The Inferno (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Dante Alighieri

  4 (p. 126) I do not think Maremma has so many serpents as he had all along his back: The Maremma (also mentioned in canto XIII: 8—9 and canto XXIX: 48—49) is a marshy, malaria-ridden section of Tuscany along the coast that was once infested with snakes.

  5 (pp. 126—127) That one is Cacus ... the fraudulent theft he made of the great herd: Cacus is Vulcan’s son. Dante follows long but perhaps mistaken literary tradition to represent him as a centaur covered with snakes and carrying a fire-belching dragon on his back, but in the Aeneid, Book VIII, Virgil says only that he is half-human. Cacus was a thief, since he stole some of Hercules’ cattle that had been brought into Italy. Because of this theft, Cacus “goes not on the same road with his brothers”—he is not assigned to guard Phlegethon with the other centaurs in the seventh circle (canto XII). The cave into which Cacus tried to hide the cattle stolen from Hercules was located on one of the seven hills of ancient Rome (Mount Aventine); the reference to a “lake of blood” comes from a hint in Dante’s Virgilian source that Cacus devoured human flesh inside his cave.

  6 (p. 127) Cianfa: This is a Florentine thief who died toward the end of the thirteenth century and who has been identified with the Donati family by early commentators on Dante. Soon, in 1. 50, he will appear in the form of a serpent.

  7 (p. 127) from chin to nose my finger laid: Dante the Pilgrim bids Virgil to remain silent.

  8 (p. 127) Behold! A serpent with six feet ...fastens wholly on him: The treatment of the thieves allows Dante to try his hand at the poetry of metamorphosis and to challenge the poets identified with this subject matter, Ovid and Lucan, with his own skill. Vanni Fucci was the first metamorphosis in the poem (canto XXIV: 97-120), since he is struck by a serpent at the base of the neck, turns to ash, and is resurrected from the pile of ashes, only to undergo this punishment for eternity. The second and even more complicated metamorphosis involves Cianfa, who here attaches himself in the form of a six-footed serpent to another sinner (we discover that he is a Florentine named Agnello). The two sinners merge, like ivy attached to a tree (11. 58-60); or like two pieces of heated wax melting together (11. 61-63); or in the way a flame on a piece of white paper becomes intermixed with the brown color of the paper burning before it turns to black ash (11. 64-66).

  9 (p. 128) the reins: See canto XXIV, note 8; here Dante refers to the buttocks.

  10 (p. 129) Even as a lizard: This is the beginning of a third complex metamorphosis (11. 79-141) that Dante describes as taking place during the hot, dog days of July and August—the “days canicular,” when Sirius, the Dog Star, rises up with the sun. The first sinner appears as a “small fiery serpent” (1. 83) and is only identifiable in the last line of the canto as Francesco de’ Cavalcanti (see note 18). He attaches himself to the navel of another sinner—Buoso (identified in 1. 140)—and they basically exchange, or transmute, their natures, as Dante says in 11. 100-103. The lizard to which Dante refers (il ramarro) is the kind of green lizard that is commonly found in Italy and most Mediterranean locations on rocks or walls during the hot summer days. They are extremely quick in their movements, and thus the poet compares the speed of such common reptiles to that of the “small, fiery serpent” he sees.

  11 (p. 129) that part whereat is first received our ailment: The navel.

  12 (p. 129) Henceforth be silent Lucan ... Be silent Ovid: Employing a theme of traditional classical and medieval rhetoric to crow over his triumph, Dante points to famous classical versions of metamorphoses and attacks by serpents that he believes he has surpassed. In the Pharsalia, Book IX, Lucan describes the horrible deaths of Sabellus and Nassidius, soldiers marching across the desert in Cato’s army. After being bitten by a deadly serpent, Sabellus turned into a puddle of corruption and Nassidius swelled up until he burst his armor. In Metamorphoses, Ovid describes how Cadmus was changed into a snake (Book IV) and how Arethusa was changed into a fountain (Book V). Dante is quick to note that Ovid never transmuted two different natures and, as a result, his poetic skill surpasses that of the Roman poet (11. 100—102).

  13 (p. 129-130) Together they responded in such wise. . . . The one uprose and down the other fell, though turning not away their impious lamps: Francesco de’ Cavalcanti is being transformed from a snake into human form and stands upright, while the other sinner, Buoso, falls down because he is being transformed into a snake. Each stares into the other’s eyes (“their impious lamps”; in the Bible, Matthew 6: 22, the eye is described as the lamp of the body). Francesco’s changes from a snake into human form are as follows: The tail becomes human legs; the front paws become human arms; the rear legs become a penis; the snake hide becomes human skin; his prone posture as a snake becomes human erect posture; his snake nose becomes a face; and his snake hiss becomes a human voice. Exactly the opposite transformation takes place in Buoso: human legs to tail; human arms to front paws; penis to rear legs; human skin to snake hide; erect human posture to prone snake posture; human face into a snake nose; and human voice to a snake hiss.

