The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  to move as much as an inch in a hundred years,

  long before this I would have started off

  to cull him from the freaks that fill this fosse,

  although it winds on for eleven miles

  and is no less than half a mile across.

  Because of them I lie here in this pig-pen;

  it was they persuaded me to stamp the florins

  with three carats of alloy.” And I then:

  “Who are those wretched two sprawled alongside

  your right-hand borders, and who seem to smoke

  as a washed hand smokes in winter?” He replied:

  “They were here when I first rained into this gully,

  and have not changed position since, nor may they,

  as I believe, to all eternity.

  One is the liar who charged young Joseph wrongly:

  the other, Sinon, the false Greek from Troy.

  A burning fever makes them reek so strongly.”

  And one of the false pair, perhaps offended

  by the manner of Master Adam’s presentation,

  punched him in the rigid and distended

  belly—it thundered like a drum—and he

  retorted with an arm blow to the face

  that seemed delivered no whit less politely,

  saying to him: “Although I cannot stir

  my swollen legs, I still have a free arm

  to use at times when nothing else will answer.”

  And the other wretch said: “It was not so free

  on your last walk to the stake, free as it was

  when you were coining.” And he of the dropsy:

  “That’s true enough, but there was less truth in you

  when they questioned you at Troy.” And Sinon then:

  “For every word I uttered that was not true

  you uttered enough false coins to fill a bushel:

  I am put down here for a single crime,

  but you for more than any Fiend in Hell.”

  “Think of the Horse,” replied the swollen shade,

  “and may it torture you, perjurer, to recall

  that all the world knows the foul part you played.”

  “And to you the torture of the thirst that fries

  and cracks your tongue,” said the Greek, “and of the water

  that swells your gut like a hedge before your eyes.”

  And the coiner: “So is your own mouth clogged

  with the filth that stuffs and sickens it as always;

  if I am parched while my paunch is waterlogged,

  you have the fever and your cankered brain;

  and were you asked to lap Narcissus’ mirror

  you would not wait to be invited again.”

  I was still standing, fixed upon those two

  when the Master said to me: “Now keep on looking

  a little longer and I quarrel with you.”

  When I heard my Master raise his voice to me,

  I wheeled about with such a start of shame

  that I grow pale yet at the memory.

  As one trapped in a nightmare that has caught

  his sleeping mind, wishes within the dream

  that it were all a dream, as if it were not—

  such I became: my voice could not win through

  my shame to ask his pardon; while my shame

  already won more pardon than I knew.

  “Less shame,” my Guide said, ever just and kind,

  “would wash away a greater fault than yours.

  Therefore, put back all sorrow from your mind;

  and never forget that I am always by you

  should it occur again, as we walk on,

  that we find ourselves where others of this crew

  fall to such petty wrangling and upbraiding.

  The wish to hear such baseness is degrading.”

  NOTES

  1-2. Juno took her furious revenge: As in the case of the Aeginians, Jove begot a son (Bacchus) upon a mortal (Semele, daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes); and Juno, who

  obviously could not cope with her husband’s excursions directly, turned her fury upon the mortals in a number of godlike ways, among them inducing the madness of King Athamas (Semele’s brother-in-law) which Ovid recounts in Metamorphoses, IV, 512 ff.

  16. Hecuba: Wife of King Priam. When Troy fell she was taken to Greece as a slave. En route she was forced to witness the sacrifice of her daughter and to look upon her son lying murdered and unburied. She went mad in her affliction and fell to howling like a dog. Ovid (Metamorphoses, XIII, 568 ff.) describes her anguish but does not say she was changed into a dog.

  31. the Aretine: Capocchio’s companion, Griffolino.

  32. Gianni Schicchi (DJAHN-ee SKEE-kee): Of the Cavalcanti of Florence. When Buoso di Donati (see Canto XXV) died, his son, Simone, persuaded Schicchi to impersonate the dead man and to dictate a will in Simone’s favor. Buoso was removed from the death bed, Schicchi took his place in disguise, and the will was dictated to a notary as if Buoso were still alive. Schicchi took advantage of the occasion to make several bequests to himself, including one of a famous and highly-prized mare.

  38. Myrrha: The second figure that runs rabid through the pit was the daughter of Cinyras, King of Cyprus. Moved by an incestuous passion for her father, she disguised herself and slipped into his bed. After he had mated with her, the king discovered who she was and threatened to kill her but she ran away and was changed into a myrtle. Adonis was born from her trunk. (Ovid, Metamorphoses, X, 298 ff.)

  61. Master Adam: Of Brescia. Under the orders of the Counts Guidi of Romena, he counterfeited Florentine florins of twenty-one rather than twenty-four carat gold, and on such a scale that a currency crisis arose in Northern Italy. He was burned at the stake by the Florentines in 1281.

