In that part of the young year when the sun tempers his locks beneath

Aquarius,[1] and now the nights decrease toward half the day,[2] when

the hoar frost copies on the ground the image of her white sister,[3]

but the point of her pen lasts little while, the rustic, whose

provision fails “gets up and sees the plain all whitened o’er, whereat

he strikes his thigh, returns indoors, and grumbles here and there,

like the poor wretch who knows not what to do; again goes out and picks

up hope again, seeing the world to have changed face in short while,

and takes his crook and drives forth his flock to pasture”: in like

manner the Master made me dismayed, when I saw his front so disturbed,

and in like manner speedily arrived the plaster for the hurt. For when

we came to the ruined bridge, the Leader turned to me with that sweet

look which I first saw at the foot of the mount.[4] He opened his arms,

after some counsel taken with himself, looking first well at the ruin,

and laid hold of me. And as one who acts and considers, who seems

always to be ready beforehand, so lifting me up toward the top of a

great rock, he took note of another splinter, saying, “Seize hold next

on that, but try first if it is such that it may support thee.” It was

no way for one clothed in a cloak, for we with difficulty, he light and

I pushed up, could mount from jag to jag. And had it not been that on

that precinct the bank was shorter than on the other side, I do not

know about him, but I should have been completely overcome. But because

all Malebolge slopes toward the opening of the lowest abyss, the site

of each valley is such that one side rises and the other sinks.[5] We

came, however, at length, up to the point where the last stone is

broken off. The breath was so milked from my lungs when I was up that I

could no farther, but sat me down on first arrival.

[1] Toward the end of winter.

[2] Half of the twenty-four hours.

[3] The frost copies the look of the snow, but her pen soon loses its

cut, that is, the white frost soon vanishes.

[4] The hill of the first Canto, at the foot of which Virgil had

appeared to Dante.

[5] The level of the whole circle slopes toward the central deep, so

that the inner side of each pit is of less height than the outer.

“Now it behoves thee thus to put off sloth,” said the Master, “for,

sitting upon down or under quilt, one attains not fame, without which

he who consumes his life leaves of himself such trace on earth as smoke

in air, or in water the foam. And therefore rise up, conquer the

exhaustion with the spirit that conquers every battle, if by its heavy

body it be not dragged down. A longer stairway needs must be ascended;

it is not enough from these to have departed; if thou understandest me,

now act so that it avail thee.” Then I rose up, showing myself

furnished better with breath than I felt, and said, “Go on, for I am

strong and resolute.”

Up along the crag we took the way, which was rugged, narrow, and

difficult, and far steeper than the one before. I was going along

speaking in order not to seem breathless, and a voice, unsuitable for

forming words, came out from the next ditch. I know not what it said,

though I was already upon the back of the arch that crosses here; but

he who was speaking seemed moved to anger. I had turned downwards, but

living eyes could not go to the bottom, because of the obscurity.

Wherefore I said, “Master, see that thou go on to the next girth, and

let us descend the wall, for as from hence I hear and do not

understand, so I look down and shape out nothing.” “Other reply,” he

said, “I give thee not than doing, for an honest request ought to be

followed by the deed in silence.”

We descended the bridge at its head, where it joins on with the eighth

bank, and then the pit was apparent to me. And I saw therewithin a

terrible heap of serpents, and of such hideous look that the memory

still curdles my blood. Let Libya with her sand vaunt herself no more;

for though she brings forth chelydri, jaculi, and phareae, and cenchri

with amphisboena, she never, with all Ethiopia, nor with the land that

lies on the Red Sea, showed either so many plagues or so evil.

Amid this cruel and most dismal store were running people naked and in

terror, without hope of hole or heliotrope.[1] They had their hands

tied behind with serpents, which fixed through the reins their tail and

their head, and were knotted up in front.

[1] A precious stone, of green color, spotted with red, supposed to

make its wearer invisible.

And lo! at one, who was on our side, darted a serpent that transfixed

him there where the neck is knotted to the shoulders. Nor _O_ nor _I_

was ever so quickly written as he took fire and burned, and all ashes

it behoved him to become in falling. And when upon the ground he lay

thus destroyed, the dust drew together of itself, and into that same

one instantly returned. Thus by the great sages it is affirmed that the

Phoenix dies, and then is reborn when to her five hundredth year she

draws nigh. Nor herb nor grain she feeds on in her life, but only on

tears of incense and on balsam, and nard and myrrh are her last

winding-sheet.

And as he who falls and knows not how, by force of demon that drags him

to ground, or of other attack that seizeth the man; when he arises and

around him gazes, all bewildered by the great anguish that he has

suffered, and in looking sighs, such was that sinner after he had

risen. Oh power of God! how just thou art that showerest down such

blows for vengeance!

The Leader asked him then who he was; whereon he answered, “I rained

from Tuscany short time ago into this fell gullet. Bestial life, and

not human, pleased me, like a mule that I was. I am Vanni Fucci, beast,

and Pistoia was my fitting den.” And I to my Leader, “Tell him not to

budge, and ask what sin thrust him down here, for I have seen him a man

of blood and rages.” And the sinner who heard dissembled not, but

directed toward me his mind and his face, and was painted with dismal

shame. Then he said, “More it grieves me, that thou hast caught me in

the misery where thou seest me, than when I was taken from the other

life. I cannot refuse that which thou demandest. I am put so far down

because I was robber of the sacristy with the fair furnishings, and

falsely hitherto has it been ascribed to another.[1] But that thou

enjoy not this sight, if ever thou shalt be forth of these dark places,

open thine ears to my announcement and hear.[2] Pistoia first strips

itself of the Black, then Florence renovates her people and her

customs. Mars draws a flame from Val di Magra wrapped in turbid clouds,

and with impetuous and bitter storm shall it be opposed upon Campo

Piceno, where it shall suddenly rend the mist, so that every White

shall thereby be smitten. And this have I said because it must grieve

thee.”

[1] Vanni Fucci robbed the rich sacristy of the Church of St. James,

the cathedral of Pistoia. Suspicion of the crime fell upon others, who,

though innocent, were put to torture and hung for it.

[2] The following verses refer under their dark imagery to the two

parties, the Black and the White, introduced from Pistoia, by which

Florence was divided in the early years of the fourteenth century, and

to their fightings. The prophecy is dismal to Dante, because it was

with the Whites, whose overthrow Vanni Fucci foretells, that his own

fortunes were linked.

CANTO XXV.

Eighth Circle: seventh pit: fraudulent thieves.—Cacus.—Agnel

Brunelleschi and others.

At the end of his words the thief raised his hands with both the

figs,[1] crying, “Take that, God! for at thee I square them.”

Thenceforth the serpents were my friends, for then one coiled around

his neck, as if it said, “I will not that thou say more,” and another

round his arms and bound them up anew, clinching itself so in front

that he could not give a shake with them. Ah Pistoia! Pistoia! why dost

thou not decree to make ashes of thyself, so that thou mayest last no

longer, since in evil-doing thou surpassest thine own seed?[2] Through

all the dark circles of Hell I saw no spirit against God so proud, not

he who fell at Thebes down from the walls.[3] He fled away and spake no

word more.

[1] A vulgar mode of contemptuous defiance, thrusting out the fist with

the thumb between the first and middle finger.

[2] According to tradition, Pistoia was settled by the followers of

Catiline who escaped after his defeat.

[3] Capaneus; see Canto xiv.

And I saw a Centaur full of rage come crying out, “Where is, where is

that obdurate one?” I do not think Maremma has so many snakes as he had

upon his croup up to where our semblance begins. On his shoulders

behind the nape a dragon with open wings was lying upon him, and it

sets on fire whomsoever it encounters. My Master said, “This is Cacus,

who beneath the rock of Mount Aventine made oftentimes a lake of blood.

He goes not on one road with his brothers because of the fraudulent

theft he committed of the great herd that was in his neighborhood;

wherefor his crooked deeds ceased under the club of Hercules, who

perhaps dealt him a hundred blows with it, and he felt not ten.”

While he was so speaking, and that one had run by, lo! three spirits

came below us, of whom neither I nor my Leader was aware till when they

cried out, “Who are ye?” whereon our story stopped, and we then

attended only unto them. I did not recognize them, but it happened, as

it is wont to happen by chance, that one must needs name the other,

saying, “Cianfa, where can he have stayed?” Whereupon I, in order that

the Leader should attend, put my finger upward from my chin to my nose.

If thou art now, Reader, slow to credit that which I shall tell, it

will not be a marvel, for I who saw it hardly admit it to myself. As I

was holding my brow raised upon them, lo! a serpent with six feet darts

in front of one, and grapples close to him. With his middle feet he

clasped his paunch, and with his forward took his arms, then struck his

fangs in one and the other cheek. His hinder feet he stretched upon the

thighs, and put his tail between the two, and behind bent it up along

the reins. Ivy was never so bearded to a tree, as the horrible beast

through the other’s limbs entwined his own. Then they stuck together as

if they had been of hot wax, and mingled their color; nor one nor the

other seemed now that which it was; even as before the flame, up along

the paper a dark color proceeds which is not yet black, and the white

dies away. The other two were looking on, and each cried, “O me!

