The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

Now let Lucan be still with his history

  of poor Sabellus and Nassidius,

  and wait to hear what next appeared to me.

  Of Cadmus and Arethusa be Ovid silent. I have no need to envy him those verses where he makes one a fountain, and one a serpent:

  for he never transformed two beings face to face

  in such a way that both their natures yielded

  their elements each to each, as in this case.

  Responding sympathetically to each other,

  the reptile cleft his tail into a fork,

  and the wounded sinner drew his feet together.

  The sinner’s legs and thighs began to join:

  they grew together so, that soon no trace

  of juncture could be seen from toe to loin.

  Point by point the reptile’s cloven tail

  grew to the form of what the sinner lost;

  one skin began to soften, one to scale.

  The armpits swallowed the arms, and the short shank

  of the reptile’s forefeet simultaneously

  lengthened by as much as the man’s arms shrank.

  Its hind feet twisted round themselves and grew

  the member man conceals; meanwhile the wretch

  from his one member generated two.

  The smoke swelled up about them all the while:

  it tanned one skin and bleached the other; it stripped

  the hair from the man and grew it on the reptile.

  While one fell to his belly, the other rose

  without once shifting the locked evil eyes

  below which they changed snouts as they changed pose.

  The face of the standing one drew up and in

  toward the temples, and from the excess matter

  that gathered there, ears grew from the smooth skin;

  while of the matter left below the eyes

  the excess became a nose, at the same time

  forming the lips to an appropriate size.

  Here the face of the prostrate felon slips,

  sharpens into a snout, and withdraws its ears

  as a snail pulls in its horns. Between its lips

  the tongue, once formed for speech, thrusts out a fork;

  the forked tongue of the other heals and draws

  into his mouth. The smoke has done its work.

  The soul that had become a beast went flitting

  and hissing over the stones, and after it

  the other walked along talking and spitting.

  Then turning his new shoulders, said to the one

  that still remained: “It is Buoso’s turn to go

  crawling along this road as I have done.”

  Thus did the ballast of the seventh hold

  shift and reshift; and may the strangeness of it

  excuse my pen if the tale is strangely told.

  And though all this confused me, they did not flee

  so cunningly but what I was aware

  that it was Puccio Sciancato alone of the three

  that first appeared, who kept his old form still.

  The other was he for whom you weep, Gaville.

  NOTES

  THE FIVE NOBLE THIEVES OF FLORENCE

  Dante’s concise treatment and the various transformations which the thieves undergo may lead to some confusion. It is worth noting that none of these thieves is important as an individual, and, in fact, that very little is known of the lives of these sinners beyond the sufficient fact that they were thieves.

  The first three appear in line 35 and hail the Poets rather insolently. They are Agnello Brunelleschi (Ah-NYELL-oh Broo-nell-AY-skee), Buoso (BWOE-soe) degli Abati, and Puccio Sciancato. They have been walking along with Cianfa de’ Donati (TCHAHN-fa day Don-AH-tee), but they suddenly miss him and ask about him with some concern. The careful reader will sense that a sudden disappearance is cause for very special concern in this bolgia, and sure enough, Cianfa suddenly reappears in the form of a six-legged lizard. His body has been taken from him and he is driven by a consuming desire to be rid of his reptilian form as fast as possible. He immediately fixes himself upon Agnello and merges his lizard body with Agnello’s human form. (A possible symbolic interpretation is that Cianfa is dividing the pains of Hell with a fellow thief, as on earth he might have divided the loot.)

  Immediately after Cianfa and Agnello go off together, a tiny reptile bites Buoso degli Abati and exchanges forms with him. The reptile is Francesco dei Cavalcanti. (Here the symbolism is obvious: the thieves must steal from one another the very shapes in which they appear.)

  Thus only Puccio Sciancato (POO-tchoe Shahn-KAH-toe) is left unchanged for the time being.

  2. figs: An obscene gesture made by closing the hand into a fist with the thumb protruding between the first and second fingers. The fig is an ancient symbol for the vulva, and the protruding thumb is an obvious phallic symbol. The gesture is still current in Italy and has lost none of its obscene significance since Dante’s time.

  25. Cacus: The son of Vulcan. He lived in a cave at the foot of Mount Aventine, from which he raided the herds of the cattle of Hercules, which pastured on the Roman plain. Hercules clubbed him to death for his thievery, beating him in rage long after he was dead. Cacus is condemned to the lower pit for his greater crime, instead of guarding Phlegethon with his brother centaurs. Virgil, however, did not describe him as a Centaur (v. Aeneid, VIII, 193-267). Dante’s interpretation of him is probably based on the fact that Virgil referred to him as “half-human.”

