[660] Rooted he stood, etc.: The description agrees with the symptoms of snake-bite, one of which is extreme drowsiness.
[661] Sabellus and Nassidius: Were soldiers of Cato’s army whose death by snake-bite in the Libyan desert is described by Lucan, Pharsal. ix. Sabbellus was burned up by the poison, bones and all; Nassidius swelled up and burst.
[662] Cadmus: Metam. iv.
[663] Arethusa: Metam. v.
[664] The forms, etc.: The word form is here to be taken in its scholastic sense of virtus formativa, the inherited power of modifying matter into an organised body. ‘This, united to the divinely implanted spark of reason,’ says Philalethes, ‘constitutes, on Dante’s system, a human soul. Even after death this power continues to be an essential constituent of the soul, and constructs out of the elements what seems to be a body. Here the sinners exchange the matter they have thus made their own, each retaining, however, his proper plastic energy as part of his soul.’ Dante in his Convito (iii. 2) says that ‘the human soul is the noblest form of all that are made under the heavens, receiving more of the Divine nature than any other.’
[665] The smoke has pause: The sinners have robbed one another of all they can lose. In the punishment is mirrored the sin that plunged them here.
[666] The novel theme: He has lingered longer than usual on this Bolgia, and pleads wonder of what he saw in excuse either of his prolixity or of some of the details of his description. The expression is perhaps one of feigned humility, to balance his recent boast of excelling Ovid and Lucan in inventive power.
[667] Gaville: The other, and the only one of those five Florentine thieves not yet named in the text, is he who came at first in the form of a little black snake, and who has now assumed the shape of Buoso. In reality he is Francesco Cavalcanti, who was slain by the people of Gaville in the upper Valdarno. Many of them were in their turn slaughtered in revenge by the Cavalcanti and their associates. It should be remarked that some of these five Florentines were of one party, some of the other. It is also noteworthy that Dante recruits his thieves as he did his usurers from the great Florentine families.—As the ‘shifting and changing’ of this rubbish is apt to be found confusing, the following may be useful to some readers:—There first came on the scene Agnello, Buoso, and Puccio. Cianfa, in the shape of a six-footed serpent, comes and throws himself on Agnello, and then, grown incorporate in a new strange monster, two in one, they disappear. Buoso is next wounded by Francesco, and they exchange members and bodies. Only Puccio remains unchanged.