Agnello, how thou changest! Lo, now thou art neither two nor one! Now

were the two heads become one, when there appeared to us two

countenances mixed in one face wherein the two were lost. Of four[1]

strips the two arms were made; the thighs with the legs, the belly and

the chest became members that were never seen before. Each original

aspect there was cancelled; both and neither the perverse image

appeared, and such it went away with slow step.

[1] The two fore feet of the dragon and the two arms of the man were

melted into two strange arms.

As the lizard under the great scourge of the dog days, changing from

hedge to hedge, seems a flash, if it crosses the way, so seemed, coming

toward the belly of the two others, a little fiery serpent, livid, and

black as a grain of pepper. And that part whereby our nourishment is

first taken it transfixed in one of them, then fell down stretched out

before him. The transfixed one gazed at it, but said nothing; nay

rather, with feet fixed, he yawned even as if sleep or fever had

assailed him. He looked at the serpent, and that at him; one through

his wound, the other through his mouth, smoked violently, and their

smoke met. Let Lucan henceforth be silent, where he tells of the

wretched Sabellus, and of Nasidius, and wait to hear that which now is

uttered. Let Ovid be silent concerning Cadmus and Arethusa, for if,

poetizing, he converts him into a serpent and her into a fountain, I

envy him not; for two natures front to front never did he transmute, so

that both the forms were prompt to exchange their matter. To one

another they responded by such rules, that the serpent made his tail

into a fork, and the wounded one drew together his feet. The legs and

the very thighs with them so stuck together, that in short while the

juncture made no sign that was apparent. The cleft tail took on the

shape that was lost there, and its skin became soft, and that of the

other hard. I saw the arms draw in through the armpits, and the two

feet of the beast which were short lengthen out in proportion as those

shortened. Then the hinder feet, twisted together, became the member

that man conceals, and the wretched one from his had two[1] stretched

forth.

[1] Hinder feet.

While the smoke is veiling both with a new color, and generates hair on

the one, and from the other strips it, one rose up, and the other fell

down, not however turning aside their pitiless lights,[1] beneath which

each was changing his visage. He who was erect drew his in toward the

temples, and, from the excess of material that came in there, issued

the ears on the smooth cheeks; that which did not run backwards but was

retained, of its superfluity made a nose for the face, and thickened

the lips so far as was needful. He who was lying down drives his muzzle

forward, and draws in his ears through his skull, as the snail doth his

horns. And his tongue, which erst was united and fit for speech,

cleaves itself, and the forked one of the other closes up; and the

smoke stops. The soul that had become a brute fled hissing along the

valley, and behind him the other speaking spits. Then he turned upon

him his new shoulders, and said to the other,[2] “I will that Buoso[3]

run, as I have done, groveling along this path.”

[1] Glaring steadily at each other.

[2] The third of the three spirits, the only one unchanged.

[3] Buoso is he who has become a snake.

Thus I saw the seventh ballast[1] change and rechange, and here let the

novelty be my excuse, if my pen straggle[2] a little. And although my

eyes were somewhat confused, and my mind bewildered, those could not

flee away so covertly but that I clearly distinguished Puccio

Sciancato, and he it was who alone, of the three companions that had

first come, was not changed; the other[3] was he whom thou, Gaville,

weepest.

[1] The ballast,—the sinners in the seventh bolgia.

[2] Run into unusual detail.

[3] One Francesco Guerelo de’ Cavalcanti, who was slain by men of the

little Florentine town of Gaville, and for whose death cruel vengeance

was taken. The three who had first come were the three Florentine

thieves, Agnello, Buoso, and Puccio. Cianfa Donati had then appeared as

the serpent with six feet, and had been incorporated with Agnello.

Lastly came Guercio Cavalcanti as a little snake, and changed form with

Buoso.

CANTO XXVI.

Eighth Circle: eighth pit fraudulent counselors.—Ulysses and Diomed.

Rejoice, Florence, since thou art so great that over sea and land thou

beatest thy wings, and thy name is spread through Hell. Among the

thieves I found five such, thy citizens, whereat shame comes to me, and

thou unto great honor risest not thereby. But, if near the morning one

dreams the truth, thou shalt feel within little time what Prato, as

well as others, craves for thee.[1] And if now it were, it would not be

too soon. Would that it were so! since surely it must be; for the more

it will weigh on me the more I age.

[1] If that which I foresee is not a vain dream, the calamities which

thine enemies crave for thee will soon be felt.

We departed thence, and up along the stairs that the bourns[1] had made

for our descent before, my Leader remounted and dragged me. And

pursuing the solitary way mid the splinters and rocks of the crag, the

foot without the hand sped not. Then I grieved, and now I grieve again

when I direct my mind to what I saw; and I curb my genius more than I

am wont, that it may not run unless virtue guide it; so that if a good

star, or better thing, has given me of good, I may not grudge it to

myself.

[1] The projections of the rocky wall.

As the rustic who rests him on the bill in the season when he that

brightens the world keepeth his face least hidden from us, what time

the fly yieldeth to the gnat,[1] sees many fireflies down in the

valley, perhaps there where he makes his vintage and ploughs,—with as

many flames all the eighth pit was resplendent, as I perceived soon as

I was there where the bottom became apparent. And as he[2] who was

avenged by the bears saw the chariot of Elijah at its departure, when

the horses rose erect to heaven, and could not so follow it with his

eyes as to see aught save the flame alone, even as a little cloud,

mounting upward: thus each[3] was moving through the gulley of the

ditch, for not one shows its theft, and every flame steals away a

sinner.[4]

[1] That is, in the summer twilight. Elisha.

[2] Kings ii. 9-24.

[3] Of those flames.

[4] Within each flame a sinner was concealed.

I was standing on the bridge, risen up to look, so that if I had not

taken hold of a rock I should have fallen below without being pushed.

And the Leader, who saw me thus attent, said, “Within these fires are

the spirits; each is swathed by that wherewith he is enkindled.” “My

Master,” I replied, “by hearing thee am I more certain, but already I

deemed that it was so, and already I wished to say to thee, Who is in

that fire that cometh so divided at its top that it seems to rise from

the pyre on which Eteocles was put with his brother?”[1] He answered

me, “There within are tormented Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together

they go in punishment, as of old in wrath.[2] And within their flame

they groan for the ambush of the horse that made the gate, whence the

gentle seed of the Romans issued forth. Within it they lament for the

artifice whereby the dead Deidamia still mourns for Achilles, and there

for the Palladium they bear the penalty.” “If they can speak within

those sparkles,” said I, “Master, much I pray thee, and repray that the

prayer avail a thousand, that thou make not to me denial of waiting

till the horned flame come hither; thou seest that with desire I bend

me toward it.” And he to me, “Thy prayer is worthy of much praise, and

therefore I accept it, but take heed that thy tongue restrain itself.

Leave speech to me, for I have conceived what thou wishest, for,

because they are Greeks, they would be shy, perchance, of thy

words.”[3]

[1] Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Oedipus and Jocaste, who,

contending at the siege of Thebes, slew each other. Such was their

mutual hate that, when their bodies were burned on the same funeral

pile, the flames divided in two.

—ezundant diviso vertice flammae

Alternosque apices abrupta luce coruscant.

Statius, Thebaid, xii, 431-2.

[2] Against the Trojans. It was through the stratagem of the wooden

horse that Troy was destroyed, and Aeneas thus compelled to lead forth

his followers who became the seed of the Romans. Deidamia was the wife

of Achilles, who slew herself for grief at his desertion and departure

for Troy, which had been brought about by the deceit of Ulysses and

Diomed. The Palladium was the statue of Athena, on which the safety of

Troy depended, stolen by the two heroes.

[3] The ancient heroes might be averse to talking with a man of the

strange modern world.

When the flame had come there where it seemed to my Leader time and

place, in this form I heard him speak to it: “O ye who are two within

one fire, if I deserved of you while I lived, if I deserved of you much

or little, when in the world I wrote the lofty verses, move not, but

let one of you tell us, where, having lost himself, he went away to

die.” The greater horn of the ancient flame began to waver, murmuring,

even as a flame that the wind wearies. Then moving its tip hither and

thither, as it had been the tongue that would speak, it cast forth a

voice, and said,—

“When I departed from Circe, who had retained me more than a year there

near to Gaeta, before Aeneas had so named it, neither fondness for my

son, nor piety for my old father, nor the due love that should have

made Penelope glad, could overcome within me the ardor that I had to

gain experience of the world, and of the vices of men, and of their

valor. But I put forth on the deep, open sea, with one vessel only, and

with that little company by which I had not been deserted. One shore

and the other[1] I saw as far as Spain, far as Morocco and the island

of Sardinia, and the rest which that sea bathes round about. I and my

companions were old and slow when we came to that narrow strait where

Hercules set up his bounds, to the end that man may not put out

beyond.[2] On the right hand I left Seville, on the other already I had

left Ceuta. ‘O brothers,’ said I, ‘who through a hundred thousand

perils have reached the West, to this so little vigil of your senses

that remains be ye unwilling to deny, the experience, following the

sun, of the world that hath no people. Consider ye your origin; ye were

not made to live as brutes, but for pursuit of virtue and of

knowledge.’ With this little speech I made my companions so eager for

the road that hardly afterwards could I have held them back. And

turning our stern to the morning, with our oars we made wings for the

mad flight, always gaining on the left hand side. The night saw now all

the stars of the other pole, and ours so low that it rose not forth

from the ocean floor. Five times rekindled and as many quenched was the

light beneath the moon, since we had entered on the deep pass, when

there appeared to us a mountain dim through the distance, and it

appeared to me so high as I had not seen any. We rejoiced thereat, and

soon it turned to lamentation, for from the strange land a whirlwind

rose, and struck the fore part of the vessel. Three times it made her

whirl with all the waters, the fourth it made her stern lift up, and

the prow go down, as pleased Another, till the sea had closed over us.”