  82. that part: The navel. 91 ff. let Lucan be still, etc.: In Pharsalia (IX, 761 ff.) Lucan relates how Sabellus and Nassidius, two soldiers of the army Cato led across the Libyan desert, were bitten by monsters. Sabellus melted into a puddle and Nassidius swelled until he popped his coat of mail. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid wrote how Cadmus was changed into a serpent (IV, 562-603) and how Arethusa was changed into a fountain (V, 572-661).

  Dante cites these cases, obviously, that he may boast of how much better he is going to handle the whole matter of transformation. The master knows his own mastery and sees no real point in being modest about it.

  146. he for whom you weep, Gaville: Francesco dei Cavalcanti. He was killed by the people of Gaville (a village in the Valley of the Arno). His kinsmen rallied immediately to avenge his death, and many of the townsmen of Gaville were killed in the resulting feud.

  Canto XXVI

  CIRCLE EIGHT: BOLGIA EIGHT

  The Evil Counselors

  Dante turns from the Thieves toward the Evil Counselors of the next Bolgia, and between the two he addresses a passionate lament to Florence prophesying the griefs that will befall her from these two sins. At the purported time of the Vision, it will be recalled, Dante was a Chief Magistrate of Florence and was forced into exile by men he had reason to consider both thieves and evil counselors. He seems prompted, in fact, to say much more on this score, but he restrains himself when he comes in sight of the sinners of the next Bolgia, for they are a moral symbolism, all men of gift who abused their genius, perverting it to wiles and stratagems. Seeing them in Hell he knows his must be another road: his way shall not be by deception.

  So the Poets move on and Dante observes the EIGHTH BOLGIA in detail. Here the EVIL COUNSELORS move about endlessly, hidden from view inside great flames. Their sin was to abuse the gifts of the Almighty, to steal his virtues for low purposes. And as they stole from God in their lives and worked by hidden ways, so are they stolen from sight and hidden in the great flames which are their own guilty consciences. And as, in most instances at least, they sinned by glibness of tongue, so are the flames made into a fiery travesty of tongues.

  Among the others, the Poets see a great doubleheaded flame, and discover that ULYSSES and DIOMEDE are punished together within it. Virgil addresses the flame, and through its wavering tongue Ulysses narrates an unforgettable tale of his last voyage and death.

  Joy to you, Florence, that your banners swell,

  beating their pr
oud wings over land and sea,

  and that your name expands through all of Hell!

  Among the thieves I found five who had been

  your citizens, to my shame; nor yet shall you

  mount to great honor peopling such a den!

  But if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning,

  you soon shall feel what Prato and the others

  wish for you. And were that day of mourning

  already come it would not be too soon.

  So may it come, since it must! for it will weigh

  more heavily on me as I pass my noon.

  We left that place. My Guide climbed stone by stone

  the natural stair by which we had descended

  and drew me after him. So we passed on,

  and going our lonely way through that dead land

  among the crags and crevices of the cliff,

  the foot could make no way without the hand.

  I mourned among those rocks, and I mourn again

  when memory returns to what I saw:

  and more than usually I curb the strain

  of my genius, lest it stray from Virtue’s course;

  so if some star, or a better thing, grant me merit,

  may I not find the gift cause for remorse.

  As many fireflies as the peasant sees

  when he rests on a hill and looks into the valley

  (where he tills or gathers grapes or prunes his trees)

  in that sweet season when the face of him

  who lights the world rides north, and at the hour

  when the fly yields to the gnat and the air grows dim—

  such myriads of flames I saw shine through

  the gloom of the eighth abyss when I arrived

  at the rim from which its bed comes into view.

  As he the bears avenged so fearfully

  beheld Elijah’s chariot depart—

  the horses rise toward heaven—but could not see

  more than the flame, a cloudlet in the sky,

  once it had risen—so within the fosse

  only those flames, forever passing by

  were visible, ahead, to right, to left;

  for though each steals a sinner’s soul from view

  not one among them leaves a trace of the theft.

  I stood on the bridge, and leaned out from the edge;

  so far, that but for a jut of rock I held to

  I should have been sent hurtling from the ledge

  without being pushed. And seeing me so intent,

  my Guide said: “There are souls within those flames;

  each sinner swathes himself in his own torment.”

  “Master,” I said, “your words make me more sure,

  but I had seen already that it was so

  and meant to ask what spirit must endure

  the pains of that great flame which splits away

  in two great horns, as if it rose from the pyre

  where Eteocles and Polynices lay?”

