FOOTNOTES:
[735] Thou didst not, etc.: It is a noteworthy feature in the conduct of the Poem that when Dante has once gained sufficient knowledge of any group in the Inferno he at once detaches his mind from it, and, carrying on as little arrear of pity as he can, gives his thoughts to further progress on the journey. The departure here made from his usual behaviour is presently accounted for. Virgil knows why he lingers, but will not seem to approve of the cause.
[736] Twenty miles and two: The Ninth Bolgia has a circumference of twenty-two miles, and as the procession of the shades is slow it would indeed involve a protracted halt to wait till all had passed beneath the bridge. Virgil asks ironically if he wishes to count them all. This precise detail, taken along with one of the same kind in the following Canto (line 86), has suggested the attempt to construct the Inferno to a scale. Dante wisely suffers us to forget, if we will, that—taking the diameter of the earth at 6500 miles, as given by him in the Convito—he travels from the surface of the globe to the centre at the rate of more than two miles a minute, counting downward motion alone. It is only when he has come to the lowest rings that he allows himself to give details of size; and probably the mention of the extent of the Ninth Bolgia, which comes on the reader as a surprise, is thrown out in order to impress on the imagination some sense of the enormous extent of the regions through which the pilgrim has already passed. Henceforth he deals in exact measurement.
[737] The moon: It is now some time after noon on the Saturday. The last indication of time was at Canto xxi. 112.
[738] The time, etc.: Before nightfall they are to complete their exploration of the Inferno, and they will have spent twenty-four hours in it.
[739] Geri del Bello: One of the Alighieri, a full cousin of Dante’s father. He was guilty of encouraging dissension, say the commentators; which is to be clearly inferred from the place assigned him in Inferno: but they do not agree as to how he met his death, nor do they mention the date of it. ‘Not avenged till thirty years after,’ says Landino; but does not say if this was after his death or the time at which Dante writes.
[740] Hautefort: Bertrand de Born’s castle in Gascony.
[741] My ruth: Enlightened moralist though Dante is, he yet shows himself man of his age enough to be keenly alive to the extremest claims of kindred; and while he condemns the vendetta by the words put into Virgil’s mouth, he confesses to a feeling of meanness not to have practised it on behoof of a distant relative. There is a high art in this introduction of Geri del Bello. Had they conferred together Dante must have seemed either cruel or pusillanimous, reproaching or being reproached. As it is, all the poetry of the situation comes out the stronger that they do not meet face to face: the threatening finger, the questions hastily put to Geri by the astonished shades, and his disappearance under the dark vault when by the law of his punishment the sinner can no longer tarry.
[742] With but clearer light: They have crossed the rampart dividing the Ninth Bolgia from the Tenth, of which they would now command a view, were it not so dark.
[743] The Brotherhood: The word used properly describes the Lay Brothers of a monastery. Philalethes suggests that Dante may regard the devils as the true monks of the monastery of Malebolge. The simile involves no contempt for the monastic life, but is naturally used with reference to those who live secluded and under a fixed rule. He elsewhere speaks of the College of the Hypocrites (Inf. xxiii. 91) and of Paradise as the Cloister where Christ is Abbot (Purg. xxvi.129).
[744] Valdichiana: The district lying between Arezzo and Chiusi; in Dante’s time a hotbed of malaria, but now, owing to drainage works promoted by the enlightened Tuscan minister Fossombroni (1823), one of the most fertile and healthy regions of Italy.
[745] Sardinia: Had in the middle ages an evil reputation for its fever-stricken air. The Maremma has been already mentioned (Inf. xxv.19). In Dante’s time it was almost unpeopled.
[746] The long ridge: One of the ribs of rock which, like the spokes of a wheel, ran from the periphery to the centre of Malebolge, rising into arches as they crossed each successive Bolgia. The utmost brink is the inner bank of the Tenth and last Bolgia. To the edge of this moat they descend, bearing as usual to the left hand.
[747] Doomed on earth, etc.: ‘Whom she here registers.’ While they are still on earth their doom is fixed by Divine justice.
[748] Ægina: The description is taken from Ovid (Metam. vii.).
[749] The scab, etc.: As if by an infernal alchemy the matter of the shadowy bodies of these sinners is changed into one loathsome form or another.
[750] To all eternity: This may seem a stroke of sarcasm, but is not. Himself a shade, Virgil cannot, like Dante, promise to refresh the memory of the shades on earth, and can only wish for them some slight alleviation of their suffering.
