The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  40. Montereggione (Mon-teh-reh-DJOE-neh): A castle in Val d’Elsa near Siena built in 1213. Its walls had a circumference of more than half a kilometer and were crowned by fourteen great towers, most of which are now destroyed.

  59. the bronze pine cone in St. Peter’s: Originally a part of a fountain. In Dante’s time it stood in front of the Basilica of St. Peter. It is now inside the Vatican. It stands about thirteen feet high (Scartazzini-Vandelli give the height as four meters) but shows signs of mutilation that indicate it was once higher. Many translations incorrectly render the original “la pina” as pine tree. In Italian “pino” is “pine tree” and “pina” is “pine cone.” Like most of Dante’s measurements it is a poetical rather than a literal assistance in determining the height of the giants. How tall is a man whose face is thirteen feet long? If the face represents one-sixth of a man’s height, a minimum figure will be seventy-eight feet; but other interpretations of Dante’s details will yield figures ranging from forty to one hundred feet. Lines 65-66, for example, would yield a figure between 300 and 474 inches for the measurement from the waist to (roughly) the collarbone.

  63. Frieslanders: The men of Friesland were reputed to be the tallest in Europe.

  66. thirty good hand-spans: Dante uses the word “palma,” which in Italian signifies the spread of the open hand, a considerably larger measure than the English “hand” which equals four inches. The Dante Society edition of the Comedy equates ten palms to four meters or 158 inches, but 15.8 inches seems excessive. Ten inches would seem closer to a “good hand-span.”

  67. Rafel mahee, etc.: This line, as Virgil explains below, is Nimrod’s gibberish.

  77. Nimrod: The first king of Babylon, supposed to have built the Tower of Babel, for which he is punished, in part, by the confusion of his own tongue and understanding. Nothing in the Biblical reference portrays him as one of the earth-giants.

  94. Ephialtes: Son of Neptune (the sea) and Iphimedia. With his brother, Otus, he warred against the Gods striving to pile Mt. Ossa on Mt. Olympus, and Mt. Pelion on Mt. Ossa. Apollo restored good order by killing the two brothers.

  99. Briareus: Another of the giants who rose against the Olympian Gods. Virgil speaks of him as having a hundred arms and fifty hands (Aeneid, X, 565-568), but Dante has need only of his size, and of his sin, which he seems to view as a kind of revolt of the angels, just as the action of Ephialtes and Otus may be read as a pagan distortion of the Tower of Babel legend. He was the son of Uranus and Tellus.

  100. Antaeus: The son of Neptune and Tellus (the earth). In battle, his strength grew every time he touched the earth, his mother. He was accordingly invincible until Hercules killed him by lifting him over his head and strangling him in mid-air. Lucan (Pharsalia, IV, 595-660) describes Antaeus’ great lion-hunting feat in the valley of Zama where, in a later era, Scipio defeated Hannibal. Antaeus did not join in the rebellion against the Gods and therefore he is not chained.

  123. Cocytus: The final pit of Hell. See the remaining Cantos.

  124. Tityos or Typhon: Also sons of Tellus. They offended Jupiter, who had them hurled into the crater of Etna, below which the Lake Tartarus was supposed to lie.

  136. the Carisenda: A leaning tower of Bologna.

  HELL NINTH CIRCLE (COCYTUS)

  Canto XXXII

  CIRCLE NINE: COCYTUS

  ROUND ONE: CAÏNA

  ROUND TWO: ANTENORA

  Compound Fraud

  The Treacherous to Kin

  The Treacherous to Country

  At the bottom of the well Dante finds himself on a huge frozen lake. This is COCYTUS, the NINTH CIRCLE, the fourth and last great water of Hell, and here, fixed in the ice, each according to his guilt, are punished sinners guilty of TREACHERY AGAINST THOSE TO WHOM THEY WERE BOUND BY SPECIAL TIES. The ice is divided into four concentric rings marked only by the different positions of the damned within the ice.

  This is Dante’s symbolic equivalent of the final guilt. The treacheries of these souls were denials of love (which is God) and of all human warmth. Only the remorseless dead center of the ice will serve to express their natures. As they denied God’s love, so are they furthest removed from the light and warmth of His Sun. As they denied all human ties, so are they bound only by the unyielding ice.

  The first round is CAINA, named for Cain. Here lie those who were treacherous against blood ties. They have their necks and heads out of the ice and are permitted to bow their heads—a double boon since it allows them some protection from the freezing gale and, further, allows their tears to fall without freezing their eyes shut. Here Dante sees ALESSANDRO and NAPOLEONE DEGLI ALBERTI, and he speaks to CAMICION, who identifies other sinners of this round.