  65. Casentino: A mountainous district in which the Arno rises.

  74. the Baptist’s image: John the Baptist’s. As patron of Florence, his image was stamped on the florins.

  76-77. Guido . . . Alessandro . . . their filthy brother: The Counts Guidi.

  79. Branda: A spring near Romena. The famous fountain of Branda is in Siena, but Adam is speaking of his home country and must mean the spring.

  79-81. One of the three . . . is here already: Guido died before 1300.

  92. your right-hand borders: Master Adam’s right side. Dante uses confini (borders) for “side,” suggesting ironically that Master Adam in his swollen state is more like a territory than a man.

  97. the liar who charged young Joseph: Potiphar’s wife bore false witness against Joseph. (Genesis, xxxix, 6-23.)

  98. Sin

  on: The Greek who glibly talked the Trojans into taking the Horse inside the city walls. (Aeneid, II, 57-194.)

  115-117. a single crime: Dante must reckon each false florin as a separate sin.

  128. Narcissus’ mirror: A pool of water. Ovid (Metamorphoses, III, 407-510) tells how the young Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pool. He remained bent over the reflection till he wasted away and was changed into a flower.

  Canto XXXI

  THE CENTRAL PIT OF MALEBOLGE

  The Giants

  Dante’s spirits rise again as the Poets approach the Central Pit, a great well, at the bottom of which lies Cocytus, the Ninth and final circle of Hell. Through the darkness Dante sees what appears to be a city of great towers, but as he draws near he discovers that the great shapes he has seen are the Giants and Titans who stand perpetual guard inside the well-pit with the upper halves of their bodies rising above the rim.

  Among the Giants, Virgil identifies NIMROD, builder of the Tower of Babel; EPHIALTES and BRIAREUS, who warred against the Gods; and TITYOS and TYPHON, who insulted Jupiter. Also here, but for no specific offense, is ANTAEUS, and his presence makes it clear that the Giants are placed here less for their particular sins than for their general natures.

  These are the sons of earth, embodiments of elemental forces unbalance
d by love, desire without restraint and without acknowledgment of moral and theological law. They are symbols of the earth-trace that every devout man must clear from his soul, the unchecked passions of the beast. Raised from the earth, they make the very gods tremble. Now they are returned to the darkness of their origins, guardians of earth’s last depth.

  At Virgil’s persuasion, Antaeus takes the Poets in his huge palm and lowers them gently to the final floor of Hell.

  One and the same tongue had first wounded me so that the blood came rushing to my cheeks, and then supplied the soothing remedy.

  Just so, as I have heard, the magic steel of the lance that was Achilles’ and his father’s could wound at a touch, and, at another, heal.

  We turned our backs on the valley and climbed from it to the top of the stony bank that walls it round, crossing in silence to the central pit.

  Here it was less than night and less than day; my eyes could make out little through the gloom, but I heard the shrill note of a trumpet bray

  louder than any thunder. As if by force, it drew my eyes; I stared into the gloom along the path of the sound back to its source.

  After the bloody rout when Charlemagne had lost the band of Holy Knights, Roland blew no more terribly for all his pain.

  And as I stared through that obscurity, I saw what seemed a cluster of great towers, whereat I cried: “Master, what is this city?”

  And he: “You are still too far back in the dark to make out clearly what you think you see; it is natural that you should miss the mark:

  You will see clearly when you reach that place how much your eyes mislead you at a distance; I urge you, therefore, to increase your pace.”

  Then taking my hand in his, my Master said: “The better to prepare you for strange truth, let me explain those shapes you see ahead:

  they are not towers but giants. They stand in the well from the navel down; and stationed round its bank they mount guard on the final pit of Hell.”

  Just as a man in a fog that starts to clear begins little by little to piece together the shapes the vapor crowded from the air—

  so, when those shapes grew clearer as I drew across the darkness to the central brink, error fled from me; and my terror grew.

  For just as at Montereggione the great towers crown the encircling wall; so the grim giants whom Jove still threatens when the thunder roars

  raised from the rim of stone about that well the upper halves of their bodies, which loomed up like turrets through the murky air of Hell.

  I had drawn close enough to one already to make out the great arms along his sides, the face, the shoulders, the breast, and most of the belly.

  Nature, when she destroyed the last exemplars on which she formed those beasts, surely did well to take such executioners from Mars.

  And if she has not repented the creation of whales and elephants, the thinking man will see in that her justice and discretion:

  for where the instrument of intelligence is added to brute power and evil will, mankind is powerless in its own defense.

