nor hence shalt go
Till by the horrid sand thy footsteps stay.
Give then good heed, and things thou’lt recognise20
That of my words will prove[421] the verity.’
Wailings on every side I heard arise:
Of who might raise them I distinguished nought;
Whereon I halted, smitten with surprise.
I think he thought that haply ’twas my thought
The voices came from people ’mong the trees,
Who, to escape us, hiding-places sought;
Wherefore the Master said: ‘From one of these
Snap thou a twig, and thou shalt understand
How little with thy thought the fact agrees.’30
Thereon a little I stretched forth my hand
And plucked a tiny branch from a great thorn.
‘Why dost thou tear me?’ made the trunk demand.
When dark with blood it had begun to turn,
It cried a second time: ‘Why wound me thus?
Doth not a spark of pity in thee burn?
Though trees we be, once men were all of us;
Yet had our souls the souls of serpents been
Thy hand might well have proved more piteous.’
As when the fire hath seized a fagot green40
At one extremity, the other sighs,
And wind, escaping, hisses; so was seen,[Pg 93]
At where the branch was broken, blood to rise
And words were mixed with it. I dropped the spray
And stood like one whom terror doth surprise.
The Sage replied: ‘Soul vexed with injury,
Had he been only able to give trust
To what he read narrated in my lay,[422]
His hand toward thee would never have been thrust.
’Tis hard for faith; and I, to make it plain,50
Urged him to trial, mourn it though I must.
But tell him who thou wast; so shall remain
This for amends to thee, thy fame shall blow
Afresh on earth, where he returns again.’
And then the trunk: ‘Thy sweet words charm me so,
I cannot dumb remain; nor count it hard
If I some pains upon my speech bestow.
For I am he[423] who held both keys in ward
Of Frederick’s heart, and turned them how I would,
[Pg 94]
And softly oped it, and as softly barred,60
Till scarce another in his counsel stood.
To my high office I such loyalty bore,
It cost me sleep and haleness of my blood.
The harlot[424] who removeth nevermore
From Cæsar’s house eyes ignorant of shame—
A common curse, of courts the special sore—
Set against me the minds of all aflame,
And these in turn Augustus set on fire,
Till my glad honours bitter woes became.
My soul, filled full with a disdainful ire,70
Thinking by means of death disdain to flee,
’Gainst my just self unjustly did conspire.
I swear even by the new roots of this tree
My fealty to my lord I never broke,
For worthy of all honour sure was he.
If one of you return ’mong living folk,
Let him restore my memory, overthrown
And suffering yet because of envy’s stroke.’
Still for a while the poet listened on,
Then said: ‘Now he is dumb, lose not the hour,80
But make request if more thou’dst have made known.’
And I replied: ‘Do thou inquire once more
Of what thou thinkest[425] I would gladly know;
I cannot ask; ruth wrings me to the core.[Pg 95]’
On this he spake: ‘Even as the man shall do,
And liberally, what thou of him hast prayed,
Imprisoned spirit, do thou further show
How with these knots the spirits have been made
Incorporate; and, if thou canst, declare
If from such members e’er is loosed a shade.’90
Then from the trunk came vehement puffs of air;
Next, to these words converted was the wind:
‘My answer to you shall be short and clear.
When the fierce soul no longer is confined
In flesh, torn thence by action of its own,
To the Seventh Depth by Minos ’tis consigned.
No choice is made of where it shall be thrown
Within the wood; but where by chance ’tis flung
It germinates like seed of spelt that’s sown.
A forest tree it grows from sapling young;100
Eating its leaves, the Harpies cause it pain,
And open loopholes whence its sighs are wrung.
We for our vestments shall return again
Like others, but in them shall ne’er be clad:[426]
Men justly lose what from themselves they’ve ta’en.
Dragged hither by us, all throughout the sad
Forest our bodies shall be hung on high;
Each on the thorn of its destructive shade.’
While to the trunk we listening lingered nigh,
Thinking he might proceed to tell us more,110
A sudden uproar we were startled by
Like him who, that the huntsman and the boar[Pg 96]
To where he stands are sweeping in the chase,
Knows by the crashing trees and brutish roar.
Upon our left we saw a couple race
Naked[427] and scratched; and they so quickly fled
The forest barriers burst before their face.
‘Speed to my rescue, death!’ the foremost pled.
The next, as wishing he could use more haste;
‘Not thus, O Lano,[428] thee thy legs bested120
When one at Toppo’s tournament thou wast.’
Then, haply wanting breath, aside he stepped,
Merged with a bush on which himself he cast.
Behind them through the forest onward swept
A pack of dogs, black, ravenous, and fleet,
Like greyhounds from their leashes newly slipped.
In him who crouched they made their teeth to meet,
And, having piecemeal all his members rent,
Haled them away enduring anguish great.
Grasping my hand, my Escort forward went130
And led me to the bush which, all in vain,
Through its ensanguined openings made lament.
‘James of St. Andrews,’[429] it we heard complain;
‘What profit hadst thou making me thy shield?
For thy bad life doth blame to me pertain?[Pg 97]’
Then, halting there, this speech my Master held:
‘Who wast thou that through many wounds dost sigh,
Mingled with blood, words big with sorrow swelled?’
‘O souls that hither come,’ was his reply,
‘To witness shameful outrage by me borne,140
Whence all my leaves torn off around me lie,
Gather them to the root of this drear thorn.
My city[430] for the Baptist changed of yore
Her former patron; wherefore, in return,
He with his art will make her aye deplore;
And were it not some image doth remain
Of him where Arno’s crossed from shore to shore,
Those citizens who founded her again
On ashes left by Attila,[431] had spent
Their labour of a surety all in vain.150
In my own house[432] I up a gibbet went.’
A forest: The second round of the Seventh Circle consists of a belt of tangled forest, enclosed by the river of blood, and devoted to suicides and prodigals.
[419]Corneto and Cecina: Corneto is a town on the coast of what used to be the States of the Church; Cecina a stream not far south of Leghorn. Between them lies the Maremma, a district of great natural fertility, now being restored again to cultivation, but for ages a neglected and poisonous wilderness.
[420]Harpies: Monsters with the bodies of birds and the heads of women. In the Æneid iii., they are described as defiling the feast of which the Trojans were about to partake on one of the Strophades—islands of the Ægean; and on that occasion the prophecy was made that Æneas and his followers should be reduced to eat their tables ere they acquired a settlement in Italy. Here the Harpies symbolise shameful waste and disgust with life.
[421]Will prove, etc.: The things seen by Dante are to make credible what Virgil tells (Æn. iii.) of the blood and piteous voice that issued from the torn bushes on the tomb of Polydorus.
[422]My lay: See previous note. Dante thus indirectly acknowledges his debt to Virgil; and, perhaps, at the same time puts in his claim to an imaginative licence equal to that taken by his master. On a modern reader the effect of the reference is to weaken the verisimilitude of the incident.
[423]For I am he, etc.: The speaker is Pier delle Vigne, who from being a begging student of Bologna rose to be the Chancellor of the Emperor Frederick II., the chief councillor of that monarch, and one of the brightest ornaments of his intellectual court. Peter was perhaps the more endeared to his master because, like him, he was a poet of no mean order. There are two accounts of what caused his disgrace. According to one of these he was found to have betrayed Frederick’s interests in favour of the Pope’s; and according to the other he tried to poison him. Neither is it known whether he committed suicide; though he is said to have done so after being disgraced, by dashing his brains out against a church wall in Pisa. Dante clearly follows this legend. The whole episode is eloquent of the esteem in which Peter’s memory was held by Dante. His name is not mentioned in Inferno, but yet the promise is amply kept that it shall flourish on earth again, freed from unmerited disgrace. He died about 1249.
[424]The harlot: Envy.
[425]Of what thou thinkest, etc.: Virgil never asks a question for his own satisfaction. He knows who the spirits are, what brought them there, and which of them will speak honestly out on the promise of having his fame refreshed in the world. It should be noted how, by a hint, he has made Peter aware of who he is (line 48); a delicate attention yielded to no other shade in the Inferno, except Ulysses (Inf. xxvi. 79), and, perhaps, Brunetto Latini (Inf. xv. 99).
In them shall ne’er be clad: Boccaccio is here at great pains to save Dante from a charge of contradicting the tenet of the resurrection of the flesh.
[427]Naked: These are the prodigals; their nakedness representing the state to which in life they had reduced themselves.
[428]Lano: Who made one of a club of prodigals in Siena (Inf. xxix. 130) and soon ran through his fortune. Joining in a Florentine expedition in 1288 against Arezzo, he refused to escape from a defeat encountered by his side at Pieve del Toppo, preferring, as was supposed, to end his life at once rather than drag it out in poverty.
[429]James of St. Andrews: Jacopo da Sant’ Andrea, a Paduan who inherited enormous wealth which did not last him for long. He literally threw money away, and would burn a house for the sake of the blaze. His death has been placed in 1239.
[430]My city, etc.: According to tradition the original patron of Florence was Mars. In Dante’s time an ancient statue, supposed to be of that god, stood upon the Old Bridge of Florence. It is referred to in Parad. xvi. 47 and 145. Benvenuto says that he had heard from Boccaccio, who had frequently heard it from old people, that the statue was regarded with great awe. If a boy flung stones or mud at it, the bystanders would say of him that he would make a bad end. It was lost in the great flood of 1333. Here the Florentine shade represents Mars as troubling Florence with wars in revenge for being cast off as a patron.
[431]Attila: A confusion with Totila. Attila was never so far south as Tuscany. Neither is there reason to believe that when Totila took the city he destroyed it. But the legend was that it was rebuilt in the time of Charles the Great.
[432]My own house, etc.: It is not settled who this was who hanged himself from the beams of his own roof. One of the Agli, say some; others, one of the Mozzi. Boccaccio and Peter Dante remark that suicide by hanging was common in Florence. But Dante’s text seems pretty often to have suggested the invention of details in support or illustration of it.
CANTO XIV.
Me of my native place the dear constraint[433]
Led to restore the leaves which round were strewn,
To him whose voice by this time was grown faint.
Thence came we where the second round joins on
Unto the third, wherein how terrible
The art of justice can be, is well shown.
But, clearly of these wondrous things to tell,
I say we entered on a plain of sand
Which from its bed doth every plant repel.
The dolorous wood lies round it like a band,10
As that by the drear fosse is circled round.
Upon its very edge we came to a stand.
And there was nothing within all that bound
But burnt and heavy sand; like that once trod
Beneath the feet of Cato[434] was the ground.[Pg 99]
Ah, what a terror, O revenge of God!
Shouldst thou awake in any that may read
Of what before mine eyes was spread abroad.
I of great herds of naked souls took heed.
Most piteously was weeping every one;20
And different fortunes seemed to them decreed.
For some of them[435] upon the ground lay prone,
And some were sitting huddled up and bent,
While others, restless, wandered up and down.
More numerous were they that roaming went
Than they that were tormented lying low;
But these had tongues more loosened to lament.
O’er all the sand, deliberate and slow,
Broad open flakes of fire were downward rained,
As ’mong the Alps[436] in calm descends the snow.30
Such Alexander[437] saw when he attained[Pg 100]
The hottest India; on his host they fell
And all unbroken on the earth remained;
Wherefore he bade his phalanxes tread well
The ground, because when taken one by one
The burning flakes they could the better quell.
So here eternal fire[438] was pouring down;
As tinder ’neath the steel, so here the sands
Kindled, whence pain more vehement was known.
And, dancing up and down, the wretched hands[439]40
Beat here and there for ever without rest;
Brushing away from them the falling brands.
And I: ‘O Master, by all things confessed
Victor, except by obdurate evil powers
Who at the gate[440] to stop our passage pressed,
Who is the enormous one who noway cowers
Beneath the fire; with fierce disdainful air
Lying as if untortured by the showers?’
And that same shade, because he was aware
That touching him I of my Guide was fain50
To learn, cried: ‘As in life, myself I bear
In death. Though Jupiter should tire again
His smith, from whom he snatched in angry bout
The bolt by which I at the last was slain;[441][Pg 101]
Though one by one he tire the others out
At the black forge in Mongibello[442] placed,
While “Ho, good Vulcan, help me!” he shall shout—
The cry he once at Phlegra’s[443] battle raised;
Though hurled with all his might at me shall fly
His bolts, yet sweet revenge he shall not taste.’60
Then spake my Guide, and in a voice so high
Never till then heard I from him such tone:
‘O Capaneus, because unquenchably
Thy pride doth burn, worse pain by thee is known.
Into no torture save thy madness wild
Fit for thy fury couldest thou be thrown.’
Then, to me turning with a face more mild,
He said: ‘Of the Seven Kings was he of old,
Who leaguered Thebes, and as he God reviled
Him in small reverence still he seems to hold;70
But for his bosom his own insolence
Supplies fit ornament,[444] as now I told.[Pg 102]
Now follow; but take heed lest passing hence
Thy feet upon the burning sand should tread;
But keep them firm where runs the forest fence.’[445]
We reached a place—nor any word we said—
Where issues from the wood a streamlet small;
I shake but to recall its colour red.
Like that which does from Bulicamë[446] fall,
And losel women later ’mong them share;80
So through the sand this brooklet’s waters crawl.
Its bottom and its banks I was aware
Were stone, and stone the rims on either side.
From this I knew the passage[447] must be there.
‘Of all that I have shown thee as thy guide
Since when we by the gateway[448] entered in,
Whose threshold unto no one is denied,[Pg 103]
Nothing by thee has yet encountered been
So worthy as this brook to cause surprise,
O’er which the falling fire-flakes quenched are seen.’90
These were my Leader’s words. For full supplies
I prayed him of the food of which to taste
Keen appetite he made within me rise.
‘In middle sea there lies a country waste,
Known by the name of Crete,’ I then was told,
‘Under whose king[449] the world of yore was chaste.
There stands a mountain, once the joyous hold
Of woods and streams; as Ida ’twas renowned,
Now ’tis deserted like a thing grown old.