  14 (p. 131) “I’ll have Buoso run, crawling as I have done”: Still unidentified himself, Francesco de’ Calvacanti names Buoso. Now that Francesco has been changed from a serpent into a human being, with the power to speak rather than merely to hiss, he hopes that Buoso will be made to crawl for a while before the next transformation, as he has been forced to do.

  15 (p. 131) the seventh ballast: Dante implies that the seventh circle is like the hold of a cargo ship filled with worthless materials of ballast, used to balance the weight inside a ship. The mention of a ship provides a hint of the next major figure and theme to appear in the poem—Ulysses and his epic sea voyages, which Dante discusses in canto XXVI.

  16 (p. 131) if aught my pen transgress: It has been suggested that in this passage Dante may offer an excuse for spending so much time on the metamorphoses—the sights were so marvelous that his pen strayed. It has also been argued that Dante may be suggesting that the incredible sights he was reporting caused him to work hurriedly, blotching the manuscript with ink in the process. The interpretation of the passage hinges upon the meaning of a rather unusual verb, abborracciare, which combines the idea of doing something badly and hurriedly as well as that of wandering or of being confused.

  17 (p. 131) Puccio Sciancato: This is the third sinner who appeared with the other two in 1. 35 (“spirits three had underneath us come”). Puccio is the only one of the three Florentine thieves who does not assume a different shape. He was a member of a Ghibelline family, the Galigai, and was exiled from Florence in 1268. Little of his career as a thief is known to us, but Dante undoubtedly knew some story of his transgression that has not come down to us in detail.

  18 (p. 131) he whom thou, Gaville, weepest: The final line of the canto finally provides the identification of the soul who first appeared earlier as a little snake (1. 83). Francesco de’ Cavalcanti, known as Guercio, was murdered by the people of Gaville, a town in the Val d‘Arno in Tuscany, and in turn the Cavalcanti family avenged his death so ferociously that they practically depopulated the town, hence the townspeople’s weeping.

  CANTO XXVI

  1 (p. 132) over sea and land thou beatest thy wings: Dante’s ironic apostrophe to his native city underscores his bitterness at the corruption and the political strife causing his exile. It is possible that the reference to Florence’s dominion over sea and land refers to a Latin inscription on the Palazzo del Podestà boasting that the city rules over land, sea, and the entire world.

  2 (p. 132) our dreams are true: In Dante’s time, as during the classical period, it was believed that dreams experienced in the early morning just before waking were prophetic. During the Pilgrim’s journey through Purgatory, he will experience three such waking dreams—in cantos IX, XIX, and XXVII.

  3 (p. 132) What Prato ... the more I age: Commentators and scholars have advanced several interpretations of this passage. It may refer to the 1309 revolt in Prato (a Tuscan town just outside of Florence) against the Black Guelphs. Or it may refer to C
ardinal Niccolò da Prato, who failed in his attempts in 1304 to bring peace to Florence’s warring factions after Pope Benedict IV sent him there as papal legate. The cardinal became angry and placed the city under an interdict. A number of disasters that ensued in Prato (the collapse of a bridge during a religious ceremony, the strife between Black and White Guelphs, a large fire) were attributed to the negative effects of the cardinal’s interdict.

  4 (p. 132) bourns: Scholars have argued on Dante’s intention in the Italian original here, accepting either i borni (the boundaries formed by the outcroppings of the rocks), the more traditional reading that Longfellow follows, or iborni (referring to the pallid color of the Pilgrims as they descend the stairs). I believe Longfellow’s reading is the correct one.

  5 (p. 134) Elijah’s chariot at departing: In the Bible, the prophet Elisha sees Elijah carried off to Heaven in a fiery chariot (2 Kings 2: 11).

  6 (p. 134) every flame a sinner steals away: We are now in the eighth Bolgia, where evil counselors are punished inside a flame that is perhaps a parody of their glib tongues, the instrument of their sin.

  7 (p. 134) “it seems uprising from the pyre where was Eteocles with his brother placed”: Dante compares the divided flame he sees to the flame that arose from the funeral pyre of Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Oedipus, who fought over the Kingdom of Thebes (Polynices led the group of allies who formed against Eteocles, known as Seven Against Thebes). They killed each other in combat and were buried together. Dante’s sources are Statius, Thebaid, Book XII, and Lucan, Pharsalia, Book I.

