Dante: His Times and His Work

by Arthur John Butler

The sinners of the fifth pit correspond in some degree with those of the third, except that in their case the traffic which is punished has to do with secular offices. Canto xxi. opens with the famous description of the work in the arsenal of Venice, which is introduced in order to afford an image of the boiling pitch in which sinners of this class are immersed. For some reason, which is not very clear, Dante devotes two whole cantos to this subdivision of the subject. There is no doubt that baratteria, peculation or jobbery, was rampant throughout Southern Europe at the time, and, as has been said, it was one of the charges brought against the poet himself at the time of his banishment.[29] We find here again one of “the torments of heat;” with one exception, that of the evil counsellors in Canto xxv., the last instance in which heat plays a part. It would be interesting, by comparison of the various sins into the punishment of which it enters, to see if any ground can be suggested for its employment in their case.

Cantos xxi. and xxii. are also noteworthy as bringing into prominence the agency of devils, and showing them actually at work. Ten are introduced and named; and some indication is given of their organisation. Dante’s skill is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the way in which he has surmounted the difficulty of depicting beings in whom there is no touch of any good quality. They are plausible; and their leader, Malacoda, appears at first sight almost friendly. It is not until later that his apparent friendliness turns out to be a deliberate attempt to mislead.

At the opening of Canto xxiii. we find the poets exactly half-way through Malebolge, on the rocky table-land, so to call it, which separates the fifth and sixth pits. They are quite solitary, for the first time in the course of their journey out of sight and hearing of any other beings; but still in fear of pursuit from the fiends whom they have just left. These do not, however, come up until just as the poets have begun the descent into the sixth pit, and here their power is at an end.

In this pit are punished the hypocrites, who go in slow procession clad in cowls of gilded lead. Contrary to the usual practice the poets have in this case to descend to the bottom of the pit, the bridges being all broken away. Malacoda, the leader of the fiends in the last bolgia, had mentioned one, but (falsely) assured them that they would find a sound one further on. He also informed them that the destruction of the bridges had taken place 1266 years ago on the previous day, but five hours later than the time of speaking. This gives an important “time-reference.” There can be no doubt that the allusion is to the rending of the rocks at the moment of Our Lord’s death (cf. xii. 31-45), which took place at 3 p.m., so that we have 10 a.m. on Easter Eve fixed as the hour at which the poets meet with the devils of the fifth pit. Among the hypocrites Dante talks with two men who had jointly held the office of Podestà, or chief magistrate, at Florence in the year after his birth.[30] They belonged to opposite parties, and the double appointment had been one of the many expedients devised to restore peace; but it had not answered, and the two were suspected of having sunk their own differences of opinion, not to conciliate the factions, but to enrich themselves at the expense of the State. While talking to them Dante sees a figure fastened to the ground with three stakes, as though crucified. This, it is explained, is Caiaphas; Annas being similarly placed at another point of the circle. Dante and Virgil have to leave this pit as they entered it, by climbing over the rocks (Canto xxiv.); and from the minuteness with which this process is described (even to so characteristic a touch as “I talked as I went, to show that my wind was good,”) it has been thought that Dante was not without experience in mountain-craft.

The seventh pit is appointed for the punishment of thieves. Serpents and dragons are here introduced. In some cases the body is reduced to ashes in consequence of the bite, and presently recovers its shape; in others man and serpent blend; in others, again, they exchange natures, the sinners themselves being transmuted into the reptiles, and becoming the instruments of torment to their fellows. A kind of reckless and brutal joviality seems to characterise the malefactors whom we meet with in this region. Among them are many Florentines, a fact which prompts Dante to an apostrophe full of bitter irony, with which Canto xxvi. opens. In the following pit a curious change of tone is manifest. The image chosen to illustrate the scene is an agreeable one—fireflies flitting in summer about a mountain valley; and the punishment though terrible is in no way loathsome or degrading, like most of those which have hitherto been described in the present circle. The sinners, too, who are mentioned are men who on earth had played heroic parts; the manner of their speech is dignified, and Dante treats them with respect. They are those who have sinned by giving wicked counsel to others, and so leading them to commit sin; and the two who are especially distinguished and who relate their stories at length are Ulysses (Canto xxvi.) and Count Guy of Montefeltro, a great Ghibeline leader (xxvii.). The former probably owes his place here to Virgil’s epithet scelerum inventor, deviser of crimes. In a passage which has deservedly become famous, he gratifies Dante’s curiosity as to the manner of his end. The passage, apart from its poetic beauty, is remarkable as being, so far as can be traced, due entirely to the poet’s own invention. At all events, beyond two or three words in the Odyssey, nothing in either classical or mediæval legend is known which can have given the suggestion for it. In the case of the Count of Montefeltro, who is alleged to have given treacherous counsel to Boniface VIII., it also appears difficult to understand how the facts, if facts they are, became known to Dante. Villani no doubt gives the story, but in language so similar to that of the poem that a suspicion arises whether he may not be relying on it as his authority.