  He answered me: “Forever round this path

  Ulysses and Diomede move in such dress,

  united in pain as once they were in wrath;

  there they lament the ambush of the Horse

  which was the door through which the noble seed

  of the Romans issued from its holy source;

  there they mourn that for Achilles slain

  sweet Deidamia weeps even in death;

  there they recall the Palladium in their pain.”

  “Master,” I cried, “I pray you and repray

  till my prayer becomes a thousand—if these souls

  can still speak from the fire, oh let me stay

  until the flame draws near! Do not deny me:

  You see how fervently I long for it!”

  And he to me: “Since what you ask is worthy,

  it shall be. But be still and let me speak;

  for I know your mind already, and they perhaps

  might scorn your manner of speaking, since they were Greek.”

  And when the flame had come where time and place

  seemed fitting to my Guide, I heard him say

  these words to it: “O you two souls who pace

  together in one flame!—if my days above

  won favor in your eyes, if I have earned

  however much or little of your love

  in writing my High Verses, do not pass by,

  but let one of you be pleased to tell where he,

  having disappeared from the known world, went to die.”

  As if it fought the wind, the greater prong

  of the ancient flame began to quiver and hum;

  then moving its tip as if it were the tongue

  that spoke, gave out a voice above the roar.

  “When I left Circe,” it said, “who more than a year

  detained me near Gaëta long before

  Aeneas came and gave the place that name,

  not fondness for my son, nor reverence

  for my aged father, nor Penelope’s claim

  to the joys of love, could drive out of my mind

  the lust to experience the far-flung world

  and the failings and felicities of mankind.

  I put out on the high and open sea

  with a single ship and only those few souls

  who stayed true when the rest deserted me.

  As far as Morocco and as far as Spain

  I saw both shores; and I saw Sardinia

  and the other islands of the open main.

  I and my men were stiff and slow with age

  when we sailed at last into the narrow pass

  where, warning all men back from further voyage,

  Hercules’ Pillars rose upon our sight.

  Already I had left Ceuta on the left;

  Seville now sank behind me on the right.

  ‘Shipmates,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand

  perils have reached the West, do not deny

  to the brief remaining watch our senses stand

  experience of the world beyond the sun.

  Greeks! You were not born to live like brutes,

  but to press on toward manhood and recognition!’

  With this brief exhortation I made my crew

  so eager for the voyage I could hardly

  have held them back from it when I was through;

  and turning our stern toward morning, our bow toward night,

  we bore southwest out of the world of man;

  we made wings of our oars for our fool’s flight.

  That night we raised the other pole ahead

  with all its stars, and ours had so declined

  it did not rise out of its ocean bed.

  Five times since we had dipped our bending oars

  beyond the world, the light beneath the moon

  had waxed and waned, when dead upon our course

  we sighted, dark in space, a peak so tall

  I doubted any man had seen the like.

  Our cheers were hardly sounded, when a squall

  broke hard upon our bow from the new land:

  three times it sucked the ship and the sea about

  as it pleased Another to order and command.

  At the fourth, the poop rose and the bow went down

  till the sea closed over us and the light was gone.”

  NOTES

  7. if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning: A semi-proverbial expression. It was a common belief that those dreams that occur just before waking foretell the future. “Morning” here would equal both “the rude awakening” and the potential “dawn of a new day.”

  8. Prato: Not the neighboring town (which was on good terms with Florence) but Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, papal legate from Benedict XI to Florence. In 1304 he tried to reconcile the warring factions, but found that neither side would accept mediation. Since none would be blessed, he cursed all impartially and laid the city under an interdict (i.e., forbade the o
ffering of the sacraments). Shortly after this rejection by the Church, a bridge collapsed in Florence, and later a great fire broke out. Both disasters cost many lives, and both were promptly attributed to the Papal curse.

  34. he the bears avenged: Elisha saw Elijah translated to Heaven in a fiery chariot. Later he was mocked by some children, who called out tauntingly that he should “Go up” as Elijah had. Elisha cursed the children in the name of the Lord, and bears came suddenly upon the children and devoured them. (II Kings, ii, 11-24.)

  53-54. the pyre where Eteocles and Polynices lay: Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Oedipus, succeeded jointly to the throne of Thebes, and came to an agreement whereby each one would rule separately for a year at a time. Eteocles ruled the first year and when he refused to surrender the throne at the appointed time, Polynices led the Seven against Thebes in a bloody war. In single combat the two brothers killed one another. Statius (Thebaid, XII, 429 ff.) wrote that their mutual hatred was so great that when they were placed on the same funeral pyre the very flame of their burning drew apart in two great raging horns.