CANTO XXXII. 1. In this Canto begins the Ninth and last Circle of the Inferno, where Traitors are punished. "Hence in the smallest circle, at the point Of all the universe, where Dis is seated, Whoe'er betrays forever is consumed." 3. The word thrust is here used in its architectural sense, as the thrust of a bridge against its abutments, and the like. 9. Still using the babble of childbood. II. The Muses; the poetic tradition being that Amphion built the walls of Thebes by the sound of his lyre; and the prosaic interpretation, that he did it by his persuasive eloquence. 15. Matthew xxvi. 24: "Woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born." half-brother. See Note 65, Canto VI. He is said also to have killed his uncle. 65. Sassol Mascheroni, according to Benvenuto, was one of the Toschi family of Florence. He murdered his nephew in order to get possession of his property; for which crime he was carried through the streets of Florence, nailed up in a cask, and then beheaded. 68. Camicion de' Pazzi of Valdarno, who murdered his kinsman Ubertino. But his crime will seem small and excusable when compared with that o another kinsman, Carlino de' Pazzi, who treacherously surrendered the castle of Piano in Valdarno, wherein many Flo rentine exiles were taken and put to death. 81. The speaker is Bocca degli Abati, whose treason caused the defeat of the Guelfs at the famous battle of Montaperti, in 1260. See Note 86, Canto X. "Messer Bocca degli Abati, the trai tor," says Malispini, Storia, ch. 171, 28 Tambernich is a mountain of Scla-"with his sword in hand, smote and cut vonia, and Pietrapana another near Lucca. 55. These two "miserable brothers" are Alessandro and Napoleone, sons of Alberto degli Alberti, lord of Falterona in the valley of the Bisenzio. After their father's death they quarrelled, and one treacherously slew the other. 58. Caïna is the first of the four divisions of this circle, and takes its name from the first fratricide. 62. Sir Mordred, son of King Arthur. See La Mort d'Arthure, III. ch. 167: "And there King Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield with a foine of his speare throughout the body more than a fadom." Nothing is said here of the sun's shining through the wound, so as to break the shadow on the ground, but that incident is mentioned in the Italian version of the Romance of Launcelot of the lake, L'illustre e famosa istoria di Lancillotto del Lago, III. ch. 162: "Behind the opening made by the lance there passed through the wound a ray of the sun so manifestly, that Girflet saw it." 63. Focaccia was one of the Cancellieri Bianchi, of Pistoia, and was engaged in the affair of cutting off the hand of his off the hand of Messer Jacopo de' Pazzi of Florence, who bore the standard of the cavalry of the Commune of Florence. And the knights and the people, seeing the standard down, and the treachery, were put to rout.' 88. The second division of the Circle, called Antenora, from Antenor, the Trojan prince, who betrayed his country by keeping up a secret correspondence with the Greeks. Virgil, Æneid, I. 242, makes him founder of Padua. 106. See Note 81 of this Canto. 116. Buoso da Duera of Cremona, being bribed, suffered the French cavalry under Guido da Monforte to pass through Lombardy on their way to Apulia, without opposing them as he had been commanded. 117. There is a double meaning in the Italian expression sta fresco, which is well rendered by the vulgarism, left out in the cold, so familiar in American politics. 119. Beccaria of Pavia, Abbot of Vallombrosa, and Papal Legate at Florence, where he was beheaded in 1258 for plotting against the Guelfs. 121. Gianni de' Soldanieri, of Flor ence, a Ghibelline, who betrayed his party. Villani, VII. 14, says: "Messe Gianni de' Soldanieri put himself at the head of the populace from motives of ambition, regardless of consequences which were injurious to the Ghibelline party, and to his own detriment, which seems always to have been the case in Florence with those who became popular leaders." 