For a safe cradle ’twas by Rhea found.100
To nurse her child[450] in; and his infant cry,
Lest it betrayed him, she with clamours drowned.
Within the mount an old man towereth high.
Towards Damietta are his shoulders thrown;
On Rome, as on his mirror, rests his eye.
His head is fashioned of pure gold alone;
Of purest silver are his arms and chest;
’Tis brass to where his legs divide; then down
From that is all of iron of the best,
Save the right foot, which is of baken clay;110
And upon this foot doth he chiefly rest.
Save what is gold, doth every part display
A fissure dripping tears; these, gathering all
Together, through the grotto pierce a way.
From rock to rock into this deep they fall,[Pg 104]
Feed Acheron[451] and Styx and Phlegethon,
Then downward travelling by this strait canal,
Far as the place where further slope is none,
Cocytus form; and what that pool may be
I say not now. Thou’lt see it further on.’120
‘If this brook rises,’ he was asked by me,
‘Within our world, how comes it that no trace
We saw of it till on this boundary?[Pg 105]’
And he replied: ‘Thou knowest that the place
Is round, and far as thou hast moved thy feet,
Still to the left hand[452] sinking to the base,
Nath’less thy circuit is not yet complete.
Therefore if something new we chance to spy,
Amazement needs not on thy face have seat.’
I then: ‘But, Master, where doth Lethe lie,130
And Phlegethon? Of that thou sayest nought;
Of this thou say’st, those tears its flood supply.’
‘It likes me well to be by thee besought;
But by the boiling red wave,’ I was told,
‘To half thy question was an answer brought.
Lethe,[453] not in this pit, shalt thou behold.
Thither to wash themselves the spirits go,
When penitence has made them spotless souled.’
Then said he: ‘From the wood ’tis fitting now
That we depart; behind me press thou nigh.140
Keep we the margins, for they do not glow,
And over them, ere fallen, the fire-flakes die.’
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CANTO XV.
Now lies[454] our way along one of the margins hard;
Steam rising from the rivulet forms a cloud,
Which ’gainst the fire doth brook and borders guard.
Like walls the Flemings, timorous of the flood
Which towards them pours betwixt Bruges and Cadsand,[455]
Have made, that ocean’s charge may be withstood;
Or what the Paduans on the Brenta’s strand
To guard their castles and their homesteads rear,
Ere Chiarentana[456] feel the spring-tide bland;
Of the same fashion did those dikes appear,10
Though not so high[457] he made them, nor so vast,
Whoe’er the builder was that piled them here.[Pg 107]
We, from the wood when we so far had passed
I should not have distinguished where it lay
Though I to see it backward glance had cast,
A group of souls encountered on the way,
Whose line of march was to the margin nigh.
Each looked at us—as by the new moon’s ray
Men peer at others ’neath the darkening sky—
Sharpening his brows on us and only us,20
Like an old tailor on his needle’s eye.
And while that crowd was staring at me thus,
One of them knew me, caught me by the gown,
And cried aloud: ‘Lo, this is marvellous!’[458]
And straightway, while he thus to me held on,
I fixed mine eyes upon his fire-baked face,
And, spite of scorching, seemed his features known,
And whose they were my memory well could trace;
And I, with hand[459] stretched toward his face below,
[Pg 108]
Asked: ‘Ser Brunetto![460] and is this your place?’30
‘O son,’ he answered, ‘no displeasure show,
If now Brunetto Latini shall some way
Step back with thee, and leave his troop to go.’
I said: ‘With all my heart for this I pray,
And, if you choose, I by your side will sit;
If he, for I go with him, grant delay.’
‘Son,’ said he, ‘who of us shall intermit
Motion a moment, for an age must lie
Nor fan himself when flames are round him lit.
On, therefore! At thy skirts I follow nigh,40
[Pg 109]
Then shall I overtake my band again,
Who mourn a loss large as eternity.’
I dared not from the path step to the plain
To walk with him, but low I bent my head,[461]
Like one whose steps are all with reverence ta’en.
‘What fortune or what destiny,’ he said,
‘Hath brought thee here or e’er thou death hast seen;
And who is this by whom thou’rt onward led?’
‘Up yonder,’ said I, ‘in the life serene,
I in a valley wandered all forlorn50
Before my years had full accomplished been.
I turned my back on it but yestermorn;[462]
Again I sought it when he came in sight
Guided by whom[463] I homeward thus return.’
And he to me: ‘Following thy planet’s light[464][Pg 110]
Thou of a glorious haven canst not fail,
If in the blithesome life I marked aright.
And had my years known more abundant tale,
Seeing the heavens so held thee in their grace
I, heartening thee, had helped thee to prevail.60
But that ungrateful and malignant race
Which down from Fiesole[465] came long ago,
And still its rocky origin betrays,
Will for thy worthiness become thy foe;
And with good reason, for ’mong crab-trees wild
It ill befits the mellow fig to grow.
By widespread ancient rumour are they styled
A people blind, rapacious, envious, vain:
See by their manners thou be not defiled.
Fortune reserves such honour for thee, fain70
Both sides[466] will be to enlist thee in their need;
But from the beak the herb shall far remain.[Pg 111]
Let beasts of Fiesole go on to tread
Themselves to litter, nor the plants molest,
If any such now spring on their rank bed,
In whom there flourishes indeed the blest
Seed of the Romans who still lingered there
When of such wickedness ’twas made the nest.’
‘Had I obtained full answer to my prayer,
You had not yet been doomed,’ I then did say,80
‘This exile from humanity to bear.
For deep within my heart and memory
Lives the paternal image good and dear
Of you, as in the world, from day to day,
How men escape oblivion you made clear;
My thankfulness for which shall in my speech
While I have life, as it behoves, appear.
I note what of my future course you teach.
Stored with another text[467] it will be glozed
By one expert, should I that Lady reach.90
Yet would I have this much to you disclosed:
If but my conscience no reproaches yield,
To all my fortune is my soul composed.
Not new to me the hint by you revealed;
Therefore let Fortune turn her wheel apace,
Even as she will; the clown[468] his mattock wield.’
Thereon my Master right about[469] did face,
And uttered this, with glance upon me thrown:[Pg 112]
‘He hears[470] to purpose who doth mark the place.’
And none the less I, speaking, still go on100
With Ser Brunetto; asking him to tell
Who of his band[471] are greatest and best known.
And he to me: ‘To hear of some is well,
But of the rest ’tis fitting to be dumb,
And time is lacking all their names to spell.
That all of them were clerks, know thou in sum,
All men of letters, famous and of might;
Stained with one sin[472] all from the world are come.
Priscian[473] goes with that crowd of evil plight,
Francis d’Accorso[474] too; and hadst thou mind110
For suchlike trash thou mightest have had sight[Pg 113]
Of him the Slave[475] of Slaves to change assigned
From Arno’s banks to Bacchiglione, where
His nerves fatigued with vice he left behind.
More would I say, but neither must I fare
Nor talk at further length, for from the sand
I see new dust-clouds[476] rising in the air,
I may not keep with such as are at hand.
Care for my Treasure;[477] for I still survive
[Pg 114]
In that my work. I nothing else demand.’120
Then turned he back, and ran like those who strive
For the Green Cloth[478] upon Verona’s plain;
And seemed like him that shall the first arrive,
And not like him that labours all in vain.
Now lies, etc.: The stream on issuing from the wood flows right across the waste of sand which that encompasses. To follow it they must turn to the right, as always when, their general course being to the left, they have to cross a Circle. But such a veering to the right is a consequence of their leftward course, and not an exception to it.
[455]Cadsand: An island opposite to the mouth of the great canal of Bruges.
[456]Chiarentana: What district or mountain is here meant has been much disputed. It can be taken for Carinthia only on the supposition that Dante was ignorant of where the Brenta rises. At the source of that river stands the Monte Chiarentana, but it may be a question how old that name is. The district name of it is Canzana, or Carenzana.
[457]Not so high, etc.: This limitation is very characteristic of Dante’s style of thought, which compels him to a precision that will produce the utmost possible effect of verisimilitude in his description. Most poets would have made the walls far higher and more vast, by way of lending grandeur to the conception.
[458]Marvellous: To find Dante, whom he knew, still living, and passing through the Circle.
[459]With hand, etc.: ‘With my face bent to his’ is another reading, but there seems to be most authority for that in the text.—The fiery shower forbids Dante to stoop over the edge of the causeway. To Brunetto, who is some feet below him, he throws out his open hand, a gesture of astonishment mingled with pity.
[460]Ser Brunetto: Brunetto Latini, a Florentine, was born in 1220. As a notary he was entitled to be called Ser, or Messer. As appears from the context, Dante was under great intellectual obligations to him, not, we may suppose, as to a tutor so much as to an active-minded and scholarly friend of mature age, and possessed of a ripe experience of affairs. The social respect that Dante owed him is indicated by the use of the plural form of address. See note, Inf. x. 51. Brunetto held high appointments in the Republic. Perhaps with some exaggeration, Villani says of him that he was the first to refine the Florentines, teaching them to speak correctly, and to administer State affairs on fixed principles of politics (Cronica, viii. 10). A Guelf in politics, he shared in the exile of his party after the Ghibeline victory of Montaperti in 1260, and for some years resided in Paris. There is reason to suppose that he returned to Florence in 1269, and that he acted as prothonotary of the court of Charles of Valois’ vicar-general in Tuscany. His signature as secretary to the Council of Florence is found under the date of 1273. He died in 1294, when Dante was twenty-nine, and was buried in the cloister of Santa Maria Maggiore, where his tombstone may still be seen. (Not in Santa Maria Novella.) Villani mentions him in his Chronicle with some reluctance, seeing he was a ‘worldly man.’ His life must indeed have been vicious to the last, before Dante could have had the heart to fix him in such company. Brunetto’s chief works are the Tesoro and Tesoretto. For the Tesoro, see note at line 119. The Tesoretto, or Little Treasure, is an allegorical poem in Italian rhymed couplets. In it he imagines himself, as he is on his return from an embassy to Alphonso of Castile, meeting a scholar of Bologna of whom he asks ‘in smooth sweet words for news of Tuscany.’ Having been told of the catastrophe of Montaperti he wanders out of the beaten way into the Forest of Roncesvalles, where he meets with various experiences; he is helped by Ovid, is instructed by Ptolemy, and grows penitent for his sins. In this, it will be seen, there is a general resemblance to the action of the Comedy. There are even turns of expression that recall Dante (e.g. beginning of Cap. iv.); but all together amounts to little.
[461]Low I bent my head: But not projecting it beyond the line of safety, strictly defined by the edge of the causeway. We are to imagine to ourselves the fire of Sodom falling on Brunetto’s upturned face, and missing Dante’s head only by an inch.
[462]Yestermorn: This is still the Saturday. It was Friday when Dante met Virgil.
Guided by whom: Brunetto has asked who the guide is, and Dante does not tell him. A reason for the refusal has been ingeniously found in the fact that among the numerous citations of the Treasure Brunetto seldom quotes Virgil. See also the charge brought against Guido Cavalcanti (Inf. x. 63), of holding Virgil in disdain. But it is explanation enough of Dante’s omission to name his guide that he is passing through Inferno to gain experience for himself, and not to satisfy the curiosity of the shades he meets. See note on line 99.
[464]Thy planet’s light: Some think that Brunetto had cast Dante’s horoscope. In a remarkable passage (Parad. xxii. 112) Dante attributes any genius he may have to the influence of the Twins, which constellation was in the ascendant when he was born. See also Inf. xxvi. 23. But here it is more likely that Brunetto refers to his observation of Dante’s good qualities, from which he gathered that he was well starred.
[465]Fiesole: The mother city of Florence, to which also most of the Fiesolans were believed to have migrated at the beginning of the eleventh century. But all the Florentines did their best to establish a Roman descent for themselves; and Dante among them. His fellow-citizens he held to be for the most part of the boorish Fiesolan breed, rude and stony-hearted as the mountain in whose cleft the cradle of their race was seen from Florence.
[466]Both sides: This passage was most likely written not long after Dante had ceased to entertain any hope of winning his way back to Florence in the company of the Whites, whose exile he shared, and when he was already standing in proud isolation from Black and White, from Guelf and Ghibeline. There is nothing to show that his expectation of being courted by both sides ever came true. Never a strong partisan, he had, to use his own words, at last to make a party by himself, and stood out an Imperialist with his heart set on the triumph of an Empire far nobler than that the Ghibeline desired. Dante may have hoped to hold a place of honour some day in the council of a righteous Emperor; and this may be the glorious haven with the dream of which he was consoled in the wanderings of his exile.
[467]Another text: Ciacco and Farinata have already hinted at the troubles that lie ahead of him (Inf. vi. 65, and x. 79).
[468]The clown, etc.: The honest performance of duty is the best defence against adverse fortune.
[469]Right about: In traversing the sands they keep upon the right-hand margin of the embanked stream, Virgil leading the way, with Dante behind him on the right so that Brunetto may see and hear him well.
[470]He hears, etc.: Of all the interpretations of this somewhat obscure sentence that seems the best which applies it to Virgil’s Quicquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est—‘Whatever shall happen, every fate is to be vanquished by endurance’ (Æn. v. 710). Taking this way of it, we have in the form of Dante’s profession of indifference to all the adverse fortune that may be in store for him a refined compliment to his Guide; and in Virgil’s gesture and words an equally delicate revelation of himself to Brunetto, in which is conveyed an answer to the question at line 48, ‘Who is this that shows the way?’—Otherwise, the words convey Virgil’s approbation of Dante’s having so well attended to his advice to store Farinata’s prophecy in his memory (Inf. x.127).
[471]His band: That is, the company to which Brunetto specially belongs, and from which for the time he has separated himself.
[472]Stained with one sin: Dante will not make Brunetto individually confess his sin.
[473]Priscian: The great grammarian of the sixth century; placed here without any reason, except that he is a representative teacher of youth.
Francis d’Accorso: Died about 1294. The son of a great civil lawyer, he was himself professor of the civil law at Bologna, where his services were so highly prized that the Bolognese forbade him, on pain of the confiscation of his goods, to accept an invitation from Edward I. to go to Oxford.