The next canto (xxviii.) introduces us to one of Dante’s most ghastly conceptions. The ninth pit is peopled by those who have on earth caused strife and divisions among mankind. They are not, as often stated, schismatics in the technical sense of the word. Mahommed and Ali are there, obviously not on religious grounds however, but as having brought about a great breach between divisions of the human race; and though Fra Dolcino, who is introduced as it were by anticipation, was a religious schismatic, it was no doubt his social heterodoxy which earned him a commemoration in this place. The punishment of these sinners is appropriate. They are constantly being slashed to pieces by demons; the wounds being closed again before they complete the circuit. Curio, who as Lucan narrates, spoke the words which finally decided Cæsar to enter upon civil war, Mosca de’ Lamberti, the instigator of the crime which first imported especial bitterness into the strife of factions at Florence, and one Peter of Medicina, who seems to have devoted himself to keeping party-spirit alive in Romagna, are here. Last of all, carrying his own head like a lantern, is Bertrand of Born, the famous troubadour, who is charged with having promoted the quarrel between Henry II. of England and his son. It is worth noting that at this point we get the first definite indication of the dimensions which Dante assumes for the present division of Hell. We are told that this ninth pit of Malebolge has a circumference of twenty-two miles. From the next canto we learn that the last or innermost pit has half this measure; and from this basis it has been found possible to draw an accurate plan of Malebolge, and to conjecture, with an approach to certainty, the conception formed by Dante of Hell generally.[31]

In the last pit (Cantos xxix. and xxx.) are found those who have been guilty of personation with criminal intent, or of bearing false witness, or of debasing the coinage or pretending to transmute metals. These suffer from leprosy, dropsy, raving madness, and other diseases. Before leaving the pit, a quarrel between two of the sinners attracts Dante’s attention more than Virgil thinks seemly; and a sharp reprimand follows. Dante’s penitence however earns speedy forgiveness.