[751] An Aretine: Called Griffolino, and burned at Florence or Siena on a charge of heresy. Albert of Siena is said to have been a relative, some say the natural son, of the Bishop of Siena. A man of the name figures as hero in some of Sacchetti’s novels, always in a ridiculous light. There seems to be no authentic testimony regarding the incident in the text.
[752] Dædalus: Who escaped on wings of his invention from the Cretan Labyrinth he had made and lost himself in.
[753] The Sienese: The comparison of these to the French would have the more cogency as Siena boasted of having been founded by the Gauls. ‘That vain people,’ says Dante of the Sienese in the Purgatory (xiii. 151). Among their neighbours they still bear the reputation of light-headedness; also, it ought to be added, of great urbanity.
[754] The Stricca: The exception in his favour is ironical, as is that of all the others mentioned.
[755] Nicholas: ‘The lavish custom of the clove’ which he invented is variously described. I have chosen the version which makes it consist of stuffing pheasants with cloves, then very costly.
[756] The club: The commentators tell that the two young Sienese nobles above mentioned were members of a society formed for the purpose of living luxuriously together. Twelve of them contributed a fund of above two hundred thousand gold florins; they built a great palace and furnished it magnificently, and launched out into every other sort of extravagance with such assiduity that in a few months their capital was gone. As that amounted to more than a hundred thousand pounds of our money, equal in those days to a million or two, the story must be held to savour of romance. That Dante refers to a prodigal’s club that actually existed some time before he wrote we cannot doubt. But it seems uncertain, to say the least, whether the sonnets addressed by the Tuscan poet Folgore da Gemignano to a jovial crew in Siena can be taken as having been inspired by the club Dante speaks of. A translation of them is given by Mr. Rossetti in his Circle of Dante. (See Mr. Symonds’s Renaissance, vol. iv. page 54, note, for doubts as to the date of Folgore.)—Caccia d’ Ascian: Whose short and merry club life cost him his estates near Siena.
[757] The Abbagliato: Nothing is known, though a great deal is guessed, about this member of the club. It is enough to know that, having a scant supply of wit, he spent it freely.
[758] Capocchio: Some one whom Dante knew. Whether he was a Florentine or a Sienese is not ascertained, but from the strain of his mention of the Sienese we may guess Florentine. He was burned in Siena in 1293.—(Scartazzini.) They had studied together, says the Anonimo. Benvenuto tells of him that one Good Friday, while in a cloister, he painted on his nail with marvellous completeness a picture of the crucifixion. Dante came up, and was lost in wonder, when Capocchio suddenly licked his nail clean—which may be taken for what it is worth.
CANTO XXX.
Because of Semele[759] when Juno’s ire
Was fierce ’gainst all that were to Thebes allied,
As had been proved by many an instance dire;
So mad grew Athamas[760] that when he spied
His wife as she with children twain drew near,
Each hand by one encumbered, loud he cried:
‘Be now the nets outspread, that I may snare
Cubs with the lioness at yon strait ground!’
And stretching claws of all compassion bare
He on Learchus seized and swung him round,10
And shattered him upon a flinty stone;
Then she herself and the other burden drowned.
And when by fortune was all overthrown
The Trojans’ pride, inordinate before—
Monarch and kingdom equally undone—
Hecuba,[761] sad and captive, mourning o’er
Polyxena, when dolorous she beheld
The body of her darling Polydore
Upon the coast, out of her wits she yelled,
And spent herself in barking like a hound;20
So by her sorrow was her reason quelled.
But never yet was Trojan fury[762] found,
Nor that of Thebes, to sting so cruelly
Brute beasts, far less the human form to wound,
As two pale naked shades were stung, whom I
Saw biting run, like swine when they escape
Famished and eager from the empty sty.
Capocchio[763] coming up to, in his nape
One fixed his fangs, and hauling at him made
His belly on the stony pavement scrape.30
The Aretine[764] who stood, still trembling, said:
‘That imp is Gianni Schicchi,[765] and he goes
Rabid, thus trimming others.’ ‘O!’ I prayed,
‘So may the teeth of the other one of those
Not meet in thee, as, ere she pass from sight,
Thou freely shalt the name of her disclose.’
And he to me: ‘That is the ancient sprite
Of shameless Myrrha,[766] who let liking rise
For him who got her, past all bounds of right.
As, to transgress with him, she in disguise40
Came near to him deception to maintain;
So he, departing yonder from our eyes,
That he the Lady of the herd might gain,
Bequeathed his goods by formal testament
While he Buoso Donate’s[767] form did feign.’