[475]Of him the Slave, etc.: One of the Pope’s titles is Servus Servorum Domini. The application of it to Boniface, so hated by Dante, may be ironical: ‘Fit servant of such a slave to vice!’ The priest referred to so contemptuously is Andrea, of the great Florentine family of the Mozzi, who was much engaged in the political affairs of his time, and became Bishop of Florence in 1286. About ten years later he was translated to Vicenza, which stands on the Bacchiglione; and he died shortly afterwards. According to Benvenuto he was a ridiculous preacher and a man of dissolute manners. What is now most interesting about him is that he was Dante’s chief pastor during his early manhood, and is consigned by him to the same disgraceful circle of Inferno as his beloved master Brunetto Latini—a terrible evidence of the corruption of life among the churchmen as well as the scholars of the thirteenth century.
[476]New dust-clouds: Raised by a band by whom they are about to be met.
[477]My Treasure: The Trésor, or Tesoro, Brunetto’s principal work, was written by him in French as being ‘the pleasantest language, and the most widely spread.’ In it he treats of things in general in the encyclopedic fashion set him by Alphonso of Castile. The first half consists of a summary of civil and natural history. The second is devoted to ethics, rhetoric, and politics. To a great extent it is a compilation, containing, for instance, a translation, nearly complete, of the Ethics of Aristotle—not, of course, direct from the Greek. It is written in a plodding style, and speaks to more industry than genius. To it Dante is indebted for some facts and fables.
[478]The Green Cloth: To commemorate a victory won by the Veronese there was instituted a race to be run on the first Sunday of Lent. The prize was a piece of green cloth. The competitors ran naked.—Brunetto does not disappear into the gloom without a parting word of applause from his old pupil. Dante’s rigorous sentence on his beloved master is pronounced as softly as it can be. We must still wonder that he has the heart to bring him to such an awful judgment.
CANTO XVI.
Now could I hear the water as it fell
To the next circle[479] with a murmuring sound
Like what is heard from swarming hives to swell;
When three shades all together with a bound
Burst from a troop met by us pressing on
’Neath rain of that sharp torment. O’er the ground
Toward us approaching, they exclaimed each one:
‘Halt thou, whom from thy garb[480] we judge to be
A citizen of our corrupted town.’
Alas, what scars I on their limbs did see,10
Both old and recent, which the flames had made:
Even now my ruth is fed by memory.
My Teacher halted at their cry, and said:
‘Await a while:’ and looked me in the face;
‘Some courtesy to these were well displayed.
And but that fire—the manner of the place—
Descends for ever, fitting ’twere to find
Rather than them, thee quickening thy pace.’
When we had halted, they again combined
In their old song; and, reaching where we stood,20
Into a wheel all three were intertwined.[Pg 116]
And as the athletes used, well oiled and nude,
To feel their grip and, wary, watch their chance,
Ere they to purpose strike and wrestle could;
So each of them kept fixed on me his glance
As he wheeled round,[481] and in opposing ways
His neck and feet seemed ever to advance.
‘Ah, if the misery of this sand-strewn place
Bring us and our petitions in despite,’
One then began, ‘and flayed and grimy face;30
Let at the least our fame goodwill incite
To tell us who thou art, whose living feet
Thus through Inferno wander without fright.
For he whose footprints, as thou see’st, I beat,
Though now he goes with body peeled and nude,
More than thou thinkest, in the world was great.
The grandson was he of Gualdrada good;
He, Guidoguerra,[482] with his armèd hand
Did mighty things, and by his counsel shrewd.
The other who behind me treads the sand40
Is one whose name should on the earth be dear;
For he is Tegghiaio[483] Aldobrand.[Pg 117]
And I, who am tormented with them here,
James Rusticucci[484] was; my fierce and proud
Wife of my ruin was chief minister.’
If from the fire there had been any shroud
I should have leaped down ’mong them, nor have earned
Blame, for my Teacher sure had this allowed.
But since I should have been all baked and burned,
Terror prevailed the goodwill to restrain50
With which to clasp them in my arms I yearned.
Then I began: ‘’Twas not contempt but pain
Which your condition in my breast awoke,
Where deeply rooted it will long remain,
When this my Master words unto me spoke,
By which expectancy was in me stirred
That ye who came were honourable folk.
I of your city[485] am, and with my word[Pg 118]
Your deeds and honoured names oft to recall
Delighted, and with joy of them I heard.60
To the sweet fruits I go, and leave the gall,
As promised to me by my Escort true;
But first I to the centre down must fall.’
‘So may thy soul thy members long endue
With vital power,’ the other made reply,
‘And after thee thy fame[486] its light renew;
As thou shalt tell if worth and courtesy
Within our city as of yore remain,
Or from it have been wholly forced to fly.
For William Borsier,[487] one of yonder train,70
And but of late joined with us in this woe,
Causeth us with his words exceeding pain.’
‘Upstarts, and fortunes suddenly that grow,[Pg 119]
Have bred in thee pride and extravagance,[488]
Whence tears, O Florence! thou art shedding now.’
Thus cried I with uplifted countenance.
The three, accepting it for a reply,
Glanced each at each as hearing truth men glance.
And all: ‘If others thou shalt satisfy
As well at other times[489] at no more cost,80
Happy thus at thine ease the truth to cry!
Therefore if thou escap’st these regions lost,
Returning to behold the starlight fair,
Then when “There was I,”[490] thou shalt make thy boast,
Something of us do thou ’mong men declare.’
Then broken was the wheel, and as they fled
Their nimble legs like pinions beat the air.
So much as one Amen! had scarce been said
Quicker than what they vanished from our view.
[Pg 120]
On this once more the way my Master led.90
I followed, and ere long so near we drew
To where the water fell, that for its roar
Speech scarcely had been heard between us two.
–And as the stream which of all those which pour
East– (from Mount Viso counting) by its own
Course falls the first from Apennine to shore—
As Acquacheta[491] in the uplands known
By name, ere plunging to its bed profound;
Name lost ere by Forlì its waters run—
Above St. Benedict with one long bound,100
Where for a thousand[492] would be ample room,
Falls from the mountain to the lower ground;
Down the steep cliff that water dyed in gloom
We found to fall echoing from side to side,
Stunning the ear with its tremendous boom.
There was a cord about my middle tied,
With which I once had thought that I might hold
Secure the leopard with the painted hide.
When this from round me I had quite unrolled[Pg 121]
To him I handed it, all coiled and tight;110
As by my Leader I had first been told.
Himself then bending somewhat toward the right,[493]
He just beyond the edge of the abyss
Threw down the cord,[494] which disappeared from sight.
‘That some strange thing will follow upon this
Unwonted signal which my Master’s eye
Thus follows,’ so I thought, ‘can hardly miss.’
Ah, what great caution need we standing by[Pg 122]
Those who behold not only what is done,
But who have wit our hidden thoughts to spy!120
He said to me: ‘There shall emerge, and soon,
What I await; and quickly to thy view
That which thou dream’st of shall be clearly known.’[495]
From utterance of truth which seems untrue
A man, whene’er he can, should guard his tongue;
Lest he win blame to no transgression due.
Yet now I must speak out, and by the song
Of this my Comedy, Reader, I swear—
So in good liking may it last full long!—
I saw a shape swim upward through that air.130
All indistinct with gross obscurity,
Enough to fill the stoutest heart with fear:
Like one who rises having dived to free
An anchor grappled on a jagged stone,
Or something else deep hidden in the sea;
With feet drawn in and arms all open thrown.
The next circle: The Eighth.
[480]Thy garb: ‘Almost every city,’ says Boccaccio, ‘had in those times its peculiar fashion of dress distinct from that of neighboring cities.’
[481]As he wheeled round: Virgil and Dante have come to a halt upon the embankment. The three shades, to whom it is forbidden to be at rest for a moment, clasping one another as in a dance, keep wheeling round in circle upon the sand.
[482]Guidoguerra: A descendant of the Counts Guidi of Modigliana. Gualdrada was the daughter of Bellincion Berti de’ Ravignani, praised for his simple habits in the Paradiso, xv. 112. Guidoguerra was a Guelf leader, and after the defeat of Montaperti acted as Captain of his party, in this capacity lending valuable aid to Charles of Anjou at the battle of Benevento, 1266, when Manfred was overthrown. He had no children, and left the Commonwealth of Florence his heir.
[483]Tegghiaio: Son of Aldobrando of the Adimari. His name should be dear in Florence, because he did all he could to dissuade the citizens from the campaign which ended so disastrously at Montaperti.
[484]James Rusticucci: An accomplished cavalier of humble birth, said to have been a retainer of Dante’s friends the Cavalcanti. The commentators have little to tell of him except that he made an unhappy marriage, which is evident from the text. Of the sins of him and his companions there is nothing known beyond what is to be inferred from the poet’s words, and nothing to say, except that when Dante consigned men of their stamp, frank and amiable, to the Infernal Circles, we may be sure that he only executed a verdict already accepted as just by the whole of Florence. And when we find him impartially damning Guelf and Ghibeline we may be equally sure that he looked for the aid of neither party, and of no family however powerful in the State, to bring his banishment to a close. He would even seem to be careful to stop any hole by which he might creep back to Florence. When he did return, it was to be in the train of the Emperor, so he hoped, and as one who gives rather than seeks forgiveness.
[485]Of your city, etc.: At line 32 Rusticucci begs Dante to tell who he is. He tells that he is of their city, which they have already gathered from his berretta and the fashion of his gown; but he tells nothing, almost, of himself. Unless to Farinata, indeed, he never makes an open breast to any one met in Inferno. But here he does all that courtesy requires.
[486]Thy fame: Dante has implied in his answer that he is gifted with oratorical powers and is the object of a special Divine care; and the illustrious Florentine, frankly acknowledging the claim he makes, adjures him by the fame which is his in store to appease an eager curiosity about the Florence which even in Inferno is the first thought of every not ignoble Florentine.
[487]William Borsiere: A Florentine, witty and well bred, according to Boccaccio. Being once at Genoa he was shown a fine new palace by its miserly owner, and was asked to suggest a subject for a painting with which to adorn the hall. The subject was to be something that nobody had ever seen. Borsiere proposed liberality as something that the miser at any rate had never yet got a good sight of; an answer of which it is not easy to detect either the wit or the courtesy, but which is said to have converted the churl to liberal ways (Decam. i. 8). He is here introduced as an authority on the noble style of manners.
[488]Pride and extravagance: In place of the nobility of mind that leads to great actions, and the gentle manners that prevail in a society where there is a due subordination of rank to rank and well-defined duties for every man. This, the aristocratic in a noble sense, was Dante’s ideal of a social state; for all his instincts were those of a Florentine aristocrat, corrected though they were by his good sense and his thirst for a reign of perfect justice. During his own time he had seen Florence grow more and more democratic; and he was irritated—unreasonably, considering that it was only a sign of the general prosperity—at the spectacle of the amazing growth of wealth in the hands of low-born traders, who every year were coming more to the front and monopolising influence at home and abroad at the cost of their neighbours and rivals with longer pedigrees and shorter purses. In Paradiso xvi. Dante dwells at length on the degeneracy of the Florentines.
At other times: It is hinted that his outspokenness will not in the future always give equal satisfaction to those who hear.
[490]There was I, etc.: Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit.—Æn. i. 203.
[491]Acquacheta: The fall of the water of the brook over the lofty cliff that sinks from the Seventh to the Eighth Circle is compared to the waterfall upon the Montone at the monastery of St. Benedict, in the mountains above Forlì. The Po rises in Monte Viso. Dante here travels in imagination from Monte Viso down through Italy, and finds that all the rivers which rise on the left hand, that is, on the north-east of the Apennine, fall into the Po, till the Montone is reached, that river falling into the Adriatic by a course of its own. Above Forlì it was called Acquacheta. The Lamone, north of the Montone, now follows an independent course to the sea, having cut a new bed for itself since Dante’s time.
[492]Where for a thousand, etc.: In the monastery there was room for many more monks, say most of the commentators; or something to the like effect. Mr. Longfellow’s interpretation seems better: Where the height of the fall is so great that it would divide into a thousand falls.
[493]Toward the right: The attitude of one about to throw.
[494]The cord: The services of Geryon are wanted to convey them down the next reach of the pit; and as no voice could be heard for the noise of the waterfall, and no signal be made to catch the eye amid the gloom, Virgil is obliged to call the attention of the monster by casting some object into the depth where he lies concealed. But, since they are surrounded by solid masonry and slack sand, one or other of them must supply something fit to throw down; and the cord worn by Dante is fixed on as what can best be done without. There may be a reference to the cord of Saint Francis, which Dante, according to one of his commentators, wore when he was a young man, following in this a fashion common enough among pious laymen who had no thought of ever becoming friars. But the simile of the cord, as representing sobriety and virtuous purpose, is not strange to Dante. In Purg. vii. 114 he describes Pedro of Arragon as being girt with the cord of every virtue; and Pedro was no Franciscan. Dante’s cord may therefore be taken as standing for vigilance or self-control. With it he had hoped to get the better of the leopard (Inf. i. 32), and may have trusted in it for support as against the terrors of Inferno. But although he has been girt with it ever since he entered by the gate, it has not saved him from a single fear, far less from a single danger; and now it is cast away as useless. Henceforth, more than ever, he is to confide wholly in Virgil and have no confidence in himself. Nor is he to be girt again till he reaches the coast of Purgatory, and then it is to be with a reed, the emblem of humility.—But, however explained, the incident will always be somewhat of a puzzle.
[495]Dante attributes to Virgil full knowledge of all that is in his own mind. He thus heightens our conception of his dependence on his guide, with whose will his will is blent, and whose thoughts are always found to be anticipating his own. Few readers will care to be constantly recalling to mind that Virgil represents enlightened human reason. But even if we confine ourselves to the easiest sense of the narrative, the study of the relations between him and Dante will be found one of the most interesting suggested by the poem—perhaps only less so than that of Dante’s moods of wonder, anger, and pity.
