The Divine Comedy Volume I Part 8

I seated myself on those huge shoulders. I wished to speak thus, "Take heed that thou embrace me," but the voice came not as I had thought. But he who other time had succored me, in other peril, soon as I mounted, clasped and sustained me with his arms: and he said, "Geryon, move on now; let the circles be wide, and the descending slow; consider the strange burden that thou hast."

As a little vessel goeth from its place, backward, backward, so he thence withdrew; and when he felt himself quite at play, he turned his tail to where his breast had been, and moved it, stretched out like an eel, and with his paws gathered the air to himself. Greater fear I do not think there was when Phaethon abandoned the reins, whereby heaven, as is still apparent, was scorched; nor when the wretched Icarus felt his flanks unfeathering through the melting of the wax, his father shouting to him, "Ill way thou holdest," than mine was, when I saw that I was in the air on every side, and saw every sight vanished, except that of the beast. He goes along swimming very slowly, wheels and descends, but I perceive it not, save by the wind upon my face, and from below.

I heard now on the right hand the gorge making beneath us a horrible roar; wherefore I stretch out my head, with my eyes downward. Then I became more afraid to lean over, because I saw fires and heard laments; whereat I, trembling, wholly cowered back. And I saw then, what I had not seen before, the descending and the wheeling, by the great evils that were drawing near on diverse sides.

As the falcon which has been long on wing, that, without sight of lure or bird, makes the falconer say, "Ah me, thou stoopest!"

descends weary, there whence he had set forth swiftly, through a hundred circles, and lights far from his master, disdainful and sullen; so Geryon set us at the bottom, at the very foot of the scarped rock, and, disburdened of our persons, darted away as arrow from the bowstring.

CANTO XVIII. Eighth Circle: the first pit: panders and seducers.-- Venedico Caccianimico.--Jason.--Second pit: false flatterers.-- Alessio Interminei.--Thais.

There is a place in h.e.l.l called Malebolge, all of stone of the color of iron, as is the encircling wall that surrounds it. Right in the middle of this field malign yawns an abyss exceeding wide and deep, the structure of which I will tell of in its place.

That belt, therefore, which remains between the abyss and the foot of the high bank is circular, and it has its ground divided into ten valleys. Such an aspect as where, for guard of the walls, many moats encircle castles, the place where they are presents, such image did these make here. And as in such strongholds from their thresholds to the outer bank are little bridges, so from the base of the precipitous wall started crags which traversed the d.y.k.es and the moats far as the abyss that collects and cuts them off.

In this place, shaken off from the back of Geryon, we found ourselves; and the Poet held to the left, and I moved on behind.

On the right hand I saw new sorrow, new torments, and new scourgers, with which the first pit [1] was replete. At its bottom were the sinners naked. This side the middle they came facing us; on the farther side with us, but with swifter pace. As the Romans, because of the great host in the year of Jubilee,[2]

have taken means upon the bridge for the pa.s.sage of the people, who on one side all have their front toward the Castle,[3] and go to Saint Peter's, and on the other toward the Mount.[4]

[1] Bolgia, literally, budget, purse, sack, here used for circular valley, or pit.

[2] The year 1299-1300, from Christmas to Easter.

[3] Of Sant' Angelo.

[4] The Capitoline.

Along the gloomy rock, on this side and on that, I saw horned demons with great scourges, who were beating them cruelly from behind. Ah! how they made them lift their heels at the first blows; truly not one waited for the second, or the third.

While I was going on, my eyes encountered one, and I said straightway, "Ere now for sight of him I have not fasted;"

wherefore to shape him out I stayed my feet, and the sweet Leader stopped with ire, and a.s.sented to my going somewhat back. And that scourged one thought to conceal himself by lowering his face, but little it availed him, for I said: "O thou that castest thine eye upon the ground, if the features that thou bearest are not false, thou art Venedico Caccianimico; but what brings thee unto such pungent sauces?"

And he to me, "Unwillingly I tell it, but thy clear speech compels me, which makes me recollect the olden world. I was he who brought the beautiful Ghisola[1] to do the will of the Marquis, how ever the shameful tale may be reported. And not the only Bolognese do I weep here, nay, this place is so full of them, that so many tongues are not now taught between Savena and the Reno to say sipa; [2] and if of this thou wishest pledge or testimony, bring to mind our avaricious heart." As he spoke thus a demon struck him with his scourge and said, "Begone, pandar, here are no women for coining."

[1] His own sister; the unseemly tale is known only through Dante and his fourteenth-century commentators, and the latter, while agreeing that the Marquis was one of the Esti of Ferrara, do not agree as to which of them he was.

[2] Bologna lies between the Savena and the Reno; sipa is the Bolognese form of sia, or si.

I rejoined my Escort; then with few steps we came to where a crag jutted from the bank.[1] Easily enough we ascended it, and turning to the right[2] upon its ridge, from those eternal circles we departed.

[1] Forming a bridge, thrown like an arch across the pit.

[2] The course of the Poets, which has mostly been to the left through the upper Circles, is now generally to proceed straight across the lower Circles where Fraud is punished. They had been going to the left at the foot of the precipice, and consequently turn to the right to ascend the bridge. The allegorical intention in the direction of their course is evident.

When we were there where it opens below to give pa.s.sage to the scourged, the Leader said, "Stop, and let the sight strike on thee of these other miscreants, of whom thou hast not yet seen the face, because they have gone along in the same direction with us."