  His face, it seemed to me, was quite as high and wide as the bronze pine cone in St. Peter’s with the rest of him proportioned accordingly:

  so that the bank, which made an apron for him from the waist down, still left so much exposed that three Frieslanders standing on the rim,

  one on another, could not have reached his hair; for to that point at which men’s capes are buckled, thirty good hand-spans of brute bulk rose clear.

  “Rafel mahee amek zabi almit,” began a bellowed chant from the brute mouth for which no sweeter psalmody was fit.

  And my Guide in his direction: “Babbling fool, stick to your horn and vent yourself with it when rage or passion stir your stupid soul.

  Feel there around your neck, you muddle-head, and find the cord; and there’s the horn itself, there on your overgrown chest.” To me he said:

  “His very babbling testifies the wrong he did on earth: he is Nimrod, through whose evil mankind no longer speaks a common tongue.

  Waste no words on him: it would be foolish. To him all speech is meaningless; as his own, which no one understands, is simply gibberish.”

  We moved on, bearing left along the pit, and a crossbow-shot away we found the next one, an even huger and more savage spirit.

  What master could have bound so gross a beast I cannot say, but he had his right arm pinned behind his back, and the left across his breast

  by an enormous chain that wound about him from the neck down, completing five great turns before it spiraled down below the rim.

  “This piece of arrogance,” said my Guide to me, “dared try his strength against the power of Jove; for which he is rewarded as you see.

  He is Ephialtes, who made the great endeavour with the other giants who alarmed the Gods; the arms he raised then, now are bound forever.”

  “Were it possible, I should like to take with me,” I said to him, “the memory of seeing the immeasurable Briareus.” And he:

  “Nearer to hand, you may observe Antaeus who is able to speak to us, and is not bound. It is he will set us down in Cocytus,

  the bottom of all guilt. The other hulk stands far beyond our road. He too, is bound and looks like this one, but with a fiercer sulk.”

  No earthquake in the fury of its shock ever seized a tower more violently, than Ephialtes, hearing, began to rock.

  Then I dreaded death as never before; and I think I could have died for very fear had I not seen what manacles he wore.

  We left the monster, and not far from him we reached Antaeus, who to his shoulders alone soared up a good five ells above the rim.

  “O soul who once in Zama’s fateful vale—where Scipio became the heir of glory when Hannibal and all his troops turned tail—

  took more than a thousand lions for your prey; and in whose memory many still believe the sons of earth would yet have won the day

  had you joined with them against High Olympus—do not disdain to do us a small service, but set us down where the cold grips Cocytus.

  Would you have us go to Tityos or Typhon?—this man can give you what is longed for here: therefore do not refuse him, but bend down.

  For he can still make new your memory: he lives, and awaits long life, unless Grace call him before his time to his felicity.”

  Thus my Master to that Tower of Pride; and the giant without delay reached out the hands which Hercules had felt, and raised my Guide.

  Virgil, when he felt himself so grasped, called to me: “Come, and I will hold you safe.” And he took me in his arms and held me clasped.

  The way the Carisenda seems to one who looks up from the leaning side when clouds are going over it from that direction,

  making the whole tower seem to topple—so Antaeus seemed to me in the fraught moment when I stood clinging, watching from below

  as he bent down; while I with heart and soul wished we had gone some other way, but gently he set us down inside the final hole

  whose ice holds Judas and Lucifer in its grip. Then straightened like a mast above a ship.

  NOTES

  5. ACHILLES’ LANCE. Peleus, father of Achilles, left this magic lance to his son. (Ovid, Metamorphoses, XIII, 171 ff.) Sonneteers of Dante’s time made frequent metaphoric use of this lance: just as the lance could cure and then heal, so could the lady’s look destroy with love and her kiss make whole.

  14-15. stared . . . along the path of the sound: Another of Dante’s peculiar reports of how the senses work. He treats his eyes here as if they were radio-compasses tracking a beam. There is not another man in literature who would anatomize this reaction in this way. Compare with this the opening of Canto XX and the note on Dante’s peculiar treatment of his vision.

  17. Roland: Nephew of Charlemagne, hero of the French epic poem, the Chanson de Roland. He protected the rear of Charlemagne’s column on the return march through the Pyrenees from a war against the Saracens. When he was attacked he was too proud to blow his horn as a signal fo
r help, but as he was dying he blew so prodigious a blast that it was heard by Charlemagne eight miles away. Band of Holy Knights: The original is “la santa gesta,” which may be interpreted as “the holy undertaking.” “Gesta,” however, can also mean “a sworn band or fellowship of men at arms” (such as the Knights of the Round Table), and since it was his Knights, rather than his undertaking, that Charlemagne lost, the second rendering seems more apt in context.