  The second round is ANTENORA, named for Antenor, the Trojan who was believed to have betrayed his city to the Greeks. Here lie those guilty of TREACHERY TO COUNTRY. They, too, have their heads above the ice, but they cannot bend their necks, which are gripped by the ice. Here Dante accidentally kicks the head of BOCCA DEGLI ABBATI and then proceeds to treat him with a savagery he has shown to no other soul in Hell. Bocca names some of his fellow traitors, and the Poets pass on to discover two heads frozen together in one hole. One of them is gnawing the nape of the other’s neck.

  If I had rhymes as harsh and horrible

  as the hard fact of that final dismal hole

  which bears the weight of all the steeps of Hell,

  I might more fully press the sap and substance from my conception; but since I must do without them, I begin with some reluctance.

  For it is no easy undertaking, I say,

  to describe the bottom of the Universe;

  nor is it for tongues that only babble child’s play.

  But may those Ladies of the Heavenly Spring

  who helped Amphion wall Thebes, assist my verse,

  that the word may be the mirror of the thing.

  O most miscreant rabble, you who keep

  the stations of that place whose name is pain,

  better had you been born as goats or sheep!

  We stood now in the dark pit of the well,

  far down the slope below the Giant’s feet,

  and while I still stared up at the great wall,

  I heard a voice cry: “Watch which way you turn:

  take care you do not trample on the heads

  of the forworn and miserable brethren.”

  Whereat I turned and saw beneath my feet

  and stretching out ahead, a lake so frozen

  it seemed to be made of glass. So thick a sheet

  never yet hid the Danube’s winter course,

  nor, far away beneath the frigid sky,

  locked the Don up in its frozen source:

  for were Tanbernick and the enormous peak

  of Pietrapana to crash down on it,

  not even the edges would so much as creak.

  The way frogs sit to croak, their muzzles leaning

  out of the water, at the time and season

  when the peasant woman dreams of her day’s gleaning—

  Just so the livid dead are sealed in place

  up to the part at which they blushed for shame,

  and they beat their teeth like storks. Each holds his face

  bowed toward the ice, each of them testifies

  to the cold with his chattering mouth, to his heart’s grief

  with tears that flood forever from his eyes.

  When I had stared about me, I looked down

  and at my feet I saw two clamped together

  so tightly that the hair of their heads had grown

  together. “Who are you,” I said, “who lie

  so tightly breast to breast?” They strained their necks,

  and when they had raised their heads as if to reply,

  the tears their eyes had managed to contain

  up to that time gushed out, and the cold froze them

  between the lids, sealing them shut again

  tighter than any
clamp grips wood to wood,

  and mad with pain, they fell to butting heads

  like billy-goats in a sudden savage mood.

  And a wraith who lay to one side and below,

  and who had lost both ears to frostbite, said,

  his head still bowed: “Why do you watch us so?

  If you wish to know who they are who share one doom,

  they owned the Bisenzio’s valley with their father,

  whose name was Albert. They sprang from one womb,

  and you may search through all Caïna’s crew

  without discovering in all this waste

  a squab more fit for the aspic than these two;

  not him whose breast and shadow a single blow

  of the great lance of King Arthur pierced with light;

  nor yet Focaccia; nor this one fastened so

  into the ice that his head is all I see,

  and whom, if you are Tuscan, you know well—

  his name on the earth was Sassol Mascheroni.

  And I—to tell you all and so be through—

  was Camicion de’ Pazzi. I wait for Carlin

  beside whose guilt my sins will shine like virtue.”

  And leaving him, I saw a thousand faces

  discolored so by cold, I shudder yet

  and always will when I think of those frozen places.

  As we approached the center of all weight,

  where I went shivering in eternal shade,

  whether it was my will, or chance, or fate,

  I cannot say, but as I trailed my Guide

  among those heads, my foot struck violently

  against the face of one. Weeping, it cried:

  “Why do you kick me? If you were not sent

  to wreak a further vengeance for Montaperti,

  why do you add this to my other torment?”

  “Master,” I said, “grant me a moment’s pause

  to rid myself of a doubt concerning this one;

  then you may hurry me at your own pace.”

  The Master stopped at once, and through the volley

  of foul abuse the wretch poured out, I said:

  “Who are you who curse others so?” And he:

  “And who are you who go through the dead larder

  of Antenora kicking the cheeks of others

  so hard, that were you alive, you could not kick harder?”

  “I am alive,” I said, “and if you seek fame,

  it may be precious to you above all else

  that my notes on this descent include your name.”

  “Exactly the opposite is my wish and hope,”

  he answered. “Let me be; for it’s little you know

  of how to flatter on this icy slope.”

  I grabbed the hair of his dog’s-ruff and I said:

  “Either you tell me truly who you are,

  or you won’t have a hair left on your head.”

  And he: “Not though you snatch me bald. I swear

  I will not tell my name nor show my face.

  Not though you rip until my brain lies bare.”

  I had a good grip on his hair; already

  I had yanked out more than one fistful of it,

  while the wretch yelped, but kept his face turned from me;

  when another said: “Bocca, what is it ails you?