CANTO XVII.
‘Behold the monster[496] with the pointed tail,
Who passes mountains[497] and can entrance make
Through arms and walls! who makes the whole world ail,
Corrupted by him!’ Thus my Leader spake,
And beckoned him that he should land hard by,
Where short the pathways built of marble break.
And that foul image of dishonesty
Moving approached us with his head and chest,
But to the bank[498] drew not his tail on high.[Pg 124]
His face a human righteousness expressed,10
’Twas so benignant to the outward view;
A serpent was he as to all the rest.
On both his arms hair to the arm-pits grew:
On back and chest and either flank were knot[499]
And rounded shield portrayed in various hue;
No Turk or Tartar weaver ever brought
To ground or pattern a more varied dye;[500]
Nor by Arachne[501] was such broidery wrought.
As sometimes by the shore the barges lie
Partly in water, partly on dry land;20
And as afar in gluttonous Germany,[502]
Watching their prey, alert the beavers stand;
So did this worst of brutes his foreparts fling
Upon the stony rim which hems the sand.
All of his tail in space was quivering,
Its poisoned fork erecting in the air,
Which scorpion-like was armèd with a sting.
My Leader said: ‘Now we aside must fare
A little distance, so shall we attain
Unto the beast malignant crouching there.’30
So we stepped down upon the right,[503] and then[Pg 125]
A half score steps[504] to the outer edge did pace,
Thus clearing well the sand and fiery rain.
And when we were hard by him I could trace
Upon the sand a little further on
Some people sitting near to the abyss.
‘That what this belt containeth may be known
Completely by thee,’ then the Master said;
‘To see their case do thou advance alone.
Let thy inquiries be succinctly made.40
While thou art absent I will ask of him,
With his strong shoulders to afford us aid.’
Then, all alone, I on the outmost rim
Of that Seventh Circle still advancing trod,
Where sat a woful folk.[505] Full to the brim[Pg 126]
Their eyes with anguish were, and overflowed;
Their hands moved here and there to win some ease,
Now from the flames, now from the soil which glowed.
No otherwise in summer-time one sees,
Working its muzzle and its paws, the hound50
When bit by gnats or plagued with flies or fleas.
And I, on scanning some who sat around
Of those on whom the dolorous flames alight,
Could recognise[506] not one. I only found
A purse hung from the throat of every wight,
Each with its emblem and its special hue;
And every eye seemed feasting on the sight.
As I, beholding them, among them drew,
I saw what seemed a lion’s face and mien
Upon a yellow purse designed in blue.60
Still moving on mine eyes athwart the scene
I saw another scrip, blood-red, display
A goose more white than butter could have been.
And one, on whose white wallet blazoned lay
A pregnant sow[507] in azure, to me said:
‘What dost thou in this pit? Do thou straightway
Begone; and, seeing thou art not yet dead,
Know that Vitalian,[508] neighbour once of mine,[Pg 127]
Shall on my left flank one day find his bed.
A Paduan I: all these are Florentine;70
And oft they stun me, bellowing in my ear:
“Come, Pink of Chivalry,[509] for whom we pine,
Whose is the purse on which three beaks appear:”’
Then he from mouth awry his tongue thrust out[510]
Like ox that licks its nose; and I, in fear
Lest more delay should stir in him some doubt
Who gave command I should not linger long,
Me from those wearied spirits turned about.
I found my Guide, who had already sprung
Upon the back of that fierce animal:80
He said to me: ‘Now be thou brave and strong.
By stairs like this[511] we henceforth down must fall.
Mount thou in front, for I between would sit
So thee the tail shall harm not nor appal.[Pg 128]’
Like one so close upon the shivering fit
Of quartan ague that his nails grow blue,
And seeing shade he trembles every whit,
I at the hearing of that order grew;
But his threats shamed me, as before the face
Of a brave lord his man grows valorous too.90
On the great shoulders then I took my place,
And wished to say, but could not move my tongue
As I expected: ‘Do thou me embrace!’
But he, who other times had helped me ’mong
My other perils, when ascent I made
Sustained me, and strong arms around me flung,
And, ‘Geryon, set thee now in motion!’ said;
‘Wheel widely; let thy downward flight be slow;
Think of the novel burden on thee laid.’
As from the shore a boat begins to go100
Backward at first, so now he backward pressed,
And when he found that all was clear below,
He turned his tail where earlier was his breast;
And, stretching it, he moved it like an eel,
While with his paws he drew air toward his chest.
More terror Phaëthon could hardly feel
What time he let the reins abandoned fall,
Whence Heaven was fired,[512] as still its tracts reveal;
Nor wretched Icarus, on finding all
His plumage moulting as the wax grew hot,110
While, ‘The wrong road!’ his father loud did call;
Than what I felt on finding I was brought
Where nothing was but air and emptiness;
For save the brute I could distinguish nought.[Pg 129]
He slowly, slowly swims; to the abyss
Wheeling he makes descent, as I surmise
From wind felt ’neath my feet and in my face.
Already on the right I heard arise
From out the caldron a terrific roar,[513]
Whereon I stretch my head with down-turned eyes.120
Terror of falling now oppressed me sore;
Hearing laments, and seeing fires that burned,
My thighs I tightened, trembling more and more.
Earlier I had not by the eye discerned
That we swept downward; scenes of torment now
Seemed drawing nearer wheresoe’er we turned.
And as a falcon (which long time doth go
Upon the wing, not finding lure[514] or prey),
While ‘Ha!’ the falconer cries, ‘descending so!’
Comes wearied back whence swift it soared away;130
Wheeling a hundred times upon the road,
Then, from its master far, sulks angrily:
So we, by Geryon in the deep bestowed,
Were ’neath the sheer-hewn precipice set down:
He, suddenly delivered from our load,
Like arrow from the string was swiftly gone.
> ‘The wrong road!’
The monster: Geryon, a mythical king of Spain, converted here into the symbol of fraud, and set as the guardian demon of the Eighth Circle, where the fraudulent are punished. There is nothing in the mythology to justify this account of Geryon; and it seems that Dante has created a monster to serve his purpose. Boccaccio, in his Genealogy of the Gods (Lib. i.), repeats the description of Geryon given by ‘Dante the Florentine, in his poem written in the Florentine tongue, one certainly of no little importance among poems;’ and adds that Geryon reigned in the Balearic Isles, and was used to decoy travellers with his benignant countenance, caressing words, and every kind of friendly lure, and then to murder them when asleep.
[497]Who passes mountains, etc.: Neither art nor nature affords any defence against fraud.
[498]The bank: Not that which confines the brook but the inner limit of the Seventh Circle, from which the precipice sinks sheer into the Eighth, and to which the embankment by which the travellers have crossed the sand joins itself on. Virgil has beckoned Geryon to come to that part of the bank which adjoins the end of the causeway.
[499]Knot and rounded shield: Emblems of subtle devices and subterfuges.
[500]Varied dye: Denoting the various colours of deceit.
[501]Arachne: The Lydian weaver changed into a spider by Minerva. See Purg. xii. 43.
[502]Gluttonous Germany: The habits of the German men-at-arms in Italy, odious to the temperate Italians, explains this gibe.
[503]The right: This is the second and last time that, in their course through Inferno, they turn to the right. See Inf. ix. 132. The action may possibly have a symbolical meaning, and refer to the protection against fraud which is obtained by keeping to a righteous course. But here, in fact, they have no choice, for, traversing the Inferno as they do to the left hand, they came to the right bank of the stream which traverses the fiery sands, followed it, and now, when they would leave its edge, it is from the right embankment that they have to step down, and necessarily to the right hand.
[504]A half score steps, etc.: Traversing the stone-built border which lies between the sand and the precipice. Had the brook flowed to the very edge of the Seventh Circle before tumbling down the rocky wall it is clear that they might have kept to the embankment until they were clear beyond the edge of the sand. We are therefore to figure to ourselves the water as plunging down at a point some yards, perhaps the width of the border, short of the true limit of the circle; and this is a touch of local truth, since waterfalls in time always wear out a funnel for themselves by eating back the precipice down which they tumble. It was into this funnel that Virgil flung the cord, and up it that Geryon was seen to ascend, as if by following up the course of the water he would find out who had made the signal. To keep to the narrow causeway where it ran on by the edge of this gulf would seem too full of risk.
[505]Woful folk: Usurers; those guilty of the unnatural sin of contemning the legitimate modes of human industry. They sit huddled up on the sand, close to its bound of solid masonry, from which Dante looks down on them. But that the usurers are not found only at the edge of the plain is evident from Inf. xiv. 19.
[506]Could recognise, etc.: Though most of the group prove to be from Florence Dante recognises none of them; and this denotes that nothing so surely creates a second nature in a man, in a bad sense, as setting the heart on money. So in the Fourth Circle those who, being unable to spend moderately, are always thinking of how to keep or get money are represented as ‘obscured from any recognition’ (Inf. vii. 44).
[507]A pregnant sow: The azure lion on a golden field was the arms of the Gianfigliazzi, eminent usurers of Florence; the white goose on a red ground was the arms of the Ubriachi of Florence; the azure sow, of the Scrovegni of Padua.
[508]Vitalian: A rich Paduan noble, whose palace was near that of the Scrovegni.
Pink of Chivalry: ‘Sovereign Cavalier;’ identified by his arms as Ser Giovanni Buiamonte, still alive in Florence in 1301, and if we are to judge from the text, the greatest usurer of all. A northern poet of the time would have sought his usurers in the Jewry of some town he knew, but Dante finds his among the nobles of Padua and Florence. He ironically represents them as wearing purses ornamented with their coats of arms, perhaps to hint that they pursued their dishonourable trade under shelter of their noble names—their shop signs, as it were. The whole passage may have been planned by Dante so as to afford him the opportunity of damning the still living Buiamonte without mentioning his name.
[510]His tongue thrust out: As if to say: We know well what sort of fine gentleman Buiamonte is.
[511]By stairs like this: The descent from one circle to another grows more difficult the further down they come. They appear to have found no special obstacle in the nature of the ground till they reached the bank sloping down to the Fifth Circle, the pathway down which is described as terrible (Inf. vii. 105). The descent into the Seventh Circle is made practicable, and nothing more (Inf. xii. I).
[512]Heaven was fired: As still appears in the Milky Way. In the Convito, ii. 15, Dante discusses the various explanations of what causes the brightness of that part of the heavens.
[513]A terrific roar: Of the water falling to the ground. On beginning the descent they had left the waterfall on the left hand, but Geryon, after fetching one or more great circles, passes in front of it, and then they have it on the right. There is no further mention of the waters of Phlegethon till they are found frozen in Cocytus (Inf. xxxii. 23). Philalethes suggests that they flow under the Eighth Circle.
[514]Lure: An imitation bird used in training falcons. Dante describes the sulky, slow descent of a falcon which has either lost sight of its prey, or has failed to discover where the falconer has thrown the lure. Geryon has descended thus deliberately owing to the command of Virgil.
CANTO XVIII.
Of iron colour, and composed of stone,
A place called Malebolge[515] is in Hell,
Girt by a cliff of substance like its own.
In that malignant region yawns a well[516]
Right in the centre, ample and profound;
Of which I duly will the structure tell.
The zone[517] that lies between them, then, is round—
Between the well and precipice hard and high;
Into ten vales divided is the ground.
As is the figure offered to the eye,10
Where numerous moats a castle’s towers enclose
That they the walls may better fortify;[Pg 131]
A like appearance was made here by those.
And as, again, from threshold of such place
Many a drawbridge to the outworks goes;
So ridges from the precipice’s base
Cutting athwart the moats and barriers run,
Till at the well join the extremities.[518]
From Geryon’s back when we were shaken down
’Twas here we stood, until the Poet’s feet20
Moved to the left, and I, behind, came on.
New torments on the right mine eyes did meet
With new tormentors, novel woe on woe;
With which the nearer Bolgia was replete.
Sinners, all naked, in the gulf below,
This side the middle met us; while they strode
On that side with us, but more swift did go.[519]
Even so the Romans, that the mighty crowd[Pg 132]
Across the bridge, the year of Jubilee,
Might pass with ease, ordained a rule of road[520]—30
Facing the Castle, on that side should be
The multitude which to St. Peter’s hied;
So to the Mount on this was passage free.
On the grim rocky ground, on either side,
I saw horned devils[521] armed with heavy whip
Which on the sinners from behind they plied.
Ah, how they made the wretches nimbly skip
At the first lashes; no one ever yet
But sought from the second and the third to slip.
And as I onward went, mine eyes were set40
On one of them; whereon I called in haste:
‘This one already I have surely met!’
Therefore to know him, fixedly I gazed;
And my kind Leader willingly delayed,
While for a little I my course retraced.[Pg 133]
On this the scourged one, thinking to evade
My search, his visage bent without avail,
For: ‘Thou that gazest on the ground,’ I said,
‘If these thy features tell trustworthy tale,
Venedico Caccianimico[522] thou!50
But what has brought thee to such sharp regale?’[523]
And he, ‘I tell it ’gainst my will, I trow,
But thy clear accents[524] to the old world bear
My memory, and make me all avow.
I was the man who Ghisola the fair
To serve the Marquis’ evil will led on,
Whatever[525] the uncomely tale declare.
Of Bolognese here weeping not alone
Am I; so full the place of them, to-day
’Tween Reno and Savena[526] are not known60
So many tongues that Sipa deftly say:
And if of this thou’dst know the reason why,
Think but how greedy were our hearts alway.[Pg 134]’
To him thus speaking did a demon cry:
‘Pander, begone!’ and smote him with his thong;
‘Here are no women for thy coin to buy.’
Then, with my Escort joined, I moved along.
Few steps we made until we there had come,
Where from the bank a rib of rock was flung.
With ease enough up to its top we clomb,70
And, turning on the ridge, bore to the right;[527]
And those eternal circles[528] parted from.