122. The traitor Ganellon, or Ganalon, who betrayed the Christian cause at Roncesvalles, persuading Charlemagne not to go to the assistance of Orlando. See Canto XXXI. Note 18. Tebaldello de' Manfredi treacherously opened the gates of Faenza to the French in the night. Visconte retired to the absolute government of Sardinia. But Ugolino, still dissatisfied, sent his son to disturb the island; a deadly feud was the conse quence, Guelph against Guelph, while the latent spirit of Ghibellinism, which filled the breasts of the citizens and was encouraged by priest and friar, felt its advantage; the Archbishop Ruggiero Rubaldino was its real head, but he worked with hidden caution as the appa rent friend of either chiefta n. In 1287, after some sharp contests, both of them abdicated, for the sake, as it was alleged, of public tranquillity; but, soon perceiv ing their error, again united, and, scour 130. Tydeus, son of the king of Ca-ing the streets with all their followers, lydon, slew Menalippus at the siege of Thebes, and was himself mortally wounded. Statius, Thebaid, VIII., thus describes what followed: forcibly re-established their authority. Ruggieri seemed to assent quietly to this new outrage, even looked without emotion on the bloody corpse of his favourite nephew, who had been stabbed by Ugolino; and so deep was his dissimulation, that he not only refused to believe the murdered body to be his kinsman's, but zealously assisted the Count to establish himself alone in the government, and accomplish Visconte's ruin. The design was successful; Nino was overcome and driven from the town, and in 1288 Ugolino entered Pisa in triumph from his villa, where he had retired to await the catastrophe. The Archbishop had neglected nothing, and Ugolino found himself associated with this prelate in the public government; events now began to thicken; the Count could not brook a competitor, much less a Ghibelline priest; and in the month of July both parties flew to arms, and the Archbishop was victorious. After a feeble attempt to rally in the public palace, Count Ugolino, his two sons, Uguccione and Gaddo, and two young grandsons, Anselmuccio and Brigata, surrendered at discretion, and were immediately im prisoned in a tower, afterwards called the Torre della fame, and there perished by starvation. Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, whose tragic story after five hundred years still sounds in awful numbers from the lyre of Dante, was stained with the ambition and darker vices of the age; like other potent chiefs, he sought to enslave his country, and checked at nothing in his impetuous career. He was accused of many crimes; of poisoning his own nephew, of failing in war, making a disgraceful peace, of dying shamefully, perhaps traitorously, at Meloria, and of obstructing all negotiations with Genoa for the return of his imprisoned countrymen. Like most others of his rank in those frenzied times, he belonged more to faction than his country, and made the former subservient to his own ambition; but all these accusations, even if well founded, would not draw him from the general standard; they would only prove that he shared the ambition, the cruelty, the ferocity, the recklessness of human life and suffering, and the relentless pursuit of power in common with other chieftains of his age and country. Ugolino was overcome, and suffered a cruel death; his family was dispersed, and his memory has perhaps been blackened with a darker colouring to excuse the severity of his punishment; but his sons, who naturally followed their parent's fortune, were scarcely implicated in his crimes, although they shared his fate; and his grandsons, though not children, were still less guilty, though one of these was not unstained with blood. The Archbishop had public and private wrongs to revenge, and had he fallen, his sacred character alone would probably have procured for him a milder destiny." Villani, VII. 128, gives this account of the imprisonment: "The Pisans, who had imprisoned Count Ugolino and his two sons and two grandsons, children of Count Guelfo, as we have before mentioned, in a tower on the Piazza degli Anziani, ordered the door of the tower to be locked, and the keys to be thrown into the Arno, and forbade any food should be given to the prisoners, who in a few days died of hunger. And the five dead bodies, being taken together out of the tower, were ignominiously buried; and from that day forth the tower was called the Tower of Famine, and shall be for evermore. For this cruelty the Pisans were much blamed through all the world where it was known; and grandchildren, who were young and innocent boys; and this sin, committed by the Pisans, did not remain unpunished." Chaucer's version of the story in the Ther may no tonge tellen for pitee. Dampned was he to die in that prison, And therwithal it was ful poure and bad. And on a day befell, that in that houre, The gailer shette the dores of the toure; Alas! quod he, alas that I was wrought! His