We are now drawing near the lowest pit; and through the dim air is heard the sound of a great horn (Canto xxxi.) Going forward, they find that the final descent, which appears to be a sheer drop of about thirty-five feet, is guarded by a ring of giants. Those of them who are seen are Nimrod, and the classical Ephialtes and Antæus; but we learn that others famous in Greek mythology are there also. Antæus being addressed by Virgil in courteous words, lifts the poets down the wall and lands them on the lowest floor of Hell. This (Canto xxxii.) is of ice, and must be conceived as a circular plain, perhaps about two miles in diameter. In this are punished all who have been guilty of any treachery towards those to whom they were bound by special ties of kindred, fellow-citizenship, friendship, or gratitude. Each of these various grades of crime has its own division, and these are arranged concentrically, with no very definite boundaries between the different classes. At the same time each division has its appropriate name, formed from some famous malefactor who had specially exemplified that class of crime. Thus the first ring is Caina; the second, Antenora, from Antenor, who, according to a late version of the Trojan legend, had betrayed Troy to the Greeks; the third, Toommea, from that Ptolemy, son of Abubus, who treacherously slew the Maccabees at a feast; the last, in which Lucifer himself abides, is Giudecca. No distinction appears to exist between the penalties inflicted on the two first classes; all are alike plunged up to the shoulders in the ice, the head being free. Dante speaks with more than one, most of them persons who had belonged to the Ghibeline party; though in the case of one, Bocca degli Abati, the treachery had been committed to the detriment of the Guelfs.[32] The mention of Bocca and Dante’s behaviour to him, may remind us that the whole question of Dante’s demeanour towards the persons whom he meets in the first part of the poem is interesting. For some he is full of pity, towards some he is even respectful; occasionally he is neutral; while in some cases he displays anger and scorn, amounting as here to positive cruelty. The expressions of pity, it will be observed, practically cease from the moment that Malebolge, the “nethermost Hell,” is reached. Similarly, after reaching the City of Dis, the tone of Virgil towards the guardians of the damned, which up to that point has been peremptory, becomes almost suppliant. The reason for this is indeed somewhat obscure: one does not at once see why the formula “So it is willed there, where will is power,” should not be as good for the Furies or for Malacoda as it has proved for Charon and Minos. Perhaps the clue is to be found in the fact that the sins punished inside the walls of the city (sins which, it will be seen, are not represented in Purgatory at all) are to be regarded as the result of a will obstinately set against the will of God; while the sins arising from the frailty of human nature may be checked by the “right judgement” recalling, before it is too late, what the will of God is. This, however, is a different question, and we must not here pursue it too far. To revert to that of Dante’s various demeanour, it will be seen that, with the limitation indicated above, his sympathy with the sinner does not vary with the comparative heinousness of the sin. Almost his bitterest scorn, indeed, is directed towards some whose chief sin is lack of any positive qualities, good or bad. One infers that he would almost rather wander in a flame with Ulysses, or lie in the ice with Ugolino, than undergo the milder punishment of Celestine and his ignoble companions. For the simply self-indulgent, Francesca or Ciacco, he has pity in abundance; Farinata, Brunetto, and the other famous men who share the fates of these, may probably come into the same category. In such cases as these, while he has not a word to say against the justice of God, he has no desire to add “the wrath of man” thereto. In the one instance in Malebolge where he shows any sympathy (and is reproved by Virgil for doing so) it is for the soothsayers, whose sin would not necessarily involve the hurt of others. But his conduct is very different to those whose sin has been primarily against their fellow-man, or against kindly human intercourse. His first fierce outbreak is against the swaggering ruffian Filippo Argenti, who seems to have been in Florentine society the most notable example of a class now happily extinct in civilised countries, at all events among adults; a kind of bully, or “Mohock,” fond of rough practical jokes, prompted, not by a misguided sense of humour, but by an irritable man’s delight in venting his spite. One can sympathise, even after six hundred years, in Dante’s pious satisfaction when he saw the man, of whom he may himself have once gone in bodily fear, become in his turn the object of persecution. It is, however, after Malebolge is reached, and Dante is among the sinners who have by dishonest practices weakened the bond of confidence which should bind human society together, that he lets his wrath and scorn have full play. His imagery even takes on a grotesque, at times even a foul aspect. He was not one to mince his words, and if he means to sicken his readers, he goes straight to his aim.

It is to be noted, too, that the language and demeanour of the sinners themselves have in many cases changed. Above Malebolge, at all events till the usurers are reached, a certain dignity of speech and action is the rule. Now we find flippant expressions and vulgar gestures. Nothing is omitted which can give a notion, not merely of the sinfulness, but of the sordidness of dishonesty. Curiously enough, the one denizen of this region who is thoroughly dignified and even pathetic, is the pagan Ulysses; and to him Dante does not himself speak, leaving the pagan Virgil to hold all communication with him. Besides Ulysses, Guy of Montfeltro and Ugolino are presented in such a way as to enlist, in some degree, the sympathy of the reader; and it may further be noted that in each case a representative of the family in the next generation is placed in Purgatory; as though Dante, while bound to condemn the elder men, had held the houses in such esteem that he wished to balance the condemnation by assigning a better fate to their successors.

The opening of Canto xxxiii. brings us to the famous episode of Count Ugolino, which shares with the earlier one of Francesca da Rimini the widest renown of any passage in the whole poem. It is curious, by the way, that the structure of the two shows many marked parallelisms; only the tender pity which characterises Dante’s treatment of the former is wholly lacking in the latter. There is no need to dwell on so well-known a story; but it may be noted that Ugolino, though a Guelf leader, and condemned here no doubt for his intrigues with the Ghibeline Archbishop Roger, came of a Ghibeline family, and thus forms only a partial exception to the rule stated above. The only genuine Guelf who is named in this division is Tesauro de’ Beccheria, the Abbot of Vallombrosa.