When we had reached where underneath the height
A passage opes, yielding the scourged a way,
My Guide bade: ‘Tarry, so to hold in sight
Those other spirits born in evil day,
Whose faces until now from thee have been
Concealed, because with ours their progress lay.’
Then from the ancient bridge by us were seen
The troop which toward us on that circuit sped,80
Chased onward, likewise, by the scourges keen.
And my good Master, ere I asked him, said:
‘That lordly one now coming hither, see,
By whom, despite of pain, no tears are shed.
What mien he still retains of majesty!
’Tis Jason, who by courage and by guile
The Colchians of the ram deprived. ’Twas he
Who on his passage by the Lemnian isle,
Where all of womankind with daring hand
[Pg 135]
Upon their males had wrought a murder vile,
With loving pledges and with speeches bland
The tender-yeared Hypsipyle betrayed,
Who had herself a fraud on others planned.
Forlorn he left her then, when pregnant made.
That is the crime condemns him to this pain;
And for Medea[529] too is vengeance paid.
Who in his manner cheat compose his train.
Of the first moat sufficient now is known,
And those who in its jaws engulfed remain.’
Already had we by the strait path gone100
To where ’tis with the second bank dovetailed—
The buttress whence a second arch is thrown.
Here heard we who in the next Bolgia wailed[530]
And puffed for breath; reverberations told
They with their open palms themselves assailed.
The sides were crusted over with a mould
Plastered upon them by foul mists that rise,
And both with eyes and nose a contest hold.
The bottom is so deep, in vain our eyes
Searched it till further up the bridge we went,110
To where the arch o’erhangs what under lies.
Ascended there, our eyes we downward bent,
And I saw people in such ordure drowned,
A very cesspool ’twas of excrement.
And while I from above am searching round,
One with a head so filth-smeared I picked out,
I knew not if ’twas lay, or tonsure-crowned.[Pg 136]
‘Why then so eager,’ asked he with a shout,
‘To stare at me of all the filthy crew?’
And I to him: ‘Because I scarce can doubt120
That formerly thee dry of hair I knew,
Alessio Interminei[531] the Lucchese;
And therefore thee I chiefly hold in view.’
Smiting his head-piece, then, his words were these:
‘’Twas flattery steeped me here; for, using such,
My tongue itself enough could never please.’
‘Now stretch thou somewhat forward, but not much,’
Thereon my Leader bade me, ‘and thine eyes
Slowly advance till they her features touch
And the dishevelled baggage recognise,130
Clawing her yonder with her nails unclean,
Now standing up, now squatting on her thighs.
’Tis harlot Thais,[532] who, when she had been
Asked by her lover, “Am I generous
And worthy thanks?” said, “Greatly so, I ween.”
Enough[533] of this place has been seen by us.’
Malebolge: Or Evil Pits; literally, Evil Pockets.
[516]A well: The Ninth and lowest Circle, to be described in Canto xxxii., etc.
[517]The zone: The Eighth Circle, in which the fraudulent of all species are punished, lies between the precipice and the Ninth Circle. A vivid picture of the enormous height of the enclosing wall has been presented to us at the close of the preceding Canto. As in the description of the Second Circle the atmosphere is represented as malignant, being murky and disturbed with tempest; so the Malebolge is called malignant too, being all of barren iron-coloured rock. In both cases the surroundings of the sinners may well be spoken of as malign, adverse to any thought of goodwill and joy.
[518]The extremities: The Malebolge consists of ten circular pits or fosses, one inside of another. The outermost lies under the precipice which falls sheer from the Seventh Circle; the innermost, and of course the smallest, runs immediately outside of the ‘Well,’ which is the Ninth Circle. The Bolgias or valleys are divided from each other by rocky banks; and, each Bolgia being at a lower level than the one that encloses it, the inside of each bank is necessarily deeper than the outside. Ribs or ridges of rock—like spokes of a wheel to the axle-tree—run from the foot of the precipice to the outer rim of the ‘Well,’ vaulting the moats at right angles with the course of them. Thus each rib takes the form of a ten-arched bridge. By one or other of these Virgil and Dante now travel towards the centre and the base of Inferno; their general course being downward, though varied by the ascent in turn of the hog-backed arches over the moats.
[519]More swift: The sinners in the First Bolgia are divided into two gangs, moving in opposite directions, the course of those on the outside being to the right, as looked at by Dante. These are the shades of panders; those in the inner current are such as seduced on their own account. Here a list of the various classes of sinners contained in the Bolgias of the Eighth Circle may be given:—
1st Bolgia—Seducers, Canto xviii.
2d ” Flatterers, ” ”
3d ” Simoniacs, ” xix.
4th ” Soothsayers, ” xx.
5th ” Barrators, ” xxi. xxii.
6th ” Hypocrites, ” xxiii.
7th ” Thieves, ” xxiv. xxv.
8th ” Evil Counsellors, ” xxvi. xxvii.
9th ” Scandal and Heresy Mongers, ” xxviii. xxix.
10th ” Falsifiers, ” xxix. xxx.
[520]A rule of road: In the year 1300 a Jubilee was held in Rome with Plenary Indulgence for all pilgrims. Villani says that while it lasted the number of strangers in Rome was never less than two hundred thousand. The bridge and castle spoken of in the text are those of St. Angelo. The Mount is probably the Janiculum.
[521]Horned devils: Here the demons are horned—terrible remembrancers to the sinner of the injured husband.
[522]Venedico Caccianimico: A Bolognese noble, brother of Ghisola, whom he inveigled into yielding herself to the Marquis of Este, lord of Ferrara. Venedico died between 1290 and 1300.
[523]Such sharp regale: ‘Such pungent sauces.’ There is here a play of words on the Salse, the name of a wild ravine outside the walls of Bologna, where the bodies of felons were thrown. Benvenuto says it used to be a taunt among boys at Bologna: Your father was pitched into the Salse.
[524]Thy clear accents: Not broken with sobs like his own and those of his companions.
[525]Whatever, etc.: Different accounts seem to have been current about the affair of Ghisola.
[526]’Tween Reno, etc.: The Reno and Savena are streams that flow past Bologna. Sipa is Bolognese for Maybe, or for Yes. So Dante describes Tuscany as the country where Si is heard (Inf. xxxiii. 80). With regard to the vices of the Bolognese, Benvenuto says: ‘Dante had studied in Bologna, and had seen and observed all these things.’
[527]To the right: This is only an apparent departure from their leftward course. Moving as they were to the left along the edge of the Bolgia, they required to turn to the right to cross the bridge that spanned it.
[528]Those eternal circles: The meaning is not clear; perhaps it only is that they have now done with the outer stream of sinners in this Bolgia, left by them engaged in endless procession round and round.
[529]Medea: When the Argonauts landed on Lemnos, they found it without any males, the women, incited by Venus, having put them all to death, with the exception of Thoas, saved by his daughter Hypsipyle. When Jason deserted her he sailed for Colchis, and with the assistance of Medea won the Golden Fleece. Medea, who accompanied him from Colchis, was in turn deserted by him.
Who in the next Bolgia wailed: The flatterers in the Second Bolgia.
[531]Alessio Interminei: Of the Great Lucchese family of the Interminelli, to which the famous Castruccio Castrucani belonged. Alessio is know to have been living in 1295. Dante may have known him personally. Benvenuto says he was so liberal of his flattery that he spent it even on menial servants.
[532]Thais: In the Eunuch of Terence, Thraso, the lover of that courtesan, asks Gnatho, their go-between, if she really sent him many thanks for the present of a slave-girl he had sent her. ‘Enormous!’ says Gnatho. It proves what great store Dante set on ancient instances when he thought this worth citing.
[533]Enough, etc.: Most readers will agree with Virgil.
CANTO XIX.
O Simon Magus![534] ye his wretched crew!
The gifts of God, ordained to be the bride
Of righteousness, ye prostitute that you
With gold and silver may be satisfied;
Therefore for you let now the trumpet[535] blow,
Seeing that ye in the Third Bolgia ’bide.
Arrived at the next tomb,[536] we to the brow
Of rock ere this had finished our ascent,
Which hangs true plumb above the pit below.
What perfect art, O Thou Omniscient,10
Is Thine in Heaven and earth and the bad world found!
How justly does Thy power its dooms invent!
The livid stone, on both banks and the ground,
I saw was full of holes on every side,
All of one size, and each of them was round.
[Pg 138]
No larger seemed they to me nor less wide
Than those within my beautiful St. John[537]
For the baptizers’ standing-place supplied;
And one of which, not many years agone,
I broke to save one drowning; and I would20
Have this for seal to undeceive men known.
Out of the mouth of each were seen protrude
A sinner’s feet, and of the legs the small
Far as the calves; the rest enveloped stood.
And set on fire were both the soles of all,
Which made their ankles wriggle with such throes
As had made ropes and withes asunder fall.
And as flame fed by unctuous matter goes[Pg 139]
Over the outer surface only spread;
So from their heels it flickered to the toes.30
‘Master, who is he, tortured more,’ I said,
‘Than are his neighbours, writhing in such woe;
And licked by flames of deeper-hearted red?’
And he: ‘If thou desirest that below
I bear thee by that bank[538] which lowest lies,
Thou from himself his sins and name shalt know.’
And I: ‘Thy wishes still for me suffice:
Thou art my Lord, and knowest I obey
Thy will; and dost my hidden thoughts surprise.’
To the fourth barrier then we made our way,40
And, to the left hand turning, downward went
Into the narrow hole-pierced cavity;
Nor the good Master caused me make descent
From off his haunch till we his hole were nigh
Who with his shanks was making such lament.
‘Whoe’er thou art, soul full of misery,
Set like a stake with lower end upcast,’
I said to him, ‘Make, if thou canst, reply.’
I like a friar[539] stood who gives the last
Shrift to a vile assassin, to his side50
Called back to win delay for him fixed fast.
‘Art thou arrived already?’ then he cried,
‘Art thou arrived already, Boniface?
By several years the prophecy[540] has lied.[Pg 140]
Art so soon wearied of the wealthy place,
For which thou didst not fear to take with guile,
Then ruin the fair Lady?’[541] Now my case
Was like to theirs who linger on, the while
They cannot comprehend what they are told,
And as befooled[542] from further speech resile.60
But Virgil bade me: ‘Speak out loud and bold,
“I am not he thou thinkest, no, not he!”’
And I made answer as by him controlled.
The spirit’s feet then twisted violently,[Pg 141]
And, sighing in a voice of deep distress,
He asked: ‘What then requirest thou of me?
If me to know thou hast such eagerness,
That thou the cliff hast therefore ventured down,
Know, the Great Mantle sometime was my dress.
I of the Bear, in sooth, was worthy son:70
As once, the Cubs to help, my purse with gain
I stuffed, myself I in this purse have stown.
Stretched out at length beneath my head remain
All the simoniacs[543] that before me went,
And flattened lie throughout the rocky vein.
I in my turn shall also make descent,
Soon as he comes who I believed thou wast,
When I asked quickly what for him was meant.
O’er me with blazing feet more time has past,
While upside down I fill the topmost room,80
Than he his crimsoned feet shall upward cast;
For after him one viler still shall come,
A Pastor from the West,[544] lawless of deed:
To cover both of us his worthy doom.[Pg 142]
A modern Jason[545] he, of whom we read
In Maccabees, whose King denied him nought:
With the French King so shall this man succeed.’
Perchance I ventured further than I ought,
But I spake to him in this measure free:
‘Ah, tell me now what money was there sought90
Of Peter by our Lord, when either key
He gave him in his guardianship to hold?
Sure He demanded nought save: “Follow me!”
Nor Peter, nor the others, asked for gold
Or silver when upon Matthias fell
The lot instead of him, the traitor-souled.
Keep then thy place, for thou art punished well,[546]
And clutch the pelf, dishonourably gained,
Which against Charles[547] made thee so proudly swell.
And, were it not that I am still restrained100
By reverence[548] for those tremendous keys,
Borne by thee while the glad world thee contained,
I would use words even heavier than these;
Seeing your avarice makes the world deplore,
Crushing the good, filling the bad with ease.
’Twas you, O Pastors, the Evangelist bore
In mind what time he saw her on the flood
Of waters set, who played with kings the whore;
Who with seven heads was born; and as she would
By the ten horns to her was service done,110
Long as her spouse[549] rejoiced in what was good.
Now gold and silver are your god alone:
What difference ’twixt the idolater and you,
Save that ye pray a hundred for his one?
Ah, Constantine,[550] how many evils grew—
Not from thy change of faith, but from the gift
Wherewith thou didst the first rich Pope endue![Pg 144]’
While I my voice continued to uplift
To such a tune, by rage or conscience stirred
Both of his soles he made to twist and shift.120
My Guide, I well believe, with pleasure heard;
Listening he stood with lips so well content
To me propounding truthful word on word.
Then round my body both his arms he bent,
And, having raised me well upon his breast,
Climbed up the path by which he made descent.
Nor was he by his burden so oppressed
But that he bore me to the bridge’s crown,
Which with the fourth joins the fifth rampart’s crest.
And lightly here he set his burden down,130
Found light by him upon the precipice,
Up which a goat uneasily had gone.
And thence another valley met mine eyes.
Simon Magus: The sin of simony consists in setting a price on the exercise of a spiritual grace or the acquisition of a spiritual office. Dante assails it at headquarters, that is, as it was practised by the Popes; and in their case it took, among other forms, that of ecclesiastical nepotism.
[535]The trumpet: Blown at the punishment of criminals, to call attention to their sentence.
[536]The next tomb: The Third Bolgia, appropriately termed a tomb, because its manner of punishment is that of a burial, as will be seen.