  8 (p. 134) Ulysses and Diomed: In the Trojan War, Ulysses (King of Ithaca) and Diomedes (King of Argos) fought on the victorious Greek side (not the side Dante favored, since the offspring of the Trojans founded Rome). It is important to remember that Dante never read Homer’s Iliad and knew about the Trojan War only through what he had read in Virgil’s Aeneid and the works of a number of lesser authors, including Dicyts the Cretan and Dares the Phrygian. Basically, much of what he recounts about Ulysses is a fiction of his own invention, although he accurately captures the shrewd, calculating personality of Homer’s protagonist.

  9 (pp. 134-135) “The ambush of the horse . . . there is borne”: Ulysses and Diomedes are punished as evil counselors in Hell. Ulysses proposed the Trojan horse and also tricked Achilles into joining the campaign against Troy, during which he was killed. Deidamia, daughter of the King of Sykros, bore Achilles a son and died of grief when she learned of his death in battle (in the Purgatory, canto XXII, we learn she is in Limbo). Dante’s source here is the Achilleid, by Statius. Both Ulysses and Diomedes stole the Palladium, a wooden image of Athena that the goddess entrusted to Troy; the theft ensured a Greek victory over the Trojans.

  10 (p. 135) “they might disdain ... discourse of thine”: Virgil’s refusal to allow Dante to address the two Greeks directly has provoked a great deal of critical debate. Dante knew no Greek and his native tongue, Italian, was derived from Latin. While Latin was the classical language of the Roman Republic and Empire, and surpassed Greek in the realms of politics and economics, Greek remained the language of culture, and all educated Romans spoke Greek fluently. Perhaps Virgil mediates the encounter with the Greek heroes because his poetry was one of the most important means of transmitting Greek culture to Latin Rome and medieval Italy.

  11 - (p. 135) “If I deserved of you ... the lofty verses”: Virgil’s mention of his “lofty verses” brings to mind canto XX, line 113, where he describes his epic poem as “my lofty Tragedy.” Virgil does mention Ulysses and Diomed in his Aeneid, but does not do so favorably, since his poem celebrates the Trojan origins of ancient Rome. Western culture was prejudiced against the Greeks (for example, Shakespeare famously admonishes us to beware Greeks bearing gifts) right up to the Romantic period, when Homer was rediscovered and Greece, for the first time in Western culture, was raised above Rome.

  12 (p. 135) “of the antique flame the greater horn”: The larger part of the horn-shaped flame represents Ulysses, since he was the most important of the two Greek warriors.

  13 (p. 135) “When I from Circe had departed.... ”: Ulysses’ speech (11. 90-142) represents one of the high points of Dante’s epic poetry. After escaping from the enchantress Circe, who had transformed Ulysses’ sailors into swine, Ulysses claims to have visited Gaëta on the coast of Italy above Naples—and to have arrived there before Aeneas, who does so in Virgil’s Aeneid, Book VII; “or ever yet Aeneas named it so,” 1. 93, is a reference to “Caieta,” as Aeneas called the place, after his nurse, who died there. Ulysses admits to abandoning the ties of family and his love for his son (Telemachus), wife (Penelope), and father (Laertes) in favor of a hubristic desire to know the world. This was exactly the opposite course taken by Virgil’s pious hero Aeneas, who revered his son Ascanius, his wife Creusa, and his father Anchises, and who always obeyed the commands of the gods, to the point of sometimes annoying his modern readers. Ulysses’ adventuresome voyage in a single ship took him beyond the known world, the Strait of Gibraltar, then called the Pillars of Hercules (1. 108). His mention of Seville (1. 110) simply refers to the fact that he has left Spain behind, just as his mention of Ceuta (1. III), a city on the North African coast opposite Gibraltar, signifies Africa. Some recent commentators have suggested that the voyage of Ulysses beyond the boundaries of the medieval world might reflect an expedition of the Vivaldi brothers, who in 1291 set out from Italy to reach India by sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar and were never heard from again. For the post-Renaissance reader of Dante, there is certainly a touch of Christopher Columbus in Dante’s Ulysses.

  14 (p. 136) “but for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge”: One of the most famous and appealing of all of Dante’s lines (ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza) has been as misunderstood as the equally famous lines uttered by Francesca da Rimini in canto V. Ulysses is being punished in Hell because of his treacherous words. The beautiful speech he gives to his men to convince them to sail to their deaths (11. 112—120) may give the impression that Dante has created a Romantic hero, but in point of fact, Dante considers Ulysses to be a paragon of pride; even the glib Ulysses admits that his voyage was “our mad flight” (1. 125). In Homer’s Odyssey (a poem Dante could not have known, though he captures the spirit of the work in his depiction of Ulysses), the protagonist, Odysseus, indirectly kills his men off in adventure after adventure, usually motivated by instincts that Dante would not have admired if he had had access to the poem.

