[873] To morn from night: Dante’s knowledge of the time of day is wholly derived from what Virgil tells him. Since he began his descent into the Inferno he has not seen the sun.
[874] ’Neath whose summit: Jerusalem is in the centre of the northern hemisphere—an opinion founded perhaps on Ezekiel v. 5: ‘Jerusalem I have set in the midst of the nations and countries round about her.’ In the Convito, iii. 5, we find Dante’s belief regarding the distribution of land and sea clearly given: ‘For those I write for it is enough to know that the Earth is fixed and does not move, and that, with the ocean, it is the centre of the heavens. The heavens, as we see, are for ever revolving around it as a centre; and in these revolutions they must of necessity have two fixed poles.... Of these one is visible to almost all the dry land of the Earth; and that is our north pole [star]. The other, that is, the south, is out of sight of almost all the dry land.’
[875] The Man: The name of Christ is not mentioned in the Inferno.
[876] Land, as of yore, etc.: On the fall of Lucifer from the southern sky all the dry land of that hemisphere fled before him under the ocean and took refuge in the other; that is, as much land emerged in the northern hemisphere as sank in the southern. But the ground in the direct line of his descent to the centre of the earth heaped itself up into the Mount of Purgatory—the only dry land left in the southern hemisphere. The Inferno was then also hollowed out; and, as Mount Calvary is exactly antipodal to Purgatory, we may understand that on the fall of the first rebels the Mount of Reconciliation for the human race, which is also that of Purification, rose out of the very realms of darkness and sin.—But, as Todeschini points out, the question here arises of whether the Inferno was not created before the earth. At Parad. vii. 124, the earth, with the air and fire and water, is described as ‘corruptible and lasting short while;’ but the Inferno is to endure for aye, and was made before all that is not eternal (Inf. iii. 8).
[877] Belzebub: Called in the Gospel the prince of the devils. It may be worth mentioning here that Dante sees in Purgatory (Purg. viii. 99) a serpent which he says may be that which tempted Eve. The identification of the great tempter with Satan is a Miltonic, or at any rate a comparatively modern idea.
[878] The sepulchre: The Inferno, tomb of Satan and all the wicked.
[879] A brook: Some make this to be the same as Lethe, one of the rivers of the Earthly Paradise. It certainly descends from the Mount of Purgatory.
[880] The stars: Each of the three divisions of the Comedy closes with ‘the stars.’ These, as appears from Purg. i. are the stars of dawn. It was after sunrise when they began their ascent to the surface of the earth, and so nearly twenty-four hours have been spent on the journey—the time it took them to descend through Inferno. It is now the morning of Easter Sunday—that is, of the true anniversary of the Resurrection although not of the day observed that year by the Church. See Inf. xxi. 112.