[537]St. John: The church of St. John’s, in Dante’s time, as now, the Baptistery of Florence. In Parad. xxv. he anticipates the day, if it should ever come, when he shall return to Florence, and in the church where he was baptized a Christian be crowned as a Poet. Down to the middle of the sixteenth century all baptisms, except in cases of urgent necessity, were celebrated in St. John’s; and, even there, only on the eves of Easter and Pentecost. For protection against the crowd, the officiating priests were provided with standing-places, circular cavities disposed around the great font. To these Dante compares the holes of this Bolgia, for the sake of introducing a defence of himself from a charge of sacrilege. Benvenuto tells that once when some boys were playing about the church one of them, to hide himself from his companions, squeezed himself into a baptizer’s standing-place, and made so tight a fit of it that he could not be rescued till Dante with his own hands plied a hammer upon the marble, and so saved the child from drowning. The presence of water in the cavity may be explained by the fact of the church’s being at that time lighted by an unglazed opening in the roof; and as baptisms were so infrequent the standing-places, situated as they were in the centre of the floor, may often have been partially flooded. It is easy to understand how bitterly Dante would resent a charge of irreverence connected with his ‘beautiful St. John’s;’ ‘that fair sheep-fold’ (Parad. xxv. 5).
[538]That bank, etc.: Of each Bolgia the inner bank is lower than the outer; the whole of Malebolge sloping towards the centre of the Inferno.
[539]Like a friar, etc.: In those times the punishment of an assassin was to be stuck head downward in a pit, and then to have earth slowly shovelled in till he was suffocated. Dante bends down, the better to hear what the sinner has to say, like a friar recalled by the felon on the pretence that he has something to add to his confession.
[540]The prophecy: ‘The writing.’ The speaker is Nicholas III., of the great Roman family of the Orsini, and Pope from 1277 to 1280; a man of remarkable bodily beauty and grace of manner, as well as of great force of character. Like many other Holy Fathers he was either a great hypocrite while on his promotion, or else he degenerated very quickly after getting himself well settled on the Papal Chair. He is said to have been the first Pope who practised simony with no attempt at concealment. Boniface VIII., whom he is waiting for to relieve him, became Pope in 1294, and died in 1303. None of the four Popes between 1280 and 1294 were simoniacs; so that Nicholas was uppermost in the hole for twenty-three years. Although ignorant of what is now passing on the earth, he can refer back to his foreknowledge of some years earlier (see Inf. x. 99) as if to a prophetic writing, and finds that according to this it is still three years too soon, it being now only 1300, for the arrival of Boniface. This is the usual explanation of the passage. To it lies the objection that foreknowledge of the present that can be referred back to is the same thing as knowledge of it, and with this the spirits in Inferno are not endowed. But Dante elsewhere shows that he finds it hard to observe the limitation. The alternative explanation, supported by the use of scritto (writing) in the text, is that Nicholas refers to some prophecy once current about his successors in Rome.
[541]The fair Lady: The Church. The guile is that shown by Boniface in getting his predecessor Celestine v. to abdicate (Inf. iii. 60).
Her spouse: In the preceding lines the vision of the Woman in the Apocalypse is applied to the corruption of the Church, represented under the figure of the seven-hilled Rome seated in honour among the nations and receiving observance from the kings of the earth till her spouse, the Pope, began to prostitute her by making merchandise of her spiritual gifts. Of the Beast there is no mention here, his qualities being attributed to the Woman.
[550]Ah, Constantine, etc.: In Dante’s time, and for some centuries later, it was believed that Constantine, on transferring the seat of empire to Byzantium, had made a gift to the Pope of rights and privileges almost equal to those of the Emperor. Rome was to be the Pope’s; and from his court in the Lateran he was to exercise supremacy over all the West. The Donation of Constantine, that is, the instrument conveying these rights, was a forgery of the Middle Ages.
CANTO XX.
Now of new torment must my verses tell,
And matter for the Twentieth Canto win
Of Lay the First,[551] which treats of souls in Hell.
Already was I eager to begin
To peer into the visible profound,[552]
Which tears of agony was bathèd in:
And I saw people in the valley round;
Like that of penitents on earth the pace
At which they weeping came, nor uttering[553] sound.
When I beheld them with more downcast gaze,[554]10
That each was strangely screwed about I learned,
Where chest is joined to chin. And thus the face[Pg 146]
Of every one round to his loins was turned;
And stepping backward[555] all were forced to go,
For nought in front could be by them discerned.
Smitten by palsy although one might show
Perhaps a shape thus twisted all awry,
I never saw, and am to think it slow.
As, Reader,[556] God may grant thou profit by
Thy reading, for thyself consider well20
If I could then preserve my visage dry
When close at hand to me was visible
Our human form so wrenched that tears, rained down
Out of the eyes, between the buttocks fell.
In very sooth I wept, leaning upon
A boss of the hard cliff, till on this wise
My Escort asked: ‘Of the other fools[557] art one?
Here piety revives as pity dies;
For who more irreligious is than he
[Pg 147]
In whom God’s judgments to regret give rise?30
Lift up, lift up thy head, and thou shalt see
Him for whom earth yawned as the Thebans saw,
All shouting meanwhile: “Whither dost thou flee,
Amphiaraüs?[558] Wherefore thus withdraw
From battle?” But he sinking found no rest
Till Minos clutched him with all-grasping claw.
Lo, how his shoulders serve him for a breast!
Because he wished to see too far before
Backward he looks, to backward course addressed.
Behold Tiresias,[559] who was changed all o’er,40
Till for a man a woman met the sight,
And not a limb its former semblance bore;
And he behoved a second time to smite
The same two twisted serpents with his wand,
Ere he again in manly plumes was dight.
With back to him, see Aruns next at hand,
Who up among the hills of Luni, where
Peasants of near Carrara till the land,
Among the dazzling marbles[560] held his lair
Within a cavern, whence could be descried50
The sea and stars of all obstruction bare.
The other one, whose flowing tresses hide
Her bosom, of the which thou seest nought,
And all whose hair falls on the further side,[Pg 148]
Was Manto;[561] who through many regions sought:
Where I was born, at last her foot she stayed.
It likes me well thou shouldst of this be taught.
When from this life her father exit made,
And Bacchus’ city had become enthralled,
She for long time through many countries strayed.60
’Neath mountains by which Germany is walled
And bounded at Tirol, a lake there lies
High in fair Italy, Benacus[562] called.
The waters of a thousand springs that rise
’Twixt Val Camonica and Garda flow
Down Pennine; and their flood this lake supplies.
And from a spot midway, if they should go
Thither, the Pastors[563] of Verona, Trent,
And Brescia might their blessings all bestow.
Peschiera,[564] with its strength for ornament,70
Facing the Brescians and the Bergamese
Lies where the bank to lower curve is bent.
And there the waters, seeking more of ease,
For in Benacus is not room for all,
Forming a river, lapse by green degrees.[Pg 149]
The river, from its very source, men call
No more Benacus—’tis as Mincio known,
Which into Po does at Governo fall.
A flat it reaches ere it far has run,
Spreading o’er which it feeds a marshy fen,80
Whence oft in summer pestilence has grown.
Wayfaring here the cruel virgin, when
She found land girdled by the marshy flood,
Untilled and uninhabited of men,
That she might ’scape all human neighbourhood
Stayed on it with her slaves, her arts to ply;
And there her empty body was bestowed.
On this the people from the country nigh
Into that place came crowding, for the spot,
Girt by the swamp, could all attack defy,90
And for the town built o’er her body sought
A name from her who made it first her seat,
Calling it Mantua, without casting lot.[565]
The dwellers in it were in number great,
Till stupid Casalodi[566] was befooled
And victimised by Pinamonte’s cheat.[Pg 150]
Hence, shouldst thou ever hear (now be thou schooled!)
Another story to my town assigned,
Let by no fraud the truth be overruled.’
And I: ‘Thy reasonings, Master, to my mind100
So cogent are, and win my faith so well,
What others say I shall black embers find.
But of this people passing onward tell,
If thou, of any, something canst declare,
For all my thoughts[567] on that intently dwell.’
And then he said: ‘The one whose bearded hair
Falls from his cheeks upon his shoulders dun,
Was, when the land of Greece[568] of males so bare
Was grown the very cradles scarce held one,
An augur;[569] he with Calchas gave the sign110
In Aulis through the first rope knife to run.
Eurypylus was he called, and in some line
Of my high Tragedy[570] is sung the same,
As thou know’st well, who mad’st it wholly thine.
That other, thin of flank, was known to fame[Pg 151]
As Michael Scott;[571] and of a verity
He knew right well the black art’s inmost game.
Guido Bonatti,[572] and Asdente see
Who mourns he ever should have parted from
His thread and leather; but too late mourns he.120
Lo the unhappy women who left loom,
Spindle, and needle that they might divine;
With herb and image[573] hastening men’s doom.
But come; for where the hemispheres confine
Cain and the Thorns[574] is falling, to alight
Underneath Seville on the ocean line.[Pg 152]
The moon was full already yesternight;
Which to recall thou shouldst be well content,
For in the wood she somewhat helped thy plight.’
Thus spake he to me while we forward went.
Lay the First: The Inferno.
[552]The visible profound: The Fourth Bolgia, where soothsayers of every kind are punished. Their sin is that of seeking to find out what God has made secret. That such discoveries of the future could be made by men, Dante seems to have had no doubt; but he regards the exercise of the power as a fraud on Providence, and also credits the adepts in the black art with ruining others by their spells (line 123).
[553]Nor uttering, etc.: They who on earth told too much are now condemned to be for ever dumb. It will be noticed that with none of them does Dante converse.
[554]More downcast gaze: Standing as he does on the crown of the arch, the nearer they come to him the more he has to decline his eyes.
[555]Stepping backward: Once they peered far into the future; now they cannot see a step before them.
[556]As, Reader, etc.: Some light may be thrown on this unusual, and, at first sight, inexplicable display of pity, by the comment of Benvenuto da Imola:—‘It is the wisest and most virtuous of men that are most subject to this mania of divination; and of this Dante is himself an instance, as is well proved by this book of his.’ Dante reminds the reader how often since the journey began he has sought to have the veil of the future lifted; and would have it understood that he was seized by a sudden misgiving as to whether he too had not overstepped the bounds of what, in that respect, is allowed and right.
[557]Of the other fools: Dante, weeping like the sinners in the Bolgia, is asked by Virgil: ‘What, art thou then one of them?’ He had been suffered, without reproof, to show pity for Francesca and Ciacco. The terrors of the Lord grow more cogent as they descend, and even pity is now forbidden.
[558]Amphiaraüs: One of the Seven Kings who besieged Thebes. He foresaw his own death, and sought by hiding to evade it; but his wife revealed his hiding-place, and he was forced to join in the siege. As he fought, a thunderbolt opened a chasm in the earth, into which he fell.
[559]Tiresias: A Theban soothsayer whose change of sex is described by Ovid (Metam. iii.).
[560]The dazzling marbles: Aruns, a Tuscan diviner, is introduced by Lucan as prophesying great events to come to pass in Rome—the Civil War and the victories of Cæsar. His haunt was the deserted city of Luna, situated on the Gulf of Spezia, and under the Carrara mountains (Phars. i. 586).
[561]Manto: A prophetess, a native of Thebes the city of Bacchus, and daughter of Tiresias.—Here begins a digression on the early history of Mantua, the native city of Virgil. In his account of the foundation of it Dante does not agree with Virgil, attributing to a Greek Manto what his master attributes to an Italian one (Æn. x. 199).
[562]Benacus: The ancient Benacus, now known as the Lake of Garda.
[563]The Pastors, etc.: About half-way down the western side of the lake a stream falls into it, one of whose banks, at its mouth, is in the diocese of Trent, and the other in that of Brescia, while the waters of the lake are in that of Verona. The three Bishops, standing together, could give a blessing each to his own diocese.
[564]Peschiera: Where the lake drains into the Mincio. It is still a great fortress.
Without casting lot; Without consulting the omens, as was usual when a city was to be named.
[566]Casalodi: Some time in the second half of the thirteenth century Alberto Casalodi was befooled out of the lordship of Mantua by Pinamonte Buonacolsi. Benvenuto tells the tale as follows:—Pinamonte was a bold, ambitious man, with a great troop of armed followers; and, the nobility being at that time in bad odour with the people at large, he persuaded the Count Albert that it would be a popular measure to banish the suspected nobles for a time. Hardly was this done when he usurped the lordship; and by expelling some of the citizens and putting others of them to death he greatly thinned the population of the city.
[567]All my thoughts, etc.: The reader’s patience is certainly abused by this digression of Virgil’s, and Dante himself seems conscious that it is somewhat ill-timed.
[568]The land of Greece, etc.: All the Greeks able to bear arms being engaged in the Trojan expedition.
[569]An augur: Eurypylus, mentioned in the Second Æneid as being employed by the Greeks to consult the oracle of Apollo regarding their return to Greece. From the auspices Calchas had found at what hour they should set sail for Troy. Eurypylus can be said only figuratively to have had to do with cutting the cable.
[570]Tragedy: The Æneid. Dante defines Comedy as being written in a style inferior to that of Tragedy, and as having a sad beginning and a happy ending (Epistle to Can Grande, 10). Elsewhere he allows the comic poet great licence in the use of common language (Vulg. El. ii. 4). By calling his own poem a Comedy he, as it were, disarms criticism.
[571]Michael Scott: Of Balwearie in Scotland, familiar to English readers through the Lay of the Last Minstrel. He flourished in the course of the thirteenth century, and made contributions to the sciences, as they were then deemed, of astrology, alchemy, and physiognomy. He acted for some time as astrologer to the Emperor Frederick II., and the tradition of his accomplishments powerfully affected the Italian imagination for a century after his death. It was remembered that the terrible Frederick, after being warned by him to beware of Florence, had died at a place called Firenzuola; and more than one Italian city preserved with fear and trembling his dark sayings regarding their fate. Villani frequently quotes his prophecies; and Boccaccio speaks of him as a great necromancer who had been in Florence. A commentary of his on Aristotle was printed at Venice in 1496. The thinness of his flanks may refer to a belief that he could make himself invisible at will.
[572]Guido Bonatti: Was a Florentine, a tiler by trade, and was living in 1282. When banished from his own city he took refuge at Forlì and became astrologer to Guido of Montefeltro (Inf. xxvii.), and was credited with helping his master to a great victory.—Asdente: A cobbler of Parma, whose prophecies were long renowned, lived in the twelfth century. He is given in the Convito (iv. 16) as an instance that a man may be very notorious without being truly noble.