[1] Of the Mediterranean.

[2] Piu oltre non; the famous Ne plus ultra, adopted as his motto by

Charles V.

CANTO XXVII.

Eighth Circle: eighth pit fraudulent counselors.—Guido da Montefeltro.

Now was the flame erect and quiet, through not speaking more, and now

was going from us, with the permission of the sweet poet, when another

that was coming behind it made us turn our eyes to its tip, by a

confused sound that issued forth therefrom. As the Sicilian

bull[1]—that bellowed first with the plaint of him (and that was right)

who had shaped it with his file—was wont to bellow with the voice of

the sufferer, so that, although it was of brass, yet it appeared

transfixed with pain, thus, through not at first having way or outlet

from the fire, the disconsolate words were converted into its language.

But when they had taken their course up through the point, giving it

that vibration which the tongue had given in their passage, we heard

say, “O thou, to whom I direct my voice, thou that wast just speaking

Lombard,[2] saying, ‘Now go thy way, no more I urge thee,’ although I

may have arrived perchance somewhat late, let it not irk thee to stop

to speak with me, behold, it irks not me, and I am burning. If thou but

now into this blind world art fallen from that sweet Italian land

whence I bring all my sin, tell me if the Romagnuoli have peace or war;

for I was from the mountains there between Urbino and the chain from

which Tiber is unlocked.”[3]

[1] The brazen bull of Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum, made to hold

criminals to be burned within it. Perillus, its inventor, was the first

to suffer. So these sinners are wrapped in the flames which their

fraudulent counsels had prepared for them.

[2] Lombard, because the words were those of Virgil, whose “parents

were Lombards,” and in speaking he had used a form peculiar to the

Lombard dialect.

[3] It is the spirit of the Ghibelline count, Guido da Montefeltro, a

famous freebooting captain, who speaks.

I was still downward attent and leaning over when my Leader touched me

on the side, saying, “Speak thou, this is an Italian.” And I, who even

now had my answer ready, without delay began to speak, “O soul, that

art hidden there below, thy Romagna is not, and never was, without war

in the hearts of her tyrants, but open war none have I left there now.

Ravenna is as it hath been for many years; the eagle of Polenta[1] is

brooding there, so that he covers Cervia with his wings. The city[2]

that made erewhile the long struggle, and of the French a bloody heap,

finds itself again beneath the green paws. And the old mastiff and the

new of Verrucchio,[3] who made the ill disposal of Montagna, make an

anger of their teeth there where they are wont. The little lion of the

white lair[4] governs the city of Lamone and of Santerno, and changes

side from summer to winter. And she[5] whose flank the Savio bathes,

even as she sits between the plain and the mountain, lives between

tyranny and a free state. Now who thou art, I pray thee that thou tell

us; be not harder than another hath been,[6] so may thy name in the

world hold front.”

[1] Guido Novello da Polenta had been lord of Ravenna since 1275. He

was father of Francesca da Rimini, and a friend of Dante. His shield

bore an eagle, gules, on a field, or. Cervia is a small town on the

coast, not far from Ravenna.

[2] Forli, where in 1282 Guido da Montefeltro had defeated, with great

slaughter, a troop, largely of French soldiers, sent against him by

Pope Martin III. It was now ruled by the Ordelaffi, whose shield, party

per fess, bore on its upper half, or, a demilion, vert.

[3] Malatesta, father and son, rulers of Rimini; father and brother of

the husband and of the lover of Francesca da Rimim. They had cruelly

put to death Montagna di Parcitade, the head of the Ghibellines of

Rimini; and they ruled as tyrants, sucking the blood of their subjects.

[4] This is Maghinardo da Susinana, who bore a lion azure on a field

argent.

[5] The city of Cesena.

[6] Refuse not to answer me as I have answered thee.

After the fire had somewhat roared according to its fashion, the sharp

point moved this way and that, and then gave forth this breath: “If I

could believe that my answer might be to a person who should ever

return unto the world, this flame would stand without more quiverings;

but inasmuch as, if I hear truth, never from this depth did any living

man return, without fear of infamy I answer thee.

“I was a man of arms, and then became a cordelier, trusting, thus girt,

to make amends; and surely my trust had been fulfilled but for the

Great Priest,[1] whom may ill betide! who set me back into my first

sins; and how and wherefore, I will that thou hear from me. While I was

that form of bone and flesh that my mother gave me, my works were not

leonine, but of the fox. The wily practices, and the covert ways, I

knew them all, and I so plied their art that to the earth’s end the

sound went forth. When I saw me arrived at that part of my age where

every one ought to strike the sails and to coil up the ropes, what erst

was pleasing to me then gave me pain, and I yielded me repentant and

confessed. Alas me wretched! and it would have availed. The Prince of

the new Pharisees having war near the Lateran,[2]—and not with Saracens

nor with Jews, for every enemy of his was Christian, and none of them

had been to conquer Acre,[3] nor a trafficker in the land of the

Soldan,—regarded in himself neither his supreme office, nor the holy

orders, nor in me that cord which is wont to make those girt with it

more lean; but as Constantine besought Sylvester within Soracte to cure

his leprosy,[4] so this one besought me as master to cure his proud

fever. He asked counsel of me, and I kept silence, because his words

seemed drunken. And then he said to me, ‘Let not thy heart mistrust;

from now I absolve thee, and do thou teach me to act so that I may

throw Palestrina to the ground. Heaven can I lock and unlock, as thou

knowest; for two are the keys that my predecessor held not dear.’ Then

his grave arguments pushed me to where silence seemed to me the worst,

and I said, ‘Father, since thou washest me of that sin wherein I now

must fall, long promise with short keeping will make thee triumph on

the High Seat.’ Francis[5] came for me afterwards, when I was dead, but

one of the Black Cherubim said to him, ‘Bear him not away; do me not

wrong; he must come down among my drudges because he gave the

fraudulent counsel, since which till now I have been at his hair; for

he who repents not cannot be absolved, nor can repentance and will

exist together, because of the contradiction that allows it not.’ O

woeful me! how I shuddered when he took me, saying to me, ‘Perhaps thou

didst not think that I was a logician.’ To Minos he bore me; and he

twined his tail eight times round his hard back, and, after he had

bitten it in great rage, he said, ‘This is one of the sinners of the

thievish fire.’ Therefore I, where thou seest, am lost, and going thus

robed I rankle.” When he had thus completed his speech the flame,

sorrowing, departed, twisting and flapping its sharp horn.

[1] Boniface VIII.

[2] With the Colonna family, whose stronghold was Palestrina.

[3] Not one had been a renegade, to help the Saracens at the siege of

Acre in 1291.

[4] It was for this service that Constantine was supposed to have made

Sylvester “the first rich Father.” See Canto xiv. His predecessor,

Celestine V., had renounced the papacy.

[5] St. Francis came for his soul, as that of one of the brethren of

his Order.

We passed onward, I and my Leader, along the crag, far as upon the next

arch that covers the ditch in which the fee is paid by those who,

sowing discord, win their burden.

CANTO XXVIII.

Eighth Circle: ninth pit: sowers of discord and schism.—Mahomet and

Ali.—Fra Dolcino.—Pier da Medicina.—Curio.—Mosca.—Bertrau de Born.

Who, even with words unfettered,[1] could ever tell in full of the

blood and of the wounds that I now saw, though many times narrating?

Every tongue assuredly would come short, by reason of our speech and

our memory that have small capacity to comprise so much.

[1] In prose.

If all the people were again assembled, that of old upon the fateful

land of Apulia lamented for their blood shed by the Trojans,[1] and in

the long war that made such high spoil of the rings,[2] as Livy writes,

who erreth not; with those that, by resisting Robert Guiscard,[3] felt

the pain of blows, and the rest whose bones are still heaped up at

Ceperano,[4] where every Apullian was false, and there by

Tagliacozzo,[5] where without arms the old Alardo conquered,—and one

should show his limb pierced through, and one his lopped off, it would

be nothing to equal the grisly mode of the ninth pit.

[1] The Romans, descendants of the Trojans.

[2] The spoils of the battle of Canon, in the second Punic War.

[3] The Norman conqueror and Duke of Apulia. He died in 1085.

[4] Where, in 1266, the leaders of the army of Manfred, King of Apulia

and Sicily, treacherously went over to Charles of Anjou.

[5] Here, in 1265, Conradin, the nephew of Manfred, was defeated and

taken prisoner. The victory was won by a stratagem devised by Count

Erard de Valery.

Truly cask, by losing mid-board or cross-piece, is not so split open as

one I saw cleft from the chin to where the wind is broken: between his

legs were hanging his entrails, his inner parts were visible, and the

dismal sack that makes ordure of what is swallowed. Whilst all on

seeing him I fix myself, he looked at me, and with his hands opened his

breast, saying, “Now see how I rend myself, see how mangled is Mahomet.

