FOOTNOTES:
[649] The robber, etc.: By means of his prophecy Fucci has, after a fashion, taken revenge on Dante for being found by him among the cheating thieves instead of among the nobler sinners guilty of blood and violence. But in the rage of his wounded pride he must insult even Heaven, and this he does by using the most contemptuous gesture in an Italian’s repertory. The fig is made by thrusting the thumb between the next two fingers. In the English ‘A fig for him!’ we have a reference to the gesture.
[650] Pistoia: The Pistoiese bore the reputation of being hard and pitiless. The tradition was that their city had been founded by such of Catiline’s followers as survived his defeat on the Campo Piceno. ‘It is no wonder,’ says Villani (i. 32) ‘that, being the descendants as they are of Catiline and his followers, the Pistoiese have always been ruthless and cruel to strangers and to one another.’
[651] Who down Thebes’ wall: Capaneus (Inf. xiv. 63).
[652] Maremma: See note, Inf. xiii. 8.
[653] Cacus: Dante makes him a Centaur, but Virgil (Æn. viii.) only describes him as half human. The pool was fed with the blood of his human victims. The herd was the spoil Hercules took from Geryon. In the Æneid Cacus defends himself from Hercules by vomiting a fiery smoke; and this doubtless suggested the dragon of the text.
[654] His brethren: The Centaurs who guard the river of blood (Inf. xii. 56). In Fucci, as a sinner guilty of blood and violence above most of the thieves, the Centaur Cacus takes a special malign interest.
[655] Our tale: Of Cacus. It is interrupted by the arrival of three sinners whom Dante does not at first recognise as he gazes down on them, but only when they begin to speak among themselves. They are three noble citizens of Florence: Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, and Puccio Sciancatto de’ Galigai—all said to have pilfered in private life, or to have abused their tenure of high office by plundering the Commonwealth. What is certainly known of them is that they were Florentine thieves of quality.
[656] Cianfa: Another Florentine gentleman, one of the Donati. Since his companions lost sight of him he has been transformed into a six-footed serpent. Immediately appearing, he darts upon Agnello.
[657] On chin, etc.: A gesture by which silence is requested. The mention of Cianfa shows Dante that he is among Florentines.
[658] Papyrus: The original is papiro, the word used in Dante’s time for a wick made out of a reed like the papyrus; papér being still the name for a wick in some dialects.—(Scartazzini.) It cannot be shown that papiro was ever employed for paper in Italian. This, however, does not prove that Dante may not so use it in this instance, adopting it from the Latin papyrus. Besides, he says that the brown colour travels up over the papiro; while it goes downward on a burning wick. Nor would the simile, if drawn from a slowly burning lamp-wick, agree with the speed of the change described in the text.
[659] A little snake: As transpires from the last line of the Canto, this is Francesco, of the Florentine family of the Cavalcanti, to which Dante’s friend Guido belonged. He wounds Buoso in the navel, and then, instead of growing into one new monster as was the case with Cianfa and Agnello, they exchange shapes, and when the transformation is complete Buoso is the serpent and Francesco is the human shade.
[660] Rooted he stood, etc.: The description agrees with the symptoms of snake-bite, one of which is extreme drowsiness.
[661] Sabellus and Nassidius: Were soldiers of Cato’s army whose death by snake-bite in the Libyan desert is described by Lucan, Pharsal. ix. Sabbellus was burned up by the poison, bones and all; Nassidius swelled up and burst.
[662] Cadmus: Metam. iv.
[663] Arethusa: Metam. v.
[664] The forms, etc.: The word form is here to be taken in its scholastic sense of virtus formativa, the inherited power of modifying matter into an organised body. ‘This, united to the divinely implanted spark of reason,’ says Philalethes, ‘constitutes, on Dante’s system, a human soul. Even after death this power continues to be an essential constituent of the soul, and constructs out of the elements what seems to be a body. Here the sinners exchange the matter they have thus made their own, each retaining, however, his proper plastic energy as part of his soul.’ Dante in his Convito (iii. 2) says that ‘the human soul is the noblest form of all that are made under the heavens, receiving more of the Divine nature than any other.’
[665] The smoke has pause: The sinners have robbed one another of all they can lose. In the punishment is mirrored the sin that plunged them here.
[666] The novel theme: He has lingered longer than usual on this Bolgia, and pleads wonder of what he saw in excuse either of his prolixity or of some of the details of his description. The expression is perhaps one of feigned humility, to balance his recent boast of excelling Ovid and Lucan in inventive power.
[667] Gaville: The other, and the only one of those five Florentine thieves not yet named in the text, is he who came at first in the form of a little black snake, and who has now assumed the shape of Buoso. In reality he is Francesco Cavalcanti, who was slain by the people of Gaville in the upper Valdarno. Many of them were in their turn slaughtered in revenge by the Cavalcanti and their associates. It should be remarked that some of these five Florentines were of one party, some of the other. It is also noteworthy that Dante recruits his thieves as he did his usurers from the great Florentine families.—As the ‘shifting and changing’ of this rubbish is apt to be found confusing, the following may be useful to some readers:—There first came on the scene Agnello, Buoso, and Puccio. Cianfa, in the shape of a six-footed serpent, comes and throws himself on Agnello, and then, grown incorporate in a new strange monster, two in one, they disappear. Buoso is next wounded by Francesco, and they exchange members and bodies. Only Puccio remains unchanged.
CANTO XXVI.
Rejoice, O Florence, in thy widening fame!
Thy wings thou beatest over land and sea,
And even through Inferno spreads thy name.