[573]Herb and image: Part of the witch’s stock in trade. All that was done to a waxen image of him was suffered by the witch’s victim.
[574]Cain and the Thorns: The moon. The belief that the spots in the moon are caused by Cain standing in it with a bundle of thorns is referred to at Parad. ii. 51. Although it is now the morning of the Saturday, the ‘yesternight’ refers to the night of Thursday, when Dante found some use of the moon in the Forest. The moon is now setting on the line dividing the hemisphere of Jerusalem, in which they are, from that of the Mount of Purgatory. According to Dante’s scheme of the world, Purgatory is the true opposite of Jerusalem; and Seville is ninety degrees from Jerusalem. As it was full moon the night before last, and the moon is now setting, it is now fully an hour after sunrise. But, as has already been said, it is not possible to reconcile the astronomical indications thoroughly with one another.—Virgil serves as clock to Dante, for they can see nothing of the skies.
CANTO XXI.
Conversing still from bridge to bridge[575] we went;
But what our words I in my Comedy
Care not to tell. The top of the ascent
Holding, we halted the next pit to spy
Of Malebolge, with plaints bootless all:
There, darkness[576] full of wonder met the eye.
As the Venetians[577] in their Arsenal
Boil the tenacious pitch at winter-tide,
To caulk the ships with for repairs that call;
For then they cannot sail; and so, instead,10
One builds his bark afresh, one stops with tow
His vessel’s ribs, by many a voyage tried;[Pg 154]
One hammers at the poop, one at the prow;
Some fashion oars, and others cables twine,
And others at the jib and main sails sew:
So, not by fire, but by an art Divine,
Pitch of thick substance boiled in that low Hell,
And all the banks did as with plaster line.
I saw it, but distinguished nothing well
Except the bubbles by the boiling raised,20
Now swelling up and ceasing now to swell.
While down upon it fixedly I gazed,
‘Beware, beware!’ my Leader to me said,
And drew me thence close to him. I, amazed,
Turned sharply round, like him who has delayed,
Fain to behold the thing he ought to flee,
Then, losing nerve, grows suddenly afraid,
Nor lingers longer what there is to see;
For a black devil I beheld advance
Over the cliff behind us rapidly.30
Ah me, how fierce was he of countenance!
What bitterness he in his gesture put,
As with spread wings he o’er the ground did dance!
Upon his shoulders, prominent and acute,
Was perched a sinner[578] fast by either hip;
And him he held by tendon of the foot.
He from our bridge: ‘Ho, Malebranche![579] Grip
An Elder brought from Santa Zita’s town:[580]
Stuff him below; myself once more I slip[Pg 155]
Back to the place where lack of such is none.40
There, save Bonturo, barrates[581] every man,
And No grows Yes that money may be won.’
He shot him down, and o’er the cliff began
To run; nor unchained mastiff o’er the ground,
Chasing a robber, swifter ever ran.
The other sank, then rose with back bent round;
But from beneath the bridge the devils cried:
‘Not here the Sacred Countenance[582] is found,
One swims not here as on the Serchio’s[583] tide;[Pg 156]
So if thou wouldst not with our grapplers deal50
Do not on surface of the pitch abide.’
Then he a hundred hooks[584] was made to feel.
‘Best dance down there,’ they said the while to him,
‘Where, if thou canst, thou on the sly mayst steal.’
So scullions by the cooks are set to trim
The caldrons and with forks the pieces steep
Down in the water, that they may not swim.
And the good Master said to me: ‘Now creep
Behind a rocky splinter for a screen;
So from their knowledge thou thyself shalt keep.60
And fear not thou although with outrage keen
I be opposed, for I am well prepared,
And formerly[585] have in like contest been.’
Then passing from the bridge’s crown he fared
To the sixth bank,[586] and when thereon he stood
He needed courage doing what he dared.
In the same furious and tempestuous mood
In which the dogs upon the beggar leap,
Who, halting suddenly, seeks alms or food,
They issued forth from underneath the deep70
Vault of the bridge, with grapplers ’gainst him stretched;
But he exclaimed: ‘Aloof, and harmless keep![Pg 157]
Ere I by any of your hooks be touched,
Come one of you and to my words give ear;
And then advise you if I should be clutched.’
All cried: ‘Let Malacoda then go near;’
On which one moved, the others standing still.
He coming said: ‘What will this[587] help him here?’
‘O Malacoda, is it credible
That I am come,’ my Master then replied,80
‘Secure your opposition to repel,
Without Heaven’s will, and fate, upon my side?
Let me advance, for ’tis by Heaven’s behest
That I on this rough road another guide.’
Then was his haughty spirit so depressed,
He let his hook drop sudden to his feet,
And, ‘Strike him not!’ commanded all the rest
My Leader charged me thus: ‘Thou, from thy seat
Where ’mid the bridge’s ribs thou crouchest low,
Rejoin me now in confidence complete.’90
Whereon I to rejoin him was not slow;
And then the devils, crowding, came so near,
I feared they to their paction false might show.
So at Caprona[588] saw I footmen fear,
Spite of their treaty, when a multitude
Of foes received them, crowding front and rear.[Pg 158]
With all my body braced I closer stood
To him, my Leader, and intently eyed
The aspect of them, which was far from good.
Lowering their grapplers, ’mong themselves they cried:
‘Shall I now tickle him upon the thigh?’101
‘Yea, see thou clip him deftly,’ one replied.
The demon who in parley had drawn nigh
Unto my Leader, upon this turned round;
‘Scarmiglione, lay thy weapon by!’
He said; and then to us: ‘No way is found
Further along this cliff, because, undone,
All the sixth arch lies ruined on the ground.
But if it please you further to pass on,
Over this rocky ridge advancing climb110
To the next rib,[589] where passage may be won.
Yestreen,[590] but five hours later than this time,
Twelve hundred sixty-six years reached an end,
Since the way lost the wholeness of its prime.[Pg 159]
Thither I some of mine will straightway send
To see that none peer forth to breathe the air:
Go on with them; you they will not offend.
You, Alichin[591] and Calcabrin, prepare
To move,’ he bade; ‘Cagnazzo, thou as well;
Guiding the ten, thou, Barbariccia, fare.120
With Draghignazzo, Libicocco fell,
Fanged Ciriatto, Graffiacane too,
Set on, mad Rubicant and Farfarel:
Search on all quarters round the boiling glue.
Let these go safe, till at the bridge they be,
Which doth unbroken[592] o’er the caverns go.’
‘Alas, my Master, what is this I see?’
Said I, ‘Unguided, let us forward set,
If thou know’st how. I wish no company.
If former caution thou dost not forget,130
Dost thou not mark how each his teeth doth grind,
The while toward us their brows are full of threat?’
And he: ‘I would not fear should fill thy mind;[Pg 160]
Let them grin all they will, and all they can;
’Tis at the wretches in the pitch confined.’
They wheeled and down the left hand bank began
To march, but first each bit his tongue,[593] and passed
The signal on to him who led the van.
He answered grossly as with trumpet blast.
From bridge to bridge: They cross the barrier separating the Fourth from the Fifth Bolgia, and follow the bridge which spans the Fifth until they have reached the crown of it. We may infer that the conversation of Virgil and Dante turned on foreknowledge of the future.
[576]Darkness, etc.: The pitch with which the trench of the Bolgia is filled absorbs most of the scanty light accorded to Malebolge.
[577]The Venetians: But for this picturesque description of the old Arsenal, and a passing mention of the Rialto in one passage of the Paradiso, and of the Venetian coinage in another, it could not be gathered from the Comedy, with all its wealth of historical and geographical references, that there was such a place as Venice in the Italy of Dante. Unlike the statue of Time (Inf. xiv.), the Queen of the Adriatic had her face set eastwards. Her back was turned and her ears closed as in a proud indifference to the noise of party conflicts which filled the rest of Italy.
[578]A sinner: This is the only instance in the Inferno of the arrival of a sinner at his special place of punishment. See Inf. v. 15, note.
[579]Malebranche: Evil Claws, the name of the devils who have the sinners of this Bolgia in charge.
[580]Santa Zita’s town: Zita was a holy serving-woman of Lucca, who died some time between 1270 and 1280, and whose miracle-working body is still preserved in the church of San Frediano. Most probably, although venerated as a saint, she was not yet canonized at the time Dante writes of, and there may be a Florentine sneer hidden in the description of Lucca as her town. Even in Lucca there was some difference of opinion as to her merits, and a certain unlucky Ciappaconi was pitched into the Serchio for making fun of the popular enthusiasm about her. See Philalethes, Gött. Com. In Lucca the officials that were called Priors in Florence, were named Elders. The commentators give a name to this sinner, but it is only guesswork.
[581]Save Bonturo, barrates, etc.: It is the barrators, those who trafficked in offices and sold justice, that are punished in this Bolgia. The greatest barrator of all in Lucca, say the commentators, was this Bonturo; but there seems no proof of it, though there is of his arrogance. He was still living in 1314.
[582]The Sacred Countenance: An image in cedar wood, of Byzantine workmanship, still preserved and venerated in the cathedral of Lucca. According to the legend, it was carved from memory by Nicodemus, and after being a long time lost was found again in the eighth century by an Italian bishop travelling in Palestine. He brought it to the coast at Joppa, where it was received by a vessel without sail or oar, which, with its sacred freight, floated westwards and was next seen at the port of Luna. All efforts to approach the bark were vain, till the Bishop of Lucca descended to the seashore, and to him the vessel resigned itself and suffered him to take the image into his keeping. ‘Believe what you like of all this,’ says Benvenuto; ‘it is no article of faith.’—The sinner has come to the surface, bent as if in an attitude of prayer, when he is met by this taunt.
[583]The Serchio: The stream which flows past Lucca.
[584]A hundred hooks: So many devils with their pronged hooks were waiting to receive the victim. The punishment of the barrators bears a relation to their sins. They wrought their evil deeds under all kinds of veils and excuses, and are now themselves effectually buried out of sight. The pitch sticks as close to them as bribes ever did to their fingers. They misused wards and all subject to them, and in their turn are clawed and torn by their devilish guardians.
Formerly, etc.: On the occasion of his previous descent (Inf. ix. 22).
[586]The sixth bank: Dante remains on the crown of the arch overhanging the pitch-filled moat. Virgil descends from the bridge by the left hand to the bank on the inner side of the Fifth Bolgia.
[587]What will this, etc.: As if he said: What good will this delay do him in the long-run?
[588]At Caprona: Dante was one of the mounted militia sent by Florence in 1289 to help the Lucchese against the Pisans, and was present at the surrender by the Pisan garrison of the Castle of Caprona. Some make the reference to be to a siege of the same stronghold by the Pisans in the following year, when the Lucchese garrison, having surrendered on condition of having their lives spared, were met as they issued forth with cries of ‘Hang them! Hang them!’ But of this second siege it is only a Pisan commentator that speaks.
[589]The next rib: Malacoda informs them that the arch of rock across the Sixth Bolgia in continuation of that by which they have crossed the Fifth is in ruins, but that they will find a whole bridge if they keep to the left hand along the rocky bank on the inner edge of the pitch-filled moat. But, as appears further on, he is misleading them. It will be remembered that from the precipice enclosing the Malebolge there run more than one series of bridges or ribs into the central well of Inferno.
[590]Yestreen, etc.: This is the principal passage in the Comedy for fixing the date of the journey. It is now, according to the text, twelve hundred and sixty-six years and a day since the crucifixion. Turning to the Convito, iv. 23, we find Dante giving his reasons for believing that Jesus, at His death, had just completed His thirty-fourth year. This brings us to the date of 1300 A.D. But according to Church tradition the crucifixion happened on the 25th March, and to get thirty-four years His life must be counted from the incarnation, which was held to have taken place on the same date, namely the 25th March. It was in Dante’s time optional to reckon from the incarnation or the birth of Christ. The journey must therefore be taken to have begun on Friday the 25th March, a fortnight before the Good Friday of 1300; and, counting strictly from the incarnation, on the first day of 1301—the first day of the new century. So we find Boccaccio in his unfinished commentary saying in Inf. iii. that it will appear from Canto xxi. that Dante began his journey in MCCCI.—The hour is now five hours before that at which the earthquake happened which took place at the death of Jesus. This is held by Dante (Convito iv. 23), who professes to follow the account by Saint Luke, to have been at the sixth hour, that is, at noon; thus the time is now seven in the morning.
[591]Alichino, etc.: The names of the devils are all descriptive: Alichino, for instance, is the Swooper; but in this and the next Canto we have enough of the horrid crew without considering too closely how they are called.
[592]Unbroken: Malacoda repeats his lie.
[593]Each bit his tongue, etc.: The demons, aware of the cheat played by Malacoda, show their devilish humour by making game of Virgil and Dante.—Benvenuto is amazed that a man so involved in his own thoughts as Dante was, should have been such a close observer of low life as this passage shows him. He is sure that he laughed to himself as he wrote the Canto.
CANTO XXII.
Horsemen I’ve seen in march across the field,
Hastening to charge, or, answering muster, stand,
And sometimes too when forced their ground to yield;
I have seen skirmishers upon your land,
O Aretines![594] and those on foray sent;
With trumpet and with bell[595] to sound command
Have seen jousts run and well-fought tournament,
With drum, and signal from the castle shown,
And foreign music with familiar blent;[Pg 162]
But ne’er by blast on such a trumpet blown10
Beheld I horse or foot to motion brought,
Nor ship by star or landmark guided on.
With the ten demons moved we from the spot;
Ah, cruel company! but ‘with the good
In church, and in the tavern with the sot.’
Still to the pitch was my attention glued
Fully to see what in the Bolgia lay,
And who were in its burning mass imbrued.
As when the dolphins vaulted backs display,
Warning to mariners they should prepare20
To trim their vessel ere the storm makes way;
So, to assuage the pain he had to bear,
Some wretch would show his back above the tide,
Then swifter plunge than lightnings cleave the air.