Ali[1] goeth before me weeping, cleft in the face from chin to

forelock; and all the others whom thou seest here were, when living,

sowers of scandal and of schism, and therefore are they so cleft. A

devil is here behind, that adjusts us so cruelly, putting again to the

edge of the sword each of this crew, when we have turned the doleful

road, because the wounds are closed up ere one passes again before him.

But thou, who art thou, that musest on the crag, perchance to delay

going to the punishment that is adjudged on thine own accusations?”[2]

“Nor death hath reached him yet,” replied my Master, “nor doth sin lead

him to torment him; but, in order to give him full experience, it

behoves me, who am dead, to lead him through Hell down here, from

circle to circle; and this is true as that I speak to thee.”

[1] Cousin and son-in-law of Mahomet, and himself the head of a schism.

[2] When the soul appears before Minos, every sin is confessed. See

Canto V.

More than a hundred there were that, when they heard him, stopped in

the ditch to look at me, forgetting the torment in their wonder. “Now,

say to Fra Dolcino,[1] then, thou who perchance shalt shortly see the

sun, if he wish not soon to follow me here, so to arm himself with

supplies that stress of snow bring not the victory to the Novarese,

which otherwise to gain would not be easy”:—after he had lifted one

foot to go on Mahomet said to me these words, then on the ground he

stretched it to depart.

[1] A noted heretic and reformer, who for two years maintained himself

in Lombardy against the forces of the Pope, but finally, being reduced

by famine in time of snow, in 1307, was taken captive and burnt at

Novara.

Another who had his throat pierced and his nose cut off up under his

brows, and had but one ear only, having stopped to look in wonder with

the rest, before the rest opened his gullet, which outwardly was all

crimson, and said, “O thou whom sin condemns not, and whom of old I saw

above in the Latian land, if too great resemblance deceive me not,

remember Pier da Medicina[1] if ever thou return to see the sweet plain

that from Vercelli slopes to Marcabb, and make known to the two best of

Fano, to Messer Guido and likewise to Angiolello,[2] that, if foresight

here be not vain, they will be cast forth from their vessel and drowned

near to the Cattolica, by treachery of a fell tyrant. Between the

islands of Cyprus and Majorca Neptune never saw so great a crime, not

of the pirates, nor of the Argolic people. That traitor who sees only

with one eye, and holds the city from sight of which one who is here

with me would fain have fasted,[3] will make them come to parley with

him; then will act so that against the wind of Focara[4] they will not

need or vow or prayer.” And I to him, “Show to me and declare, if thou

wishest that I carry up news of thee, who is he of the bitter

sight?”[5] Then he put his hand on the jaw of one of his companions,

and opened the mouth of him, crying, “This is he, and he speaks not;

this outcast stifled the doubt in Caesar, by affirming that the man

prepared always suffered harm from delay.” Oh, how dismayed, with his

tongue slit in his gorge, seemed to me Curio,[6] who in speech had been

so hardy!

[1] Medicina is a town in the Bolognese district. Piero was a fosterer

of discord.

[2] Guido del Cassero and Angiolello da Cagnano, treacherously drowned

by order of the one-eyed Malatestino, lord of Rimini.

[3] The city of Rimini, which Curio would wish never to have seen.

[4] A high foreland near the Cattolica, between Rimini and Fano, whence

often fell dangerous squalls.

[5] He to whom the sight of Rimini had been bitter.

[6] Curio the Tribune, banished from Rome, fled to Caesar delaying to

cross the Rubicon, and urged him on, with the argument, according to

Lucan, “Tolle moras, semper nocuit differre paratis.” Phars. i. 281.

And one who had both hands lopped off, lifting the stumps through the

murky air so that the blood made his face foul, cried out, “Thou shalt

remember Mosca,[1] too, who said, alas! ‘Thing done has an end,’ which

was the seed of ill for the Tuscan people.” And I added thereto, “And

death to thine own race.” Whereat he, accumulating woe on woe, went

away like a person sad and distracted.

[1] In 1215 one of the Buondelmonti, plighted to a maiden of the

Amidei, broke faith, and engaged himself to a damsel of the Donati. The

family of the girl who had been thus slighted took counsel how to

avenge the affront, and Mosca de’ Lamberti gave the ill advice to

murder the young Buondelmonte. The murder was the beginning of long woe

to Florence, and of the division of her people into Guelphs and

Ghibellines.

But I remained to look at the crowd, and I saw a thing that I should be

afraid, without more proof, only to tell, were it not that conscience

reassures me, the good companion that emboldens man under the hauberk

of feeling himself pure. I saw in truth, and still I seem to see it, a

trunk without a head going along even as the others of the dismal flock

were going. And it was holding the cut-off head by its hair, dangling

in hand like a lantern. And it gazed on us, and said, “O me!” Of itself

it was making for itself a lamp; and they were two in one, and one in

two. How it can be He knows who so ordains. When it was right at the

foot of the bridge, it lifted its arm high with the whole head, in

order to approach its words to us, which were, “Now see the dire

punishment, thou that, breathing, goest seeing the dead: see thou if

any other is great as this! And that thou mayest carry news of me, know

that I am Bertran de Born,[1] he that gave to the young king the ill

encouragements. I made father and son rebellious to each other.

Ahithophel did not more with Absalom and with David by his wicked

goadings. Because I divided persons so united, I bear my brain, alas!

divided from its source which is in this trunk. Thus retaliation is

observed in me.”

[1] The famous troubadour who incited the young Prince Henry to

rebellion against his father, Henry II. of England. The prince died in

1183.

CANTO XXIX.

Eighth Circle ninth pit.—Geri del Bello.—Tenth pit: falsifiers of all

sorts.—Griffolino of Arezzo.—Capocchio.

The many people and the diverse wounds had so inebriated mine eyes that

they were fain to stay for weeping. But Virgil said to me, “What art

thou still watching? why is thy sight still fixed down there among the

dismal mutilated shades? Thou hast not done so at the other pits;

consider if thou thinkest to count them, that the valley circles two

and twenty miles; and already the moon is beneath our feet; the time is

little now that is conceded to us, and other things are to be seen than

thou seest.” “If thou hadst,” replied I thereupon, “attended to the

reason why I was looking perhaps thou wouldst have permitted me yet to

stay.”

Meanwhile my Leader went on, and I behind him went, already waking

reply, and adding, “Within that cavern where I just now was holding my

eyes so fixedly, I think that a spirit of my own blood weeps the sin

that down there costs so dear.” Then said the Master, “Let not thy

thought henceforth reflect on him; attend to other thing, and let him

there remain, for I saw him at the foot of the little bridge pointing

at thee, and threatening fiercely with his finger, and I heard him

called Geri del Bello.[1] Thou wert then so completely engaged on him

who of old held Hautefort[2] that thou didst not look that way till he

had departed.” “O my Leader,” said I, “the violent death which is not

yet avenged for him by any who is sharer in the shame made him

indignant, wherefore, as I deem, he went on without speaking to me, and

thereby has he made me pity him the more.”

[1] A cousin or uncle of Dante’s father, of whom little is known but

what may be inferred from Dante’s words and from the place he assigns

him in Hell.

[2] Bertran de Born, lord of Hautefort.

Thus we spake far as the place on the crag which first shows the next

valley, if more light were there, quite to the bottom. When we were

above the last cloister of Malebolge so that its lay brothers could

appear to our sight, divers lamentations pierced me, that had their

arrows barbed with pity; wherefore I covered my ears with my hands.

Such pain as there would be if, between July and September, from the

hospitals of Valdichiana and of Maremma and of Sardinia[1] the sick

should all be in one ditch together, such was there here; and such

stench came forth therefrom, as is wont to come from putrescent limbs.

We descended upon the last bank of the long crag, ever to the left

hand, and then my sight became more vivid down toward the bottom, where

the ministress of the High Lord—infallible Justice—punishes the

falsifiers whom on earth she registers.

[1] Unhealthy regions, noted for the prevalence of malarial fevers in

summer.

I do not think it was a greater sorrow to see the whole people in Egina

sick, when the air was so full of pestilence that the animals, even to

the little worm, all fell dead (and afterwards the ancient people,

according as the poets hold for sure, were restored by seed of ants),

than it was to see the spirits languishing in different heaps through

that dark valley. This one over the belly, and that over the shoulders

of another was lying, and this one, crawling, was shifting himself

along the dismal path. Step by step we went without speech, looking at

and listening to the sick, who could not lift their persons.

I saw two seated leaning on each other, as pan is leaned against pan to

warm, spotted from head to foot with scabs; and never did I see

currycomb plied by a boy for whom his lord is waiting nor by one who

keeps awake unwillingly, as each often plied the bite of his nails upon

himself, because of the great rage of his itching which has no other

relief. And the nails dragged down the scab, even as a knife the scales

of bream or of other fish that may have them larger.