yonge sone, that three yere was of age, lever. Thus day by day this childe began to crie, And kist his fader, and dide the same day. For wo his armes two he gan to bite, That he his armes gnowe, and not for wo, His children wenden, that for hunger it was And ete ynough: right thus they to him seide, Himself dispeired eke for hunger starf. not so much for the Count's That highte Dante, for he can it devise sake, as on account of his crimes and treasons he perhaps deserved such a Buti, Commento, says: "After eight death, but for the sake of his children days they were removed from prison H⭑ and carried wrapped in matting to the church of the Minor Friars at San Francesco, and buried in the monument, which is on the side of the steps leading into the church near the gate of the cloister, with irons on their legs, which irons I myself saw taken out of the monument." 22. "The remains of this tower," says Napier, Florentine History, I. 319, note, "still exist in the Piazza de' Cavalieri, on the right of the archway as the spectator looks toward the clock." According to Buti it was called the Mew, "because the eagles of the Commune were kept there to moult." Shelley thus sings of it, Poems, III. 91 Amid the desolation of a city, Which was the cradle, and is now the grave Of an extinguished people, so that pity Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's wave, There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave For bread, and gold, and blood: pain, linked to guilt, Agitates the light flame of their hours, Are by its presence dimmed, they stand aloof, And are withdrawn,-so that the world is bare, As if a spectre, wrapt in shapeless terror, Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror 30. Monte San Giuliano, between Pisa and Lucca. Shelley, Poems, III. 166 :- It was that hill whose intervening brow tower was locked, and the keys thrown into the Arno; and I believe most of the commentators interpret the line in this way. But the locking of a prison door, which must have been a daily occurrence, could hardly have caused the dismay here pourtrayed, unless it can be shown that the lower door of the tower was usually left unlocked. "The thirty lines from Ed io sents are unequalled," says Landor, Pentameron, 40, "by any other continuous thirty in the whole dominions of poetry." 80. Italy; it being an old custom to call countries by the affirmative particle of the language. 82. Capraia and Gorgona are two islands opposite the mouth of the Arno. Ampère, Voyage Dantesque, 217, remarks: "This imagination may appear grotesque and forced if one looks at the map, for the isle of Gorgona is at some distance from the mouth of the Arno, and I had always thought so, until the day when, having ascended the tower of Pisa, I was struck with the aspect which the Gorgona presented from that point. It seemed to shut up the Arno. I then understood how Dante might naturally have had this idea, which had seemed strange to me, and his imagination was justified in my eyes. He had not seen the did not exist in his time, but from some Gorgona from the Leaning Tower, which one of the numerous towers which pro tected the ramparts of Pisa. This fact alone would be sufficient to show what an excellent interpretation of a poet travelling is." 86. Napier, Florentine History, I. 313: "He without hesitation surren dered Santa Maria a Monte, Fuccechio, Santa Croce, and Monte Calvole to Florence; exiled the most zealous Ghi bellines from Pisa, and reduced it to a purely Guelphic republic; he was ac cused of treachery, and certainly his own objects were admirably forwarded by the continued captivity of so many of his countrymen, by the banishment of the adverse faction, and by the friendship and support of Florence." 87. Thebes was renowned for its misfortunes and gim tragedies, from the days of the sowing of the dragon's teeth by Cadmus, down to the destruction of the city by Alexander, who commanded it to be utterly demolished, excepting only the house in which the poet Pindar was born. Moreover, the tradition runs that Pisa was founded by Pelops, son of King Tantalus of Thebes, although it derived its name from "the Olympic Pisa on the banks of the Alpheus. 118. Friar Alberigo, of the family of the Manfredi, Lords of Faenza, was one of the Frati Gaudenti, or Jovial Friars, mentioned in Canto XXIII. 103. The account which the Ottimo gives of his treason is as follows: "Having made peace with certain hostile fellow-citizens, he betrayed them in this wise. One evening he invited them