[863] Three faces: By the three faces are represented the three quarters of the world from which the subjects of Lucifer are drawn: vermilion or carnation standing for Europe, yellow for Asia, and black for Africa. Or the faces may symbolise attributes opposed to the Wisdom, Power, and Love of the Trinity (Inf. iii. 5). See also note on line 1.
[864] A bat’s wing: Which flutters and flaps in dark and noisome places. The simile helps to bring more clearly before us the dim light and half-seen horrors of the Judecca.
[865] A heckle: Or brake; the instrument used to clear the fibre of flax from the woody substance mixed with it.
[866] Sometimes nude: We are to imagine that the frame of Judas is being for ever renewed and for ever mangled and torn.
[867] Cassius: It has been surmised that Dante here confounds the pale and lean Cassius who was the friend of Brutus with the L. Cassius described as corpulent by Cicero in the Third Catiline Oration. Brutus and Cassius are set with Judas in this, the deepest room of Hell, because, as he was guilty of high treason against his Divine Master, so they were guilty of it against Julius Cæsar, who, according to Dante, was chosen and ordained by God to found the Roman Empire. As the great rebel against the spiritual authority Judas has allotted to him the fiercer pain. To understand the significance of this harsh treatment of the great Republicans it is necessary to bear in mind that Dante’s devotion to the idea of the Empire was part of his religion, and far surpassed in intensity all we can now well imagine. In the absence of a just and strong Emperor the Divine government of the world seemed to him almost at a stand.
[868] Night is rising: It is Saturday evening, and twenty-four hours since they entered by the gate of Inferno.
[869] I thought to Hell, etc.: Virgil, holding on to Lucifer’s hairy sides, descends the dark and narrow space between him and the ice as far as to his middle, which marks the centre of the earth. Here he swings himself round so as to have his feet to the centre as he emerges from the pit to the southern hemisphere. Dante now feels that he is being carried up, and, able to see nothing in the darkness, deems they are climbing back to the Inferno. Virgil’s difficulty in turning himself round and climbing up the legs of Lucifer arises from his being then at the ‘centre to which all weights tend from every part.’ Dante shared the erroneous belief of the time, that things grew heavier the nearer they were to the centre of the earth.
[870] His upturned legs: Lucifer’s feet are as far above where Virgil and Dante are as was his head above the level of the Judecca.
[871] What point, etc.: The centre of the earth. Dante here feigns to have been himself confused—a fiction which helps to fasten attention on the wonderful fact that if we could make our way through the earth we should require at the centre to reverse our posture. This was more of a wonder in Dante’s time than now.
[872] Mid tierce: The canonical day was divided into four parts, of which Tierce was the first and began at sunrise. It is now about half-past seven in the morning. The night was beginning when they took their departure from the Judecca: the day is now as far advanced in the southern hemisphere as they have spent time on the passage. The journey before them is long indeed, for they have to ascend to the surface of the earth.