  15 (p. 136) “on the larboard side ... five times rekindled and as many quenched”: After passing through the Strait of Gibraltar, Ulysses’ ship turns left toward the Equator, where the men can see that night beholds “the other pole”—that is, the Antarctic—and “ours,” a reference to the stars of “our” hemisphere, probably the North Star. Ulysses and his men sail for five months (“five times rekindled”).

  16 (p. 136) a mountain: Ulysses has no way of knowing it, but he and his men have sighted the Mount of Purgatory that rises from the sea in the Southern Hemisphere at a point exactly opposite the holy city of Jerusalem. Why a Mount of Purgatory existed in the time of Ulysses, before Christ appeared to redeem the world and the idea of purgation was born, is never addressed. Naturally, Dante treats the Mount of Purgatory at great length in Purgatory, the second canticle of his epic.

  CANTO XXVII

  1 (p. 138) As the Sicilian bull ... with his file had modulated it: Phalaris, the tyrant who ruled the Sicilian city of Agrigentum from c.570 B.C.—C.554 B.C., had an artist named Perillus construct a bronze bull into which a victim could be placed. The bull was heated, roasting the victim, whose screams sounded like the roar of a bellowing animal. Phalaris tested this device of torture on Perillus. Dante compares the manner in which the bull’s roar was produced to the way the sinners in this region of Hell can speak through the tongue-shaped flame.

  2 (p. 138) now wast speaking Lombard: The sinner has overheard Virgil dismissing Ulysses, and apparently he recognizes the lan
guage Virgil speaks as the Lombard dialect of Italian. “Lombard” may also be employed here simply to mean “Italian.” Although the sinner’s name is not identified here and is only later revealed in an indirect manner (11. 67-78), there is no doubt that he is Guido da Montefeltro (1223-1298), the most important Ghibelline leader in the Romagna district of northern Italy.

  3 (p. 139) “between Urbino and the yoke whence Tiber bursts”: This refers to the Montefeltro region, between the city of Urbino and Monte Coronaro, where the Tiber River begins.

  4 (p. 139) Ravenna stands ... and a free state: In his eager attempt to answer the question posed by the tortured sinner in 1. 28—whether the peoples of the Romagna are at war or not—the Pilgrim mentions cities and forts in the Romagna, all governed by different rulers. The city of Ravenna on the Adriatic coast was then ruled by Guido Vecchio (d. 1310), head of the powerful Polenta family, who controlled the city from the thirteenth century to 1441, when it was taken over by Venice. Guido, whose coat of arms bore the insignia of an eagle, was the father of Francesca da Rimini (see canto V). Cervia, a town a few miles below Ravenna, was valuable because of the revenue its salt generated. In 11. 43-44, Dante is referring to the town of Forlì (“the city which one made the long resistance”): Guido da Montefeltro defended the city against a French attack in 1282, during which time the French suffered heavy losses (“of the French a sanguinary heap”); the city then came under the rule of the Or deleffi family, whose coat of arms contained a green lion (the “Green Paws” of 1. 45). “Verrucchio’s ancient Mastiff” (1. 46) refers to Malatesta da Verrucchio (d. 1312), the lord of Rimini who captured the city from the Ghibellines in 1295. (One of his sons was the husband of the aforementioned Francesca da Rimini of canto V.) The “new” mastiff is Malatestino, who succeeded his father as lord of Rimini in 1312 and ruled until 1317. Dante refers to the men as dogs, or mastiffs, because of their cruelty, and he describes them as fashioning “wimbles,” or augurs, of their teeth, the better to bite into their beleaguered subjects (1. 48). The “bad disposal of Montagna” (1. 47) refers to the fact that in 1295, after Malatesta captured the leader of the Ghibellines of Rimini, Montagna de’ Parcitati, he had him murdered by his son Malatestino. The towns of Faenza on the Lamone River and Imola on the Santerno River were governed by a ruler Dante calls the “Lioncel of the white lair” (1. 50); the so-called “little lion” was Maghinardo Pagani da Susinna, whose coat of arms bore a blue lion on a white field. Dante describes him as changing sides, since he was Ghibelline in Romagna but supported the Guelphs in Tuscany. The city “of which the Savio bathes the flank” (1. 52) is Cesena, which is located between Forlì and Rimini; it “lives between tyranny and a free state,” because it was not ruled by a tyrant like the other cities of the Romagna, and its affairs were controlled by a cousin of Guido da Montefeltro named Galasso da Montefeltro.