“O thou, that with thy fingers dost dismail thyself,” began my Leader

unto one of them, “and who sometimes makest pincers of them, tell me if

any Latian[1] is among those who are here within: so may thy nails

suffice thee eternally for this work.” “Latians are we whom here thou

seest so defaced, both of us,” replied one weeping, “but thou, who art

thou that hast asked of us?” And the Leader said, “I am one that

descends with this living man down from ledge to ledge, and I intend to

show Hell to him.” Then their mutual support was broken; and trembling

each turned to me, together with others that heard him by rebound. The

good Master inclined himself wholly toward me, saying, “Say to them

what thou wilt;” and I began, since he was willing, “So may memory of

you not steal away in the first world from human minds, but may it live

under many suns, tell me who ye are, and of what race; let not your

disfiguring and loathsome punishment fright you from disclosing

yourselves unto me.” “I was from Arezzo,” replied one of them,[2] “and

Albero of Siena had me put in the fire; but that for which I died

brings me not here. True it is that I said to him, speaking in jest, I

knew how to raise myself through the air in flight, and he, who had

vain desire and little wit, wished that I should show him the art, and

only because I did not make him Daedalus, made me be burned by one[3]

that held him as a son; but to the last pit of the ten, for the alchemy

that I practiced in the world, Minos, to whom it is not allowed to err,

condemned me.” And I said to the Poet, “Now was ever people so vain as

the Sienese? surely not so the French by much.” Whereon the other

leprous one, who heard me, replied to my words, “Except[4] Stricca who

knew how to make moderate expenditure, and Niccolo, who first invented

the costly custom of the clove[5] in the garden where such seed takes

root; and except the brigade in which Caccia of Asciano wasted his

vineyard and his great wood, and the Abbagliato showed his wit. But

that thou mayest know who thus seconds thee against the Sienese, so

sharpen thine eye toward me that my face may answer well to thee, so

shalt thou see that I am the shade of Capocchio, who falsified the

metals by alchemy; and thou shouldst recollect, if I descry thee

aright, how I was a good ape of nature.”

[1] Italian.

[2] This is supposed to be one Griffolino, of whom nothing is known but

what Dante tells.

[3] The Bishop of Siena.

[4] Ironical; these youths all being members of the company known as

the brigata godereccia or spendereccia, the joyous or spendthrift

brigade.

[5] The use of rich and expensive spices in cookery.

CANTO XXX.

Eighth Circle: tenth pit: falsifiers of all sorts.—Myrrha.—Gianni

Schicchi.—Master Adam.—Sinon of Troy.

At the time when Juno was wroth because of Semele against the Theban

blood, as she showed more than once, Athamas became so insane, that

seeing his wife come laden on either hand with her two sons, cried out,

“Spread we the nets, so that I may take the lioness and the young lions

at the pass,” and then he stretched out his pitiless talons, taking the

one who was named Learchus, and whirled him and struck him on a rock;

and she drowned herself with her other burden. And when Fortune turned

downward the all-daring loftiness of the Trojans, so that together with

the kingdom the king was undone, Hecuba, sad, wretched, and captive,

when she saw Polyxena dead, and woeful descried her Polydorus on the

sea-bank, frantic, barked like a dog,—to such degree had grief

distraught her mind.

But neither the furies of Thebes, nor the Trojan, were ever seen toward

any one so cruel, whether in goading beasts or human limbs,[1] as I saw

two shades pallid and naked who, biting, were running in the way that a

boar does when from the sty he breaks loose. One came at Capocchio, and

on the nape of his neck struck his teeth, so that dragging him he made

his belly scratch along the solid bottom. And the Aretine,[2] who

remained trembling, said to me, “That goblin is Gianni Schicchi, and

rabid he goes thus maltreating others.” “Oh,” said I to him, “so may

time other not fix his teeth on thee, let it not weary thee to tell who

it is ere it start hence.” And he to me, “That is the ancient soul of

profligate Myrrha, who became her father’s lover beyond rightful love.

She came to sinning with him by falsifying herself in another’s form,

even as the other, who goes off there, undertook, in order to gain the

lady of the herd,[3] to counterfeit Buoso Donati, making a will and

giving to the will due form.”

[1] No mad rages were ever so merciless as those of these furious

spirits.

[2] Griffolino.

[3] Buoso Donati had died without making a will, whereupon his nephew

suborned Gianni Schicchi to personate the dead man in bed, and to

dictate a will in his favor. This Gianni did, but with a clause leaving

to himself a favorite mare of Buoso’s, the best in all Tuscany.

And after the two rabid ones upon whom I had kept my eye had

disappeared, I turned it to look at the other miscreants. I saw one

made in fashion of a lute, had he but only had his groin cut off at the

part where man is forked. The heavy hydropsy which, with the humor that

it ill digests, so unmates the members that the face corresponds not

with the belly, was making him hold his lips open as the hectic does,

who for thirst turns one toward his chin, the other upward.

“Oh ye, who are without any punishment, and I know not why, in the

dismal world,” said he to us, “look and attend to the misery of Master

Adam. Living, I had enough of what I wished, and now, alas! I long for

a drop of water. The rivulets that from the green hills of the

Casentino descend into the Arno, making their channels cool and soft,

stand ever before me, and not in vain; for their image dries me up far

more than the disease which strips my face of flesh. The rigid justice

that scourges me draws occasion from the place where I sinned to put my

sighs the more in flight. There is Romena, where I falsified the alloy

stamped with the Baptist,[1] for which on earth I left my body burned.

But if here I could see the wretched soul of Guido or of Alessandro, or

of their brother,[2] for Fount Branda[3] I would not give the sight.

One of them is here within already, if the rating shades who go around

speak true. But what does it avail me who have my limbs bound? If I

were only yet so light that in a hundred years I could go an inch, I

should already have set out along the path, seeking for him among this

disfigured folk, although it circles round eleven miles, and is not

less than half a mile across. Because of them I am among such a family;

they induced me to strike the forms that had full three carats of base

metal.” And I to him, “Who are the two poor wretches that are smoking

like a wet hand in winter, lying close to your confines on the right?”

“Here I found them,” he answered, “when I rained down into this trough,

and they have not since given a turn, and I do not believe they will

give one to all eternity. One is the false woman that accused Joseph,

the other is the false Sinon the Greek, from Troy; because of their

sharp fever they throw out such great reek.”

[1] The florin which bore on the obverse the figure of John the

Baptist, the protecting saint of Florence.

[2] Counts of Romena.

[3] The noted fountain in Siena, or perhaps one in Romena.

And one of them who took it ill perchance at being named so darkly,

with his fist struck him on his stiff paunch; it sounded as if it were

a drum; and Master Adam struck him on the face with his arm that did

not seem less hard, saying to him, “Though, because of my heavy limbs,

moving hence be taken from me, I have an arm free for such need.”

Whereon he replied, “When thou wast going to the fire thou hadst it not

thus ready, but so and more thou hadst it when thou wast coining.” And

the hydropic, “Thou sayst true in this, but thou wast not so true a

witness there where thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy.” “If I

spake false, thou didst falsify the coin,” said Sinon, “and I am here

for a single sin, and thou for more than any other demon.” “Remember,

perjured one, the horse,” answered he who had the puffed up paunch,

“and be it ill for thee that the whole world knows it.” “And be ill for

thee the thirst which cracks thy tongue,” said the Greek, “and the

putrid water that makes thy belly thus a hedge before thine eyes.” Then

the coiner, “So yawns thy mouth for its own harm as it is wont, for if

I am thirsty, and humor stuffs me out, thou hast the burning, and the

head that pains thee, and to lick the mirror of Narcissus thou wouldst

not want many words of invitation.”

To listen to them was I wholly fixed, when the Master said to me, “Now

then look, for it wants but little that I quarrel with thee.” When I

heard him speak to me with anger, I turned me toward him with such

shame that still it circles through my memory. And as is he that dreams

of his harm, and, dreaming, desires to dream, so that that which is he

craves as if it were not, such I became, not being able to speak, for I

desired to excuse myself, and I was indeed excusing myself, and did not

think that I was doing it. “Less shame doth wash away a greater fault

than thine hath been,” said the Master; therefore disburden thyself of

all regret, and make reckoning that I am always at thy side, if again

it happen that fortune find thee where people are in similar brawl; for

the wish to hear it is a base wish.”

CANTO XXXI.

The Giants around the Eighth Circle.—Nimrod.—Ephialtes.—Antaeus sets

the Poets down in the Ninth Circle.

One and the same tongue first stung me, so that it tinged both my

cheeks, and then supplied the medicine to me. Thus do I hear[1] that

the lance of Achilles and of his father was wont to be cause first of a

sad and then of a good gift. We turned our back to the wretched

valley,[2] up along the bank that girds it round, crossing without any

speech. Here it was less than night and less than day, so that my sight

went little forward; but I heard a horn sounding so loud that it would

have made every thunder faint, which directed my eyes, following its

course counter to it,[3] wholly to one place.

[1] Probably from Ovid, who more than once refers to the magic power of

the spear which had been given to Peleus by Chiron. Shakespeare too had

heard of it, and applies it, precisely as Dante does, to one

Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles’ spear,

Is able with the charge to kill and cure.

2 Henry VI. v. i.

[2] The tenth and last pit.

[3] My eyes went in the direction whence the sound came.

After the dolorous rout when Charlemagne lost the holy gest, Roland

sounded not so terribly.[1] Shortwhile did I carry my head turned

thitherward, when it seemed to me I saw many high towers; whereon I,

“Master, say, what city is this?” And he to me, “Because too far away

thou peerest through the darkness, it happens that thou dost err in thy

imagining. Thou shalt see well, if thou arrivest there, how much the

sense at distance is deceived; therefore somewhat more spur thyself

on.” Then tenderly he took me by the hand, and said, “Before we go

further forward, in order that the fact may seem less strange to thee,

know that they are not towers, but giants, and they are in the abyss[2]

round about the bank, from the navel downward, one and all of them.”