Burghers of thine, five such were found by me
Among the thieves; whence I ashamed[668] grew,
Nor shall great glory thence redound to thee.
But if ’tis toward the morning[669] dreams are true,
Thou shalt experience ere long time be gone
The doom even Prato[670] prays for as thy due.
And came it now, it would not come too soon.10
Would it were come as come it must with time:
’Twill crush me more the older I am grown.
Departing thence, my Guide began to climb
The jutting rocks by which we made descent
Some while ago,[671] and pulled me after him.
And as upon our lonely way we went
’Mong splinters[672] of the cliff, the feet in vain,
Without the hand to help, had labour spent.
I sorrowed, and am sorrow-smit again,
Recalling what before mine eyes there lay,20
And, more than I am wont, my genius rein
From running save where virtue leads the way;
So that if happy star[673] or holier might
Have gifted me I never mourn it may.
At time of year when he who gives earth light
His face shows to us longest visible,
When gnats replace the fly at fall of night,
Not by the peasant resting on the hill
Are seen more fire-flies in the vale below,
Where he perchance doth field and vineyard[674] till,30
Than flamelets I beheld resplendent glow
Throughout the whole Eighth Bolgia, when at last
I stood whence I the bottom plain could know.
And as he whom the bears avenged, when passed
From the earth Elijah, saw the chariot rise
With horses heavenward reared and mounting fast,
And no long time had traced it with his eyes
Till but a flash of light it all became,
Which like a rack of cloud swept to the skies:
Deep in the valley’s gorge, in mode the same,40
These flitted; what it held by none was shown,
And yet a sinner[675] lurked in every flame.
To see them well I from the bridge peered down,
And if a jutting crag I had not caught
I must have fallen, though neither thrust nor thrown.
My Leader me beholding lost in thought:
‘In all the fires are spirits,’ said to me;
‘His flame round each is for a garment wrought.’
‘O Master!’ I replied, ‘by hearing thee
I grow assured, but yet I knew before50
That thus indeed it was, and longed to be
Told who is in the flame which there doth soar,
Cloven, as if ascending from the pyre
Where with Eteocles[676] there burned of yore
His brother.’ He: ‘Ulysses in that fire
And Diomedes[677] burn; in punishment
Thus held together, as they held in ire.
And, wrapped within their flame, they now repent
The ambush of the horse, which oped the door
Through which the Romans’ noble seed[678] forth went.60
For guile Deïdamia[679] makes deplore
In death her lost Achilles, tears they shed,
And bear for the Palladium[680] vengeance sore.’
‘Master, I pray thee fervently,’ I said,
‘If from those flames they still can utter speech—
Give ear as if a thousand times I pled!
Refuse not here to linger, I beseech,
Until the cloven fire shall hither gain:
Thou seest how toward it eagerly I reach.’
And he: ‘Thy prayers are worthy to obtain70
Exceeding praise; thou hast what thou dost seek:
But see that thou from speech thy tongue refrain.
I know what thou wouldst have; leave me to speak,
For they perchance would hear contemptuously
Shouldst thou address them, seeing they were Greek.’[681]
Soon as the flame toward us had come so nigh
That to my Leader time and place seemed met,
I heard him thus adjure it to reply:
‘O ye who twain within one fire are set,
If what I did your guerdon meriteth,80
If much or little ye are in my debt
For the great verse I built while I had breath,
By one of you be openly confessed
Where, lost to men, at last he met with death.’
Of the ancient flame the more conspicuous crest
Murmuring began to waver up and down
Like flame that flickers, by the wind distressed.
At length by it was measured motion shown,
Like tongue that moves in speech; and by the flame
Was language uttered thus: ‘When I had gone90
From Circe[682] who a long year kept me tame
Beside her, ere the near Gaeta had
Receivèd from Æneas that new name;
No softness for my son, nor reverence sad
For my old father, nor the love I owed
Penelope with which to make her glad,
Could quench the ardour that within me glowed
A full experience of the world to gain—
Of human vice and worth. But I abroad
Launched out upon the high and open main[683]100
With but one bark and but the little band
Which ne’er deserted me.[684] As far as Spain
I saw the sea-shore upon either hand,
And as Morocco; saw Sardinia’s isle,
And all of which those waters wash the strand.
I and my comrades were grown old the while
And sluggish, ere we to the narrows came
Where Hercules of old did landmarks pile
For sign to men they should no further aim;
And Seville lay behind me on the right,110
As on the left lay Ceuta. Then to them
I spake: “O Brothers, who through such a fight
Of hundred thousand dangers West have won,
In this short watch that ushers in the night
Of all your senses, ere your day be done,
Refuse not to obtain experience new
Of worlds unpeopled, yonder, past the sun.
Consider whence the seed of life ye drew;
Ye were not born to live like brutish herd,
But righteousness and wisdom to ensue.”120
My comrades to such eagerness were stirred
By this short speech the course to enter on,
They had no longer brooked restraining word.
Turning our poop to where the morning shone
We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,
Still tending left the further we had gone.
And of the other pole I saw at night
Now all the stars; and ’neath the watery plain
Our own familiar heavens were lost to sight.
Five times afresh had kindled, and again130
The moon’s face earthward was illumed no more,
Since out we sailed upon the mighty main;[685]
Then we beheld a lofty mountain[686] soar,
Dim in the distance; higher, as I thought,
By far than any I had seen before.
We joyed; but with despair were soon distraught
When burst a whirlwind from the new-found world
And the forequarter of the vessel caught.
With all the waters thrice it round was swirled;
At the fourth time the poop, heaved upward, rose,140
The prow, as pleased Another,[687] down was hurled;
And then above us did the ocean close.’