From the ancient bridge we looked at the train that was coining toward us from the other side, and which the whip in like manner drives on. The good Master, without my asking, said to me, "Look at that great one who is coming, and seems not to shed a tear for pain. What royal aspect he still retains! He is Jason, who by courage and by wit despoiled the Colchians of their ram. He pa.s.sed by the isle of Lemnos, after the undaunted women pitiless had given all their males to death. There with tokens and with ornate words he deceived Hypsipyle, the maiden, who first had deceived all the rest. There he left her pregnant, and alone; such sin condemns him to such torment; and also for Medea is vengeance done. With him goes whoso in such wise deceives. And let this suffice to know of the first valley, and of those that it holds in its fangs."

Now we were where the narrow path sets across the second d.y.k.e, and makes of it shoulders for another arch. Here we heard people moaning in the next pit, and snorting with their muzzles, and with their palms beating themselves. The banks were encrusted with a mould because of the breath from below that sticks on them, and was making quarrel with the eyes and with the nose. The bottom is so hollowed out that no place sufficeth us for seeing it, without mounting on the crest of the arch where the crag rises highest. Hither we came, and thence, down in the ditch, I saw people plunged in an excrement that seemed as if it proceeded from human privies.

And while I am searching down there with my eye, I saw one with his head so foul with ordure that it was not apparent whether he were layman or clerk. He shouted to me, "Why art so greedy to look more at me than at the other filthy ones?" And I to him, "Because, if I remember rightly, ere now I have seen thee with dry hair, and thou art Alessio Interminei of Lucca[1]; therefore I eye thee more than all the rest." And he then, beating his pate, "Down here those flatteries wherewith my tongue was never cloyed have submerged me."

[1] Of him nothing is known but what these words tell.

Hereupon my Leader, "Mind thou push thy sight a little farther forward so that with thine eyes thou mayest quite reach the face of that dirty and disheveled creature, who is scratching herself there with her nasty nails, and now is crouching down and now standing on foot. She is Thais the prost.i.tute, who answered her paramour when he said, 'Have I great thanks from thee?'--'Nay, marvelous.'" [1] And herewith let our sight be satisfied.

[1] These words are derived from Terence, Eunuchus, act iii. sc.

1.

CANTO XIX. Eighth Circle third pit: simonists.--Pope Nicholas III.

Oh Simon Magus! Oh ye his wretched followers, who, rapacious, do prost.i.tute for gold and silver the things of G.o.d that ought to be the brides of righteousness, now it behoves for you the trumpet sound, since ye are in the third pit!

Already were we come to the next tomb,[1] mounted on that part of the crag which just above the middle of the ditch hangs plumb. Oh Supreme Wisdom, how great is the art that Thou displayest in Heaven, on Earth, and in the Evil World! and how justly doth Thy Power distribute!

[1] The next bolgia or pit.

I saw along the sides, and over the bottom, the livid stone full of holes all of one size, and each was circular. They seemed to me not less wide nor larger than those that in my beautiful Saint John are made as place for the baptizers [1] one of which, not many years ago, I broke for sake of one who was stifling in it; and be this the seal to undeceive all men. Forth from the mouth of each protruded the feet of a sinner, and his legs up to the calf, and the rest was within. The soles of all were both on fire, wherefore their joints quivered so violently that they would have snapped withes and bands. As the flaming of things oiled is wont to move only on the outer surface, so was it there from the heels to the toes.

[1] "My beautiful Saint John" is the Baptistery at Florence. In Dante's time the infants, born during the year, were all here baptized by immersion, mostly on the day of St. John Baptist, the 24th of June. There was a large circular font in the middle of the church, and around it in its marble wall were four cylindrical standing-places for the priests, closed by doors, to protect them from the pressure of the crowd.

"Who is he, Master, that writhes, quivering more than the others his consorts," said I, "and whom a ruddier flame is sucking?" And he to me, "If thou wilt that I carry thee down there by that bank which slopes the most,[1] from him thou shalt know of himself and of his wrongs." And I, "Whatever pleaseth thee even so is good to me. Thou art Lord, and knowest that I part me not from thy will, and thou knowest that which is unspoken."

[1] The whole of the Eighth circle slopes toward the centre, so that the inner wall of each bolgia is lower, and is less sharply inclined than the outer.

Then we went upon the fourth d.y.k.e, turned, and descended on the left hand, down to the bottom pierced with holes, and narrow. And the good Master set me not down yet from his haunch, till he brought me to the cleft of him who was thus lamenting with his shanks.

"O whoe'er thou art, that keepest upside down, sad soul, planted like a stake," I began to say, "speak, if thou canst." I was standing like the friar who confesses the perfidious a.s.sa.s.sin,[1]

who, after he is fixed, recalls him, in order to delay his death.

[1] Such criminals were not infrequently punished by being set, head downwards, in a hole in which they were buried alive.

And he[1] cried out, "Art thou already standing there? Art thoh already standing there, Boniface? By several years the record lied to me. Art thou so quickly sated with that having, for which thou didst not fear to seize by guile the beautiful Lady,[2] and then to do her outrage?"

[1] This is Nicholas III., pope from 1277 to 1280; he takes Dante to be Boniface VIII., but Boniface was not to die till 1303.

Compare what Nicholas says of "the record" with Farinata's statement, in Canto X, concerning the foresight of the d.a.m.ned.

[2] The Church, to which Boniface did outrage in many forms; but worst by his simoniacal practices.