[1] At Roncesvalles.

Rollanz ad mis l’olifan a sa buche,

Empeint le bien, par grant vertut le sunet.

Halt sunt li pui e la voiz est mult lunge,

Granz xxx. liwes l’oirent-il respundre,

Carles l’oit e ses cumpaignes tutes.

Chanson de Roland, 1753-57.

[2] The central deep of Hell, dividing the eighth circle from the

ninth,—the lowest.

As when the mist is dissipating, the look little by little shapes out

what the vapor that thickens the air conceals, so, as I pierced the

gross and dark air as we drew nearer and nearer to the verge, error

fled from me and fear grew upon me. For as above its circular enclosure

Montereggione[1] crowns itself with towers, so with half their body the

horrible giants, whom Jove still threatens from heaven when he

thunders, betowered the bank that surrounds the abyss.

[1] The towers of Montereggione in ruin still crown its broken wall,

and may be seen from the railroad not far from Siena, on the way to

Florence.

And I discerned now the face of one, his shoulders, and his breast, and

great part of his belly, and down along his sides both his arms.

Nature, surely, when she left the art of such like creatures, did

exceeding well in taking such executers from Mars; and if she repent

not of elephants and of whales, he who looks subtly holds her more just

and more discreet therefor;[1] for where the faculty of the mind is

added to evil will and to power, the human race can make no defense

against it. His face seemed to me long and huge as the pine-cone[2] of

St. Peter at Rome, and in its proportion were his other bones; so that

the bank, which was an apron from his middle downward, showed of him

fully so much above, that to reach to his hair three Frieslanders[3]

would have made ill vaunt. For I saw of him thirty great palms down

from the place where one buckles his cloak.

[1] For no longer creating giants.

[2] Of bronze, that came from the Mausoleum of Hadrian, and in Dante’s

time stood in the fore-court of St. Peter’s, and is now in the Vatican

gardens.

[3] Supposed to be tall men.

“Raphel mai amech zabi almi,” the fierce mouth, to which sweeter psalms

were not befitting, began to cry. And my Leader toward him, “Foolish

soul! Keep to thy horn, and with that vent thyself when anger or other

passion touches thee; seek at thy neck, and thou wilt find the cord

that holds it tied, O soul confused! and see it lying athwart thy great

breast.” Then he said to me, “He himself accuses himself; this is

Nimrod, because of whose evil thought the world uses not one language

only. Let us leave him, and let us not speak in vain, for so is every

language to him, as his to others, which to no one is known.”

Then turning to the left, we pursued our way, and at a crossbow’s shot

we found the next, far more fierce and larger. Who the master was for

binding him I cannot tell; but he had his right arm fastened behind,

and the other in front, by a chain that held him entwined from the neck

downward, so that upon his uncovered part it was wound as far as the

fifth coil. “This proud one wished to make trial of his power against

the supreme Jove,” said my Leader, “wherefore he has such reward;

Ephialtes[1] is his name, and he made his great endeavors when the

giants made the Gods afraid; the arms which he plied he moves

nevermore.”

[1] Iphimedeia bore to Poseidon two sons, “but they were short- lived,

godlike Otus and far-famed Ephialtes whom the fruitful Earth nourished

to be the tallest and much the most beautiful of mortals except

renowned Orion, for at nine years old they were nine cubits in breadth,

and nine fathoms tall. They even threatened the immortals, raising the

din of tumultuous war on Olympus, and strove to set Ossa upon Olympus

and wood-clad Pelion upon Ossa, in order to scale heaven. But Jove

destroyed them both.” Odyssey, xi. 306-317.

And I to him, “If it may be, I should like my eyes to have experience

of the huge Briareus.”[1] Whereon he answered, “Thou shalt see Antaeus

close at hand here, who speaks, and is unbound,[2] and will set us at

the bottom of all sin. Him whom thou wishest to see is much farther on,

and is bound and fashioned like this one, save that he seems more

ferocious in his look.”

[1] “Him of the hundred hands whom the Gods call Briareus.” Iliad, i.

402.

[2] Because he took no part in the war of his brethren against the

Gods. What Dante tells of him is derived from Lucan, Pharsalia, iv. 597

sqq.

Never was earthquake so mighty that it shook a tower as violently as

Ephialtes was quick to shake himself. Then more than ever did I fear

death; and there had been no need of more than the fright, if I had not

seen his bonds. We then proceeded further forward, and came to Antaeus,

who full five ells, besides his head, issued forth from the cavern. “O

thou that, in the fateful valley which made Scipio the heir of glory

when Hannibal and his followers turned their backs, didst bring of old

a thousand lions for booty,—and it still seems credible that hadst thou

been at the high war of thy brothers, the sons of the Earth would have

conquered,—set us below, and disdain thou not to do so, where the cold

locks up Cocytus. Make us not go to Tityus, nor to Typhon;[1] this one

can give of that which here is longed for;[2] therefore stoop, and curl

not thy snout. He yet can restore fame to thee in the world; for he is

living, and still expects long life, if Grace doth not untimely call

him to itself.” Thus said the Master; and he in haste stretched out

those hands, whose strong grip Hercules once felt, and took my Leader.

Virgil, when he felt himself taken up, said to me, “Come hither so that

I take thee.” Then he made one bundle of himself and me. As beneath its

leaning side, the Carisenda[3] seems to look when a cloud is going over

so that the tower hangs counter to it, thus seemed Antaeus to me that

stood attent to see him bend; and it was a moment when I could have

wished to go by another road. But lightly on the bottom that swallows

Lucifer with Judas he set us down; nor, thus bent, did he there make

stay, and like a mast in a ship he raised himself.

[1] Lucan (Phars. iv. 600), naming these giants, says they were less

strong than Antaeus; wherefore there is subtle flattery in these words

of Virgil.

[2] To be remembered on earth.

[3] The more inclined of the two famous leaning towers at Bologna. As

the cloud goes over it, the tower seems to bend to meet it. So

Coleridge in his Ode to Dejection:

And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,

That give sway their motion to the stars.

CANTO XXXII.

Ninth Circle: traitors. First ring: Caina.—Counts of Mangona.—Camicion

de’ Pazzi.—Second ring: Antenora.—Bocca degli Abati.—Buoso da

Duera.—Count Ugolino.

If I had rhymes both harsh and raucous, such as would befit the dismal

hole on which thrust[1] all the other rocks, I would press out the

juice of my conception more fully; but since I have them not, not

without fear I bring myself to speak; for to describe the bottom of the

whole universe is no enterprise to take up in jest, nor a tongue that

cries mamma or babbo. But may those Dames aid my verse who aided

Amphion to close in Thebes; so that from the fact the speech be not

diverse.

[1] Rest their weight.

O populace miscreant above all, that art in the place whereof to speak

is hard, better had ye been here[1] or sheep or goats!

[1] On earth.

When we were down in the dark abyss beneath the feet of the giant, but

far lower, and I was gazing still at the high wall, I heard say to me,

“Beware how thou steppest; take heed thou trample not with thy soles

the heads of the wretched weary brethren.” Whereat I turned, and saw

before me, and under my feet, a lake which through frost had semblance

of glass and not of water.

The Danube in Austria makes not for its current so thick a veil in

winter, nor the Don yonder under the cold sky, as there was here; for

if Tambernich[1] had fallen thereupon, or Pietrapana,[2] it would not

even at the edge have given a creak. And as to croak the frog lies with

muzzle out of the water, what time[3] oft dreams the peasant girl of

gleaning, so, livid up to where shame appears,[4] were the woeful

shades within the ice, setting their teeth to the note of the stork.[5]

Every one held his face turned downward; from the mouth the cold, and

from the eyes the sad heart compels witness of itself among them.

[1] A mountain, the locality of which is unknown.

[2] One of the Toscan Apennines.

[3] In summer.

[4] Up to the face.

[5] Chattering with cold.

When I had looked round awhile, I turned to my feet, and saw two so

close that they had the hair of their heads mixed together. “Tell me,

ye who so press tight your breasts,” said I, “who are ye?” And they

bent their necks, and after they had raised their faces to rue, their

eyes, which before were moist only within, gushed up through the lids,

and the frost bound the tears between them, and locked them up again.

Clamp never girt board to board so strongly; wherefore they like two he

goats butted together, such anger overcame them.

And one who had lost both his ears through the cold, still with his

face downward, said to me, “Why dost thou so mirror thyself on us? If

thou wouldst know who are these two, the valley whence the Bisenzio

descends belonged to their father Albert, and to them.[1] From one body

they issued, and all Caina[2] thou mayst search, and thou wilt not find

shade more worthy to be fixed in ice; not he whose breast and shadow

were broken by one and the same blow by the hand of Arthur;[3] not

Focaccia;[4] not he who encumbers me with his head, so that I cannot

see beyond, and was named Sassol Mascheroni:[5] if thou art Tuscan,

well knowest thou now who he was. And that thou mayst not put me to

more speech, know that I was Camicion de’ Pazzi,[6] and I await Carlino

that he may exonerate me.”

[1] They were of the Alberti, counts of Mangona, in Tuscany, and had

killed each other.

[2] The first division of this ninth and lowest circle of Hell.

