Dante: His Times and His Work Part 7

A few words on the mythological and cla.s.sical allusions in the _Commedia_ may be useful to those who are not familiar with Greek and Latin literature. The subject is a very wide one, and Dante's treatment of heathen mythology is very curious. It is especially noticeable in the _Purgatory_, where every sin and its contrary virtue are ill.u.s.trated by a pair of examples from Scripture history on the one hand, and Greek or Roman history or legend (for both seem alike to him) on the other.

Sloth, for instance, is exemplified by the Israelites who "thought scorn" of the promised land, and the slothful followers of aeneas, who hung back from the conquest of Italy; while Mary going into the hill country with haste, and Caesar dashing into Spain are the chosen models of prompt response to the call of duty. So, again, at the very outset of the poem, we find St. Paul and aeneas quoted as the two instances of living men who have been permitted to see the future world; and Dante professes his own unworthiness to be put on a level with them, apparently without a hint that he holds the _aeneid_ any lower as an authority than the Epistle to the Corinthians. In a practically pagan humanist of the days of Leo X. this would hardly surprise us; but it is, at first sight, not a little astonishing in the case of a poet to whom the Christian Church and Christian revelation were vital truths. It is, however, clear that to the mediaeval mind the Bible, though no doubt the highest authority, was in matters of morality, and to some extent even of theology, only "first among its peers." Aquinas quotes Aristotle, the Scriptures, and the Fathers almost indiscriminately in support of his positions. Dante, approaching the subject from a political as well as a moral point, takes for his guide and philosopher the poet Virgil, who, as the Middle Ages deemed, had both foretold the glories of the Church, and sung of the first origin of the Empire. It must never be forgotten that, to Dante, Church and Empire were merely two aspects of one Divine inst.i.tution. Brutus and Ca.s.sius are hardly less guilty than Judas; and that simply from the official point of view, for there is no attempt to sanctify, much less to deify, Caesar as an individual. None the less is the work that he did holy, and this holiness communicates itself, as readers of the _De Monarchia_ will remember, to the whole of the long course of workings by which Divine Providence prepared the way for it. The finger of G.o.d is no less plainly to be seen in the victory of aeneas over Turnus or of the Romans over the Samnites than in the pa.s.sage of the Israelites across the Red Sea, or the repulse of the a.s.syrians. Roman history is no less sacred than Hebrew. This being so, we shall not be surprised to find that a certain authority attaches to the literature of either one of the chosen peoples. Did they conflict, doubtless the poet, as an orthodox Catholic, would admit that Virgil must give way to Isaiah; but he would in all probability decline to allow that they could conflict, at all events within the region common to them both. No doubt, just as Caesar and Peter have, besides their common domain, functions peculiar to each, wherein Caesar may not interfere with Peter, or as Aristotle may err when he trespa.s.ses on ground that the Church has made her province (for I interpret _Purg._ xxv. 63 as an allusion to Aristotle), so might Virgil or Lucan become a teacher of false doctrine if he ventured to teach theology. (Statius, who does teach theology, as in the pa.s.sage just referred to, is, it must be remembered, a Christian.) But Virgil at all events holds scrupulously aloof from any over-stepping of his functions; and within his own limits his authority is infallible. Why, then, should we not accept his account of the infernal regions as trustworthy? He tells us that Charon is the ferryman who carries the souls across to the nether world; Minos the judge who sentences them; Pluto (whom we confuse perhaps a little with Plutus) a great personage in those regions. Furies sit over the inner gate; Gorgons and Harpies play their parts. Holy Scripture has nothing to say against these conceptions; so there is nothing to prevent our accepting Virgil's account, and expanding it into mediaeval precision and symmetry. Thus we have all the official hierarchy of h.e.l.l ready provided. As has already been observed, it is not until Dante reaches a point very far down that anything like what we may call the Christian devil appears.[43] Throughout the upper circles the work, whether of tormenting or merely of guarding, is performed exclusively by beings taken from cla.s.sic mythology. If we except the Giants, who seem to occupy a kind of intermediate position between prisoner and gaoler, Geryon is the last of these whom we meet; and him Dante has practically transformed into a being of his own invention: for there is little in common between the personage slain by Hercules and the strange monster with the face of a just man and the tail of a venomous scorpion. As might perhaps be expected when there was plenty of material to hand in Tuscany, less use is made of the persons of cla.s.sical mythology in finding subjects for punishment. Among the virtuous heathen several find their place; but it may be doubted whether Electra or Orpheus were to Dante any less historical than Plato or Seneca. Semiramis, Dido, Achilles, again, would all be recorded in the histories of Orosius and others whom Dante read, with dates and possibly portraits. Capaneus, one of the "Seven against Thebes," is more nearly mythological; but as the utterer of the earliest profession of reasoned atheism[44] he could hardly be omitted as the typical blasphemer. The most curious example of all is the Thais whom we find among the flatterers. She does not attain even to the dignity of a myth, being only a character in a play of Terence, and borrowed by Dante from Cicero; probably the strangest instance on record of the "realization" of a dramatic personage.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] See p. 102.

[44] "Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor" (Statius, _Thebaid_, iii.

661).

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THE PURGATORY OF DANTE ALIGHIERI.

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