  What the Hell’s wrong? Isn’t it bad enough

  to hear you bang your jaws? Must you bark too?”

  “Now filthy traitor, say no more!” I cried,

  “for to your shame, be sure I shall bear back

  a true report of you.” The wretch replied:

  “Say anything you please but go away.

  And if you do get back, don’t overlook

  that pretty one who had so much to say

  just now. Here he laments the Frenchman’s price.

  ‘I saw Buoso da Duera,’ you can report,

  ‘where the bad salad is kept crisp on ice.’

  And if you’re asked who else was wintering here,

  Beccheria, whose throat was slit by Florence,

  is there beside you. Gianni de’ Soldanier

  is further down, I think, with Ganelon, and Tebaldello, who opened the gates of Faenza and let Bologna steal in with the dawn.”

  Leaving him then, I saw two souls together

  in a single hole, and so pinched in by the ice

  that one head made a helmet for the other.

  As a famished man chews crusts—so the one sinner

  sank his teeth into the other’s nape

  at the base of the skull, gnawing his loathsome dinner.

  Tydeus in his final raging hour

  gnawed Menalippus’ head with no more fury

  than this one gnawed at skull and dripping gore.

  “You there,” I said, “who show so odiously

  your hatred for that other, tell me why

  on this condition: that if in what you tell me

  you seem to have a reasonable complaint

  against him you devour with such foul relish,

  I, knowing who you are, and his soul’s taint,

  may speak your cause to living memory,

  God willing the power of speech be left to me.”

  NOTES

  3. which bears the weight of all the steeps of Hell: Literally, it is the base from which all the steeps rise; symbolically, it is the total and finality of all guilt.

  10. those Ladies of the Heavenly Spring, etc.: The Muses. They so inspired Amphion’s hand upon the lyre that the music charmed blocks of stone out of Mount Cithaeron, and the blocks formed themselves into the walls of Thebes.

  28-29. Tanbernick . . . Pietrapana: There is no agreement on the location of the mountain Dante called Tanbernick. Pietrapana, today known as la Pania, is in Tuscany.

  32-33. season . . . gleaning: The summer.

  35. the part at which they blushed: The cheeks. By extension, the whole face.

  41-61. two clamped together: Alessandro and Napoleone, Counts of Mangona. Among other holdings, they inherited a castle in the Val di Bisenzio. They seemed to have been at odds on all things and finally killed one another in a squabble over their inheritance and their politics (Alessandro was a Guelph and Napoleone a Ghibelline).

  61. him whose breast and shadow, etc.: Modred, King Arthur’s traitorous nephew. He tried to kill Arthur, but the king struck him a single blow of his lance, and when it was withdrawn, a shaft of light passed through the gaping wound and split the shadow of the falling traitor.

  63. Focaccia (Foh-KAH-tcha): Of the Cancellieri of Pistoia. He murdered his cousin (among others) and may have been the principal cause of a great feud that divided the Cancellieri, and split the Guelphs into the White and Black parties.

  66. Sassol Mascheroni: Of the Toschi of Florence. He was appointed guardian of one of his nephews and murdered him to get the inheritance for himself.

  68. Camicion de’ Pazzi (Kah-mih-TCHONE day PAH-tsee): Alberto Camicion de’ Pazzi of Valdarno. He murdered a kinsman. Carlin: Carlino de’ Pazzi, relative of Alberto. He was charged with defending for the Whites the castle of Piantravigne (Pyahntrah-VEE-nyeh) in Valdarno but surrendered it for a bribe. He belongs therefore in the next lower circle, Antenora, as a traitor to his country, and when he arrives there his greater sin will make Alberto seem almost virtuous by comparison.

  70. And leaving him: These words mark the departure from Caïna to Antenora.

  73. the center of all weight: In Dante’s cosmology the bottom of Hell is at the center of the earth, which is in turn the center of the universe; it is therefore the center of all gravity. Symbolically, it is the focal point of all guilt. Gravity, weight, and evil are equivalent symbols on one level; they are what ties man to the earth, what draws him down. At the center of all, Satan is fixed forever in the eternal ice. The journey to salvation, however, is up from that center, once the soul has realized the hideousness of sin.

  78. against the face of one: Bocca de
gli Abbati, a traitorous Florentine. At the battle of Montaperti (cf. Farinata, Canto X) he hacked off the hand of the Florentine standard bearer. The cavalry, lacking a standard around which it could rally, was soon routed.

  107. What the Hell’s wrong?: In the circumstances, a monstrous pun. The original is “qual diavolo ti tocca?” (what devil touches, or molests, you?) a standard colloquialism for “what’s the matter with you?” A similar pun occurs in line 117 “kept crisp (cool) on ice.” Colloquially “stare fresco” (to be or to remain cool) equals “to be left out in the cold,” i.e., to be out of luck.