[3] Mordred, the traitorous son of Arthur.

[4] From the crimes of Focaccia, a member of the great Cancellieri

family of Pistoia, began the feud of the Black and the White factions,

which long raged in Pistoia and in Florence.

[5] A Florentine who murdered his nephew for an inheritance.

[6] A murderer of one of his kinsmen, whose crime was surpassed by that

of Carlino de’ Pazzi, who, in 1302, betrayed a band of the Florentine

exiles who had taken refuge in a stronghold of his in Valdarno.

Then I saw a thousand faces made currish by the cold, whence shuddering

comes to me, and will always come, at frozen pools.

And while we were going toward the centre[1] to which tends every

weight, and I was trembling in the eternal shade, whether it was will

or destiny, or fortune I know not, but, walking among the heads, I

struck my foot hard in the face of one. Wailing he cried out to me,

“Why dost thou trample me? If thou comest not to increase the vengeance

of Mont’ Aperti, why dost thou molest me?” And I, “My Master, now wait

here for me, so that I may free me from a doubt by means of this one,

then thou shalt make me hasten as much as thou wilt.” The Leader

stopped, and I said to that shade who was bitterly blaspheming still,

“Who art thou that thus railest at another?” “Now thou, who art thou,

that goest through the Antenora,”[2] he answered, “smiting the cheeks

of others, so that if thou wert alive, it would be too much?” “Alive I

am, and it may be dear to thee,” was my reply, “if thou demandest fame,

that I should set thy name amid the other notes.” And he to me, “For

the contrary do I long; take thyself hence, and give me no more

trouble, for ill thou knowest to flatter on this plain.” Then I took

him by the hair of the crown, and said, “It shall needs be that thou

name thyself, or that not a hair remain upon thee here.” Whereon he to

me, “Though thou strip me of hair, I will not tell thee who I am, nor

will I show it to thee if a thousand times thou fallest on my head.”

[1] The centre of the earth.

[2] The second division of the ninth circle; so named after the Trojan

who, though of good repute in Homer, was charged by a later tradition

with having betrayed Troy.

I already had his hair twisted in my hand, and had pulled out more than

one shock, he barking, with his eyes kept close down, when another

cried out, “What ails thee, Bocca?[1] Is it not enough for thee to make

music with thy jaws, but thou must bark? What devil has hold of thee?”

“Now,” said I, “I would not have thee speak, accursed traitor, for to

thy shame will I carry true news of thee.” “Begone,” he answered, “and

relate what thou wilt, but be not silent, if from here within thou

goest forth, of him who now had his tongue so ready. He weeps here the

money of the French; I saw, thou canst say, him of Duera,[2] there

where the sinners stand cooling. Shouldst thou be asked who else was

there, thou hast at thy side that Beccheria[3] whose gorget Florence

cut. Gianni del Soldanier[4] I think is farther on with Ganellon[5] and

Tribaldello,[6] who opened Faenza when it was sleeping.”

[1] Bocca degli Abati, the most noted of Florentine traitors, who in

the heat of the battle of Mont’ Aperti, in 1260, cut off the hand of

the standard-bearer of the cavalry, so that the standard fell, and the

Guelphs of Florence, disheartened thereby, were put to rout with

frightful slaughter.

[2] Buoso da Duera of Cremona, who, for a bribe, let pass near Parma,

without resistance, the cavalry of Charles of Anjou, led by Gui de

Montfort to the conquest of Naples in 1265.

[3] Tesauro de’ Beccheria, Abbot of Vallombrosa, and Papal Legato,

beheaded by the Florentines in 1258, because of his treacherous

dealings with the exiled Ghibellines.

[4] A Ghibelline leader, who, after the defeat of Manfred in 1266,

plotted against his own party.

[5] Ganellon, the traitor who brought about the defeat at Roncesvalles.

[6] He betrayed Faenza to the French, in 1282.

We had now parted from him when I saw two frozen in one hole, so that

the head of one was a hood for the other. And as bread is devoured in

hunger, so the uppermost one set his teeth upon the other where the

brain joins with the nape. Not otherwise Tydeus gnawed for spite the

temples of Menalippus than this one did the skull and the other parts.

“O thou! that by so bestial a sign showest hatred against him whom thou

dost eat, tell me the wherefore,” said I, “with this compact, that if

thou rightfully of him complainest, I, knowing who ye are, and his sin,

may yet recompense thee for it in the world above, if that with which I

speak be not dried up.”

CANTO XXXIII.

Ninth circle: traitors. Second ring: Antenora.—Count Ugolino.—Third

ring Ptolomaea.—Brother Alberigo. Branca d’ Oria.

From his savage repast that sinner raised his mouth, wiping it with the

hair of the head that he had spoiled behind: then he began, “Thou

willest that I renew a desperate grief that oppresses my heart already

only in thinking ere I speak of it. But, if my words are to be seed

that may bear fruit of infamy for the traitor whom I gnaw, thou shalt

see me speak and weep at once. I know not who thou art, nor by what

mode thou art come down hither, but Florentine thou seemest to me truly

when I hear thee. Thou hast to know that I was the Count Ugolino and he

the Archbishop Ruggieri.[1] Now will I tell thee why I am such a

neighbor. That by the effect of his evil thoughts, I, trusting to him,

was taken and then put to death, there is no need to tell. But that

which thou canst not have heard, namely, how cruel was my death, thou

shalt hear, and shalt know if he hath wronged me.

[1] In July, 1288, Ugolino della Gherardesca, Count of Donoratico, head

of a faction of the Guelphs in Pisa, in order to deprive Nino of

Gallura, head of the opposing faction, of the lordship of the city,

treacherously joined forces with the Archbishop Ruggieri degli

Ubaldini, head of the Ghibellines, and drove Nino and his followers

from the city. The archbishop thereupon took advantage of the weakening

of the Guelphs and excited the populace against Ugolino, charging him

with having for a bribe restored to Florence and Lucca some of their

towns of which the Pisans had made themselves masters. He, with his

followers, attacked Count Ugolino in his house, took him prisoner, with

two of his sons and two of his grandsons, and shut them up in the Tower

of the Gualandi, where in the following March, on the arrival of Count

Guido da Montefeltro (see Canto xvii), as Captain of Pisa, they were

starved to death.

“A narrow slit in the mew, which from me has the name of Famine, and in

which others yet must be shut up, had already shown me through its

opening many moons, when I had the bad dream that rent for me the veil

of the future. “This one appeared to me master and lord, chasing the

wolf and his whelps upon the mountain[1] for which the Pisans cannot

see Lucca. With lean, eager, and trained hounds, Gualandi with Sismondi

and with Lanfranchi[2] he had put before him at the front. After short

course, the father and his sons seemed to me weary, and it seemed to me

I saw their flanks torn by the sharp fangs.

[1] Monte San Giuliano.

[2] Three powerful Ghibelline families of Pisa.

“When I awoke before the morrow, I heard my sons, who were with me,

wailing in their sleep, and asking for bread. Truly thou art cruel if

already thou grievest not, thinking on what my heart foretold; and if

thou weepest not, at what art thou wont to weep? Now they were awake,

and the hour drew near when food was wont to be brought to us, and

because of his dream each one was apprehensive. And I heard the door

below of the horrible tower locking up; whereat I looked on the faces

of my sons without saying a word. I wept not, I was so turned to stone

within. They wept; and my poor little Anselm said, ‘Thou lookest so,

father, what aileth thee?’ Yet I did not weep; nor did I answer all

that day, nor the night after, until the next sun came out upon the

world. When a little ray entered the woeful prison, and I discerned by

their four faces my own very aspect, both my hands I bit for woe; and

they, thinking I did it through desire of eating, of a sudden rose, and

said, ‘Father, it will be far less pain to us if thou eat of us; thou

didst clothe us with this wretched flesh, and do thou strip it off.’ I

quieted me then, not to make them more sad: that day and the next we

all stayed dumb. Ah, thou hard earth! why didst thou not open? After we

had come to the fourth day, Gaddo threw himself stretched out at my

feet, saying, ‘My father, why dost thou not help me?’ Here he died:

and, even as thou seest me, I saw the three fall one by one between the

fifth day and the sixth; then I betook me, already blind, to groping

over each, and two days I called them after they were dead: then

fasting had more power than grief.”

When he had said this, with his eyes distorted, he seized again the

wretched skull with his teeth, that were strong as a dog’s upon the

bone.

Ah Pisa! reproach of the people of the fair country where the si doth

sound,[1] since thy neighbors are slow to punish thee, let Caprara and

Gorgona[2] move and make a hedge for Arno at its mouth, so that it

drown every person in thee; for if Count Ugolino had repute of having

betrayed thee in thy towns, thou oughtest not to have set his sons on

such a cross. Their young age, thou modern Thebes! made Uguccione and

the Brigata innocent, and the other two that the song names above.

[1] Italy, whose language Dante calls il volgare di ci. (Convito, i.

10.)

[2] Two little islands not far from the mouth of the Arno, on whose

banks Pisa lies.

We passed onward to where the ice roughly enswathes another folk, not

turned downward, but all upon their backs. Their very weeping lets them

not weep, and the pain that finds a barrier on the eyes turns inward to

increase the anguish; for the first tears form a block, and like a

visor of crystal fill all the cup beneath the eyebrow.

