[401] Another spot: See Inf. xxi. 112. The earthquake at the Crucifixion shook even Inferno to its base.
[402] The river of blood: Phlegethon, the ‘boiling river.’ Styx and Acheron have been already passed. Lethe, the fourth infernal river, is placed by Dante in Purgatory. The first round or circlet of the Seventh Circle is filled by Phlegethon.
[403] Centaurs: As this round is the abode of such as are guilty of violence against their neighbours, it is guarded by these brutal monsters, half-man and half-horse.
[404] Chiron: Called the most just of the Centaurs.
[405] Nessus: Slain by Hercules with a poisoned arrow. When dying he gave Dejanira his blood-stained shirt, telling her it would insure the faithfulness to her of any whom she loved. Hercules wore it and died of the venom; and thus Nessus avenged himself.
[406] The natures: The part of the Centaur where the equine body is joined on to the human neck and head.
[407] Other band: Of Centaurs.
[408] Alexander: It is not known whether Alexander the Great or a petty Thessalian tyrant is here meant. Dionysius: The cruel tyrant of Syracuse.
[409] Ezzelino: Or Azzolino of Romano, the greatest Lombard Ghibeline of his time. He was son-in-law of Frederick II., and was Imperial Vicar of the Trevisian Mark. Towards the close of Fredrick’s life, and for some years after, he exercised almost independent power in Vicenza, Padua, and Verona. Cruelty, erected into a system, was his chief instrument of government, and ‘in his dungeons men found something worse than death.’ For Italians, says Burckhardt, he was the most impressive political personage of the thirteenth century; and around his memory, as around Frederick’s, there gathered strange legends. He died in 1259, of a wound received in battle. When urged to confess his sins by the monk who came to shrive him, he declared that the only sin on his conscience was negligence in revenge. But this may be mythical, as may also be the long black hair between his eyebrows, which rose up stiff and terrible as his anger waxed.
[410] Obizzo: The second Marquis of Este of that name. He was lord of Ferrara. There seems little, if any, evidence extant of his being specially cruel. As a strong Guelf he took sides with Charles of Anjou against Manfred. He died in 1293, smothered, it was believed, by a son, here called a stepson for his unnatural conduct. But though Dante vouches for the truth of the rumour it seems to have been an invention.