And when the rabid couple from us went,
Who all this time by me were being eyed,
Upon the rest ill-starred I grew intent;
And, fashioned like a lute, I one espied,
Had he been only severed at the place50
Where at the groin men’s lower limbs divide.
The grievous dropsy, swol’n with humours base,
Which every part of true proportion strips
Till paunch grows out of keeping with the face,
Compelled him widely ope to hold his lips
Like one in fever who, by thirst possessed,
Has one drawn up while the other chinward slips.
‘O ye![768] who by no punishment distressed,
Nor know I why, are in this world of dool,’
He said; ‘a while let your attention rest60
On Master Adam[769] here of misery full.
Living, I all I wished enjoyed at will;
Now lust I for a drop of water cool.
The water-brooks that down each grassy hill
Of Casentino to the Arno fall
And with cool moisture all their courses fill—
Always, and not in vain, I see them all;
Because the vision of them dries me more
Than the disease ’neath which my face grows small.
For rigid justice, me chastising sore,70
Can in the place I sinned at motive find
To swell the sighs in which I now deplore.
There lies Romena, where of the money coined[770]
With the Baptist’s image I made counterfeit,
And therefore left my body burnt behind.
But could I see here Guido’s[771] wretched sprite,
Or Alexander’s, or their brother’s, I
For Fonte Branda[772] would not give the sight.
One is already here, unless they lie—
Mad souls with power to wander through the crowd—
What boots it me, whose limbs diseases tie?81
But were I yet so nimble that I could
Creep one poor inch a century, some while
Ago had I begun to take the road
Searching for him among this people vile;
And that although eleven miles[773] ’tis long,
And has a width of more than half a mile.
Because of them am I in such a throng;
For to forge florins I by them was led,
Which by three carats[774] of alloy were wrong,’90
‘Who are the wretches twain,’ I to him said,
‘Who smoke[775] like hand in winter-time fresh brought
From water, on thy right together spread?’
‘Here found I them, nor have they budged a jot,’
He said, ‘since I was hurled into this vale;
And, as I deem, eternally they’ll not.
One[776] with false charges Joseph did assail;
False Sinon,[777] Greek from Troy, is the other wight.
Burning with fever they this stink exhale.’
Then one of them, perchance o’ercome with spite100
Because he thus contemptuously was named,
Smote with his fist upon the belly tight.
It sounded like a drum; and then was aimed
A blow by Master Adam at his face
With arm no whit less hard, while he exclaimed:
‘What though I can no longer shift my place
Because my members by disease are weighed!
I have an arm still free for such a case.’
To which was answered: ‘When thou wast conveyed
Unto the fire ’twas not thus good at need,110
But even more so when the coiner’s trade
Was plied by thee.’ The swol’n one: ‘True indeed!
But thou didst not bear witness half so true
When Trojans[778] at thee for the truth did plead.’
‘If I spake falsely, thou didst oft renew
False coin,’ said Sinon; ‘one fault brought me here;
Thee more than any devil of the crew.’
‘Bethink thee of the horse, thou perjurer,’
He of the swol’n paunch answered; ‘and that by
All men ’tis known should anguish in thee stir.’120
‘Be thirst that cracks thy tongue thy penalty,
And putrid water,’ so the Greek replied,
‘Which ’fore thine eyes thy stomach moundeth high.’
The coiner then: ‘Thy mouth thou openest wide,
As thou art used, thy slanderous words to vent;
But if I thirst and humours plump my hide
Thy head throbs with the fire within thee pent.
To lap Narcissus’ mirror,[779] to implore
And urge thee on would need no argument.’
While I to hear them did attentive pore130
My Master said: ‘Thy fill of staring take!
To rouse my anger needs but little more.’
And when I heard that he in anger spake
Toward him I turned with such a shame inspired,
Recalled, it seems afresh on me to break.
And, as the man who dreams of hurt is fired
With wish that he might know his dream a dream,
And so what is, as ’twere not, is desired;
So I, struck dumb and filled with an extreme
Craving to find excuse, unwittingly140
The meanwhile made the apology supreme.
‘Less shame,’ my Master said, ‘would nullify
A greater fault, for greater guilt atone;
All sadness for it, therefore, lay thou by.
But bear in mind that thou art not alone,
If fortune hap again to bring thee near
Where people such debate are carrying on.
To things like these ’tis shame[780] to lend an ear.’