Then the trunk puffed strongly, and soon that wind was changed into this voice: “Briefly shall ye be answered. When the ferocious soul departeth from the body wherefrom itself hath torn itself, Minos sends it to the seventh gulf. It falls into the wood, and no part is chosen for it, but where fortune flings it, there it takes root like a grain of spelt; it springs up in a shoot and to a wild plant. The Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves, give pain, and to the pain a window.[1] Like the rest we shall go for our spoils,[2] but not, forsooth, that any one may revest himself with them, for it is not just to have that of which one deprives himself. Hither shall we drag them, and through the melancholy wood shall our bodies be suspended, each on the thorn-tree of his molested shade.”
[1] The tearing of the leaves gives an outlet to the woe.
[2] Our bodies, at the Last Judgment.
We were still attentive to the trunk, believing that it might wish to say more to us, when we were surprised by an uproar, as one who perceives the wild boar and the chase coming toward his stand and hears the Feasts and the branches crashing. And behold two on the left hand, naked and scratched, flying so violently that they broke all the limbs of the wood. The one in front was shouting, “Now, help, help, Death!” and the other, who seemed to himself too slow, “Lano, thy legs were not so nimble at the jousts of the Toppo:”[1] and when perhaps his breath was failing, of himself and of a bush he made a group. Behind them the wood was full of black bitches, ravenous and running like greyhounds that have been unleashed. On him that had squatted they set their teeth and tore him to pieces, bit by bit, then carried off his woeful limbs.
[1] Lano was slain in flight at the defeat of the Sienese by the Aretines, near the Pieve del Toppo, in 1280. He and Jacomo were notorious prodigals.
My Guide then took me by the hand, and led me to the bush, which was weeping through its bleeding breaks in vain. “O Jacomo of Sant’ Andrea,” it was saying, “what hath it vantaged thee to make of me a screen? What blame have I for thy wicked life?” When the Master had stopped beside it, he said, “Who wast thou, who through so many wounds blowest forth with blood thy woeful speech?” And he to us, “O souls who art arrived to see the shameful ravage that hath thus disjoined my leaves from me, collect them at the foot of the wretched bush. I was of the city which for the Baptist changed her first patron;[1] wherefore will he always make her sorrowful with his art. And were it not that at the passage of the Arno some semblance of him yet remains, those citizens who afterwards rebuilt it upon the ashes that were left by Attila[2] would have labored in vain. I made a gibbet for myself of my own dwelling.”
[1] The first patron of florence was Mars; a fragment of a statue of whom stood till 1333 on the Ponte Vecchio.
[2] It was not Attila, but Totila, who in 542 besieged Florence, and, according to false popular tradition, burned it. The names and personages were frequently confounded in the Dark Ages.
CANTO XIV.
Third round of the Seventh Circle of those who have done violence to God.—The Burning Sand.—Capaneus.—Figure of the Old Man in Crete.—The Rivers of Hell.