And as the frogs close to the marsh’s side
With muzzles thrust out of the water stand,
While feet and bodies carefully they hide;
So stood the sinners upon every hand.
But on beholding Barbariccia nigh
Beneath the bubbles[596] disappeared the band.30
I saw what still my heart is shaken by:
One waiting, as it sometimes comes to pass
That one frog plunges, one at rest doth lie;
And Graffiacan, who nearest to him was,
Him upward drew, clutching his pitchy hair:
To me he bore the look an otter has.[Pg 163]
I of their names[597] ere this was well aware,
For I gave heed unto the names of all
When they at first were chosen. ‘Now prepare,
And, Rubicante, with thy talons fall40
Upon him and flay well,’ with many cries
And one consent the accursed ones did call.
I said: ‘O Master, if in any wise
Thou canst, find out who is the wretched wight
Thus at the mercy of his enemies.’
Whereon my Guide drew full within his sight,
Asking him whence he came, and he replied:
‘In kingdom of Navarre[598] I first saw light.
Me servant to a lord my mother tied;
Through her I from a scoundrel sire did spring,50
Waster of goods and of himself beside.
As servant next to Thiebault,[599] righteous king,
I set myself to ply barratorship;
And in this heat discharge my reckoning.’
And Ciriatto, close upon whose lip
On either side a boar-like tusk did stand,
Made him to feel how one of them could rip.
The mouse had stumbled on the wild cat band;
But Barbariccia locked him in embrace,
And, ‘Off while I shall hug him!’ gave command.60
Round to my Master then he turned his face:
‘Ask more of him if more thou wouldest know,
While he against their fury yet finds grace.[Pg 164]’
My Leader asked: ‘Declare now if below
The pitch ’mong all the guilty there lies here
A Latian?’[600] He replied: ‘Short while ago
From one[601] I parted who to them lived near;
And would that I might use him still for shield,
Then hook or claw I should no longer fear,’
Said Libicocco: ‘Too much grace we yield.’70
And in the sinner’s arm he fixed his hook,
And from it clean a fleshy fragment peeled.
But seeing Draghignazzo also took
Aim at his legs, the leader of the Ten
Turned swiftly round on them with angry look.
On this they were a little quieted; then
Of him who still gazed on his wound my Guide
Without delay demanded thus again:
‘Who was it whom, in coming to the side,
Thou say’st thou didst do ill to leave behind?’80
‘Gomita of Gallura,’[602] he replied,
‘A vessel full of fraud of every kind,
Who, holding in his power his master’s foes,
So used them him they bear in thankful mind;
For, taking bribes, he let slip all of those,
He says; and he in other posts did worse,
And as a chieftain ’mong barrators rose.
Don Michael Zanche[603] doth with him converse,[Pg 165]
From Logodoro, and with endless din
They gossip[604]of Sardinian characters.90
But look, ah me! how yonder one doth grin.
More would I say, but that I am afraid
He is about to claw me on the skin.’
To Farfarel the captain turned his head,
For, as about to swoop, he rolled his eye,
And, ‘Cursed hawk, preserve thy distance!’ said.
‘If ye would talk with, or would closer spy,’
The frighted wretch began once more to say,
‘Tuscans or Lombards, I will bring them nigh.
But let the Malebranche first give way,100
That of their vengeance they may not have fear,
And I to this same place where now I stay
For me, who am but one, will bring seven near
When I shall whistle as we use to do
Whenever on the surface we appear.’
On this Cagnazzo up his muzzle threw,
Shaking his head and saying: ‘Hear the cheat
He has contrived, to throw himself below.’
Then he who in devices was complete:[Pg 166]
‘Far too malicious, in good sooth,’ replied,110
‘When for my friends I plan a sorer fate.’
This, Alichin withstood not but denied
The others’ counsel,[605] saying: ‘If thou fling
Thyself hence, thee I strive not to outstride.
But o’er the pitch I’ll dart upon the wing.
Leave we the ridge,[606] and be the bank a shield;
And see if thou canst all of us outspring.’
O Reader, hear a novel trick revealed.
All to the other side turned round their eyes,
He first[607] who slowest was the boon to yield.120
In choice of time the Navarrese was wise;
Taking firm stand, himself he forward flung,
Eluding thus their hostile purposes.
Then with compunction each of them was stung,
But he the most[608] whose slackness made them fail;
Therefore he started, ‘Caught!’ upon his tongue.
But little it bested, nor could prevail
His wings ’gainst fear. Below the other went,
While he with upturned breast aloft did sail.[Pg 167]
And as the falcon, when, on its descent,130
The wild duck suddenly dives out of sight,
Returns outwitted back, and malcontent;
To be befooled filled Calcabrin with spite.
Hovering he followed, wishing in his mind
The wretch escaping should leave cause for fight.
When the barrator vanished, from behind
He on his comrade with his talons fell
And clawed him, ’bove the moat with him entwined.
The other was a spar-hawk terrible
To claw in turn; together then the two140
Plunged in the boiling pool. The heat full well
How to unlock their fierce embraces knew;
But yet they had no power[609] to rise again,
So were their wings all plastered o’er with glue.
Then Barbariccia, mourning with his train,
Caused four to fly forth to the other side
With all their grapplers. Swift their flight was ta’en.
Down to the place from either hand they glide,
Reaching their hooks to those who were limed fast,
And now beneath the scum were being fried.150
And from them thus engaged we onward passed.
O Aretines: Dante is mentioned as having taken part in the campaign of 1289 against Arezzo, in the course of which the battle of Campaldino was fought. But the text can hardly refer to what he witnessed in that campaign, as the field of it was almost confined to the Casentino, and little more than a formal entrance was made on the true Aretine territory; while the chronicles make no mention of jousts and forays. There is, however, no reason to think but that Dante was engaged in the attack made by Florence on the Ghibeline Arezzo in the early summer of the preceding year. In a few days the Florentines and their allies had taken above forty castles and strongholds, and devastated the enemy’s country far and near; and, though unable to take the capital, they held all kinds of warlike games in front of it. Dante was then twenty-three years of age, and according to the Florentine constitution of that period would, in a full muster of the militia, be required to serve as a cavalier without pay, and providing his own horse and arms.
[595]Bell: The use of the bell for martial music was common in the Italy of the thirteenth century. The great war-bell of the Florentines was carried with them into the field.
[596]Beneath the bubbles, etc.: As the barrators took toll of the administration of justice and appointment to offices, something always sticking to their palms, so now they are plunged in the pitch; and as they denied to others what should be the common blessing of justice, now they cannot so much as breathe the air without paying dearly for it to the demons.
[597]Their names: The names of all the demons. All of them urge Rubicante, the ‘mad red devil,’ to flay the victim, shining and sleek with the hot pitch, who is held fast by Graffiacane.
[598]In kingdom of Navarre, etc.: The commentators give the name of John Paul to this shade, but all that is known of him is found in the text.
[599]Thiebault: King of Navarre and second of that name. He accompanied his father-in-law, Saint Louis, to Tunis, and died on his way back, in 1270.
[600]A Latian: An Italian.
[601]From one, etc.: A Sardinian. The barrator prolongs his answer so as to procure a respite from the fangs of his tormentors.
[602]Gomita of Gallura: ‘Friar Gomita’ was high in favour with Nino Visconti (Purg. viii. 53), the lord of Gallura, one of the provinces into which Sardinia was divided under the Pisans. At last, after bearing long with him, the ‘gentle Judge Nino’ hanged Gomita for setting prisoners free for bribes.
[603]Don Michael Zanche: Enzo, King of Sardinia, married Adelasia, the lady of Logodoro, one of the four Sardinian judgedoms or provinces. Of this province Zanche, seneschal to Enzo, acquired the government during the long imprisonment of his master, or upon his death in 1273. Zanche’s daughter was married to Branca d’Oria, by whom Zanche was treacherously slain in 1275 (Inf. xxxiii. 137). There seems to be nothing extant to support the accusation implied in the text.
[604]They gossip, etc.: Zanche’s experience of Sardinia was of an earlier date than Gomita’s. It has been claimed for, or charged against, the Sardinians, that more than other men they delight in gossip touching their native country. These two, if it can be supposed that, plunged among and choked with pitch, they still cared forSardinian talk, would find material enough in the troubled history of their land. In 1300 it belonged partly to Genoa and partly to Pisa.
The others’ counsel: Alichino, confident in his own powers, is willing to risk an experiment with the sinner. The other devils count a bird in the hand worth two in the bush.
[606]The ridge: Not the crown of the great rocky barrier between the Fifth and the Sixth Bolgias, for it is not on that the devils are standing; neither are they allowed to pass over it (Inf. xxiii. 55). We are to figure them to ourselves as standing on a ledge running between the fosse and the foot of the enclosing rocky steep—a pathway continued under the bridges and all round the Bolgia for their convenience as guardians of it. The bank adjoining the pitch will serve as a screen for the sinner if the demons retire to the other side of this ledge.
[607]He first, etc.: Cagnazzo. See line 106.
[608]He the most, etc.: Alichino, whose confidence in his agility had led to the outwitting of the band.
[609]No power: The foolish ineptitude of the devils for anything beyond their special function of hooking up and flaying those who appear on the surface of the pitch, and their irrational fierce playfulness as of tiger cubs, convey a vivid impression of the limits set to their diabolical power, and at the same time heighten the sense of what Dante’s feeling of insecurity must have been while in such inhuman companionship.
CANTO XXIII.
Silent, alone, not now with company
We onward went, one first and one behind,
As Minor Friars[610] use to make their way.
On Æsop’s fable[611] wholly was my mind
Intent, by reason of that contest new—
The fable where the frog and mouse we find;
For Mo and Issa[612] are not more of hue
Than like the fable shall the fact appear,
If but considered with attention due.
And as from one thought springs the next, so here10
Out of my first arose another thought,
Until within me doubled was my fear.
For thus I judged: Seeing through us[613] were brought
[Pg 169]
Contempt upon them, hurt, and sore despite,
They needs must be to deep vexation wrought.
If anger to malevolence unite,
Then will they us more cruelly pursue
Than dog the hare which almost feels its bite.
All my hair bristled, I already knew,
With terror when I spake: ‘O Master, try20
To hide us quick’ (and back I turned to view
What lay behind), ‘for me they terrify,
These Malebranche following us; from dread
I almost fancy I can feel them nigh.’
And he: ‘Were I a mirror backed with lead
I should no truer glass that form of thine,
Than all thy thought by mine is answered.
For even now thy thoughts accord with mine,
Alike in drift and featured with one face;
And to suggest one counsel they combine.30
If the right bank slope downward at this place,
To the next Bolgia[614] offering us a way,
Swiftly shall we evade the imagined chase.’
Ere he completely could his purpose say,
I saw them with their wings extended wide,
Close on us; as of us to make their prey.
Then quickly was I snatched up by my Guide:
Even as a mother when, awaked by cries,
She sees the flames are kindling at her side,
Delaying not, seizes her child and flies;40
Careful for him her proper danger mocks,
Nor even with one poor shift herself supplies.[Pg 170]
And he, stretched out upon the flinty rocks,
Himself unto the precipice resigned
Which one side of the other Bolgia blocks.
I stood, and saw two manifesting great
Desire to join me, by their countenance;
But their loads hampered them and passage strait.[618][Pg 172]
And, when arrived, me with an eye askance[619]
They gazed on long time, but no word they spoke;
Then, to each other turned, held thus parlance:
‘His heaving throat[620] proves him of living folk.
If they are of the dead, how could they gain
To walk uncovered by the heavy cloak?’90
Then to me: ‘Tuscan, who dost now attain
To the college of the hypocrites forlorn,
To tell us who thou art show no disdain.’
And I to them: ‘I was both bred and born
In the great city by fair Arno’s stream,
And wear the body I have always worn.
But who are ye, whose suffering supreme
Makes tears, as I behold, to flood the cheek;
And what your mode of pain that thus doth gleam?’
‘Ah me, the yellow mantles,’ one to speak100
Began, ‘are all of lead so thick, its weight
Maketh the scales after this manner creak.
We, Merry Friars[621] of Bologna’s state,
I Catalano, Loderingo he,
Were by thy town together designate,[Pg 173]
As for the most part one is used to be,
To keep the peace within it; and around
Gardingo,[622] what we were men still may see.’
I made beginning: ‘Friars, your profound—’
But said no more, on suddenly seeing there110
One crucified by three stakes to the ground,
Who, when he saw me, writhed as in despair,
Breathing into his beard with heavy sigh.
And Friar Catalan, of this aware,
Said: ‘He thus fixed, on whom thou turn’st thine eye,
Counselled the Pharisees that it behoved
One man as victim[623] for the folk should die.
Naked, thou seest, he lies, and ne’er removed[Pg 174]
From where, set ’cross the path, by him the weight
Of every one that passes by is proved.120
And his wife’s father shares an equal fate,
With others of the Council, in this fosse;
For to the Jews they proved seed reprobate.’
Meanwhile at him thus stretched upon the cross
Virgil,[624] I saw, displayed astonishment—
At his mean exile and eternal loss.
And then this question to the Friars he sent:
‘Be not displeased, but, if ye may, avow
If on the right[625] hand there lies any vent
By which we, both of us,[626] from hence may go,130
Nor need the black angelic company
To come to help us from this valley low.’
‘Nearer than what thou think’st,’ he made reply,
‘A rib there runs from the encircling wall,[627]
The cruel vales in turn o’erarching high;
Save that at this ’tis rent and ruined all.
Ye can climb upward o’er the shattered heap
Where down the side the piled-up fragments fall.’
His head bent down a while my Guide did keep,
Then said: ‘He warned us[628] in imperfect wise,140
Who sinners with his hook doth clutch and steep.[Pg 175]’
The Friar: ‘At Bologna[629] many a vice
I heard the Devil charged with, and among
The rest that, false, he father is of lies.’
Then onward moved my Guide with paces long,
And some slight shade of anger on his face.
I with him parted from the burdened throng,
Stepping where those dear feet had left their trace.
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