And although, because of the cold, as from a callus, all feeling had

left its abode in my face, it now seemed to me I felt some wind,

wherefore I, “My Master, who moves this? Is not every vapor[1] quenched

here below?” Whereon he to me, “Speedily shalt thou be where thine eye

shall make answer to thee of this, beholding the cause that rains down

the blast.”

[1] Wind being supposed to be cansed by the action of the sun on the

vapors of the atmosphere.

And one of the wretches of the cold crust cried out to us, “O souls so

cruel that the last station is given to you, lift from my eyes the hard

veils, so that I may vent the grief that swells my heart, a little ere

the weeping re-congeal!” Wherefore I to him, “If thou wilt that I

relieve thee, tell me who thou art, and if I rid thee not, may it be

mine to go to the bottom of the ice.” He replied then, “I am friar

Alberigo;[1] I am he of the fruits of the bad garden, and here I

receive a date for a fig.”[2] “Oh!” said I to him; “art thou now

already dead?” And he to me, “How it may go with my body in the world

above I bear no knowledge. Such vantage hath this Ptolomaea[3] that

oftentime the soul falls hither ere Atropos hath given motion to it.[4]

And that thou may the more willingly scrape the glassy tears from my

face, know that soon as the soul betrays, as I did, its body is taken

from it by a demon, who thereafter governs it until its time be all

revolved. The soul falls headlong into this cistern, and perchance the

body of the shade that here behind me winters still appears above; thou

oughtest to know him if thou comest down but now. He is Ser Branca d’

Oria,[5] and many years have passed since he was thus shut up.” “I

think,” said I to him, “that thou deceivest me, for Branca d’ Oria is

not yet dead, and he eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on

clothes.” “In the ditch of the Malebranche above,” he said, “there

where the tenacious pitch is boiling, Michel Zanche had not yet arrived

when this one left in his own stead a devil in his body, and in that of

one of his near kin, who committed the treachery together with him. But

now stretch out hither thy hand; open my eyes for me.” And I opened

them not for him, and to be rude to him was courtesy.

[1] Alberigo de’ Manfredi, of Faenza; one of the Jovial Friars (see

Canto xxiii). Having received a blow from one of his kinsmen, he

pretended to forgive it, and invited him and his son to a feast. Toward

the end of the meal he gave a preconcerted signal by calling out,

“Bring the fruit,” upon which his emissaries rushed in and killed the

two guests. The “fruit of Brother Alberigo” became a proverb.

[2] A fig is the cheapest of Tuscan fruits; the imported date is more

costly.

[3] The third ring of ice, named for that Ptolemy of Jericho who slew

his father-in-law, the high-priest Simon, and his sons (1 Maccabees wi.

11-16).

[4] That is, before its life on earth is ended.

[5] Murderer, in 1275, of his father-in-law, Michel Zanche. Already

heard of in the fifth pit (Canto xxii. 88).

Ah Genoese! men strange to all morality and full of all corruption, why

are ye not scattered from the world? For with the worst spirit of

Romagna I found one of you such that for his deeds in soul he is bathed

in Cocytus, and in body he seems still alive on earth.

CANTO XXXIV.

Ninth Circle: traitors. Fourth ring: Judecca.—Lucifer.—Judas, Brutus

and Cassius.—Centre of the universe.—Passage from Hell.—Ascent to the

surface of the Southern Hemisphere.

“Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni,[1] toward us; therefore look in

front,” said my Master; “if thou discernest him.” As a mill that the

wind turns seems from afar when a thick fog breathes, or when our

hemisphere grows dark with night, such a structure then it seemed to me

I saw.

[1] “The banners of the King of Hell advance.” Vexilla Regis prodeunt

are the first words of a hymn in honor of the Cross, sung at vespers on

the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and on Monday of Holy

Week.

Then, because of the wind, I drew me behind my Leader; for there was no

other shelter. I was now, and with fear I put it in verse, there[1]

where the shades were wholly covered, and showed through like a straw

in glass. Some are lying; some stand erect, this on his head, and that

on his soles; another like a bow inverts his face to his feet.

[1] In the fourth, innermost ring of ice of the ninth circle, the

Judecca.

When we had gone so far forward that it pleased my Master to show me

the creature that had the fair semblance, from before me he took

himself and made me stop, saying, “Behold Dis, and behold the place

where it is needful that with fortitude thou arm thee.” How I became

then chilled and hoarse, ask it not, Reader, for I write it not,

because all speech would be little. I did not die, and I did not remain

alive. Think now for thyself, if thou hast grain of wit, what I became,

deprived of one and the other.

The emperor of the woeful realm from his midbreast issued forth from

the ice; and I match better with a giant, than the giants do with his

arms. See now how great must be that whole which corresponds to such

parts. If he was as fair as he now is foul, and against his Maker

lifted up his brow, surely may all tribulation proceed from him. Oh how

great a marvel it seemed to me, when I saw three faces on his head! one

in front, and that was red; the others were two that were joined to

this above the very middle of each shoulder, and they were joined

together at the place of the crest; and the right seemed between white

and yellow, the left was such to sight as those who come from where the

Nile flows valleyward. Beneath each came forth two great wings, of size

befitting so huge a bird. Sails of the sea never saw I such. They had

no feathers, but their fashion was of a bat; and he was flapping them

so that three winds went forth from him, whereby Cocytus was all

congealed. With six eyes he was weeping, and over three chins trickled

the tears and bloody drivel. With each mouth he was crushing a sinner

with his teeth, in manner of a brake, so that he thus was making three

of them woeful. To the one in front the biting was nothing to the

clawing, so that sometimes his spine remained all stripped of skin.

“That soul up there which has the greatest punishment,” said the

Master, “is Judas Iscariot, who has his head within, and plies his legs

outside. Of the other two who have their heads down, he who hangs from

the black muzzle is Brutus; see how he writhes and says no word; and

the other is Cassius, who seems so large-limbed. But the night is

rising again, and now we must depart, for we have seen the whole.”

As was his pleasure, I clasped his neck, and he took opportunity of

time and place, and when the wings were opened wide he caught hold on

the shaggy flanks; from shag to shag he then descended between the

bushy hair and the frozen crusts. When we were just where the thigh

turns on the thick of the haunch, my Leader, with effort and stress of

breath, turned his head where he had his shanks, and clambered by the

hair as a man that ascends, so that I thought to return again to hell.

“Cling fast hold,” said the Master, panting like one weary, “for by

such stairs it behoves to depart from so much evil.” Then he came forth

through the opening of a rock, and placed me upon its edge to sit; then

stretched toward me his cautious step.

I raised my eyes, and thought to see Lucifer as I had left him, and I

saw him holding his legs upward. And if I then became perplexed, let

the dull folk think it that see not what that point is that I had

passed.[1]

[1] This point is the centre of the universe; when Virgil had turned

upon the haunch of Lucifer, the passage had been made from one

hemisphere of the earth—the inhabited and known hemisphere— to the

other where no living men dwell, and where the only land is the

mountain of Purgatory. In changing one hemisphere for the other there

is a change of time of twelve hours. A second Saturday morning begins

for the poets, and they pass nearly as long a time as they have been in

Hell, that is, twenty-four hours, in traversing the long and hard way

that leads through the new hemisphere on which they have just entered.

“Rise up,” said the Master, “on thy feet; the way is long and the road

is difficult, and already the sun unto mid-tierce[1] returns.”

[2] Tierce is the church office sung at the third hour of the day, and

the name is given to the first three hours after sunrise. Midtierce

consequently here means about half-past seven o’clock. In Hell Dante

never mentions the sun to mark division of time, but now, having issued

from Hell, Virgil marks the hour by a reference to the sun.

It was no hallway of a palace where we were, but a natural dungeon that

had a bad floor, and lack of light. “Before I tear me from the abyss,”

said I when I had risen up, “my Master, speak a little to me to draw me

out of error. Where is the ice? and this one, how is he fixed thus

upside down? and how in such short while has the sun from eve to morn

made transit?” And he to me, “Thou imaginest that thou still art on the

other side of the centre where I laid hold on the hair of the guilty

Worm that pierces the world. On that side wast thou so long as I

descended; when I turned thou didst pass the point to which from all

parts whatever has weight is drawn; and thou art now arrived beneath

the hemisphere opposite to that which the great dry land covers, and

beneath whose zenith the Man was slain who was born and lived without

sin. Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere which forms the other

face of the Judecca. Here it is morning when there it is evening; and

he who made for us a stairway with his hair is still fixed even as he

was before. Upon this side he fell down from heaven, and the earth,

which before was spread out here, through fear of him made of the sea a

veil, and came to your hemisphere; and perchance to flee from him that

land[1] which on this side appears left here this empty space and

upward ran back.”

[1] The Mount of Purgatory.

A place is there below, stretching as far from Beelzebub as his tomb

extends,[1] which not by sight is known, but by the sound of a rivulet

that here descends along the hollow of a rock that it has gnawed with

its course that winds and little falls. My Leader and I entered through

that hidden way, to return to the bright world. And without care, to

have any repose, we mounted up, he first and I second, till through a

round opening I saw of those beauteous things which heaven bears, and

thence we came forth to see again the stars.

[1] Hell is his tomb; this vacant dark passage through the opposite

hemisphere is, of course, of the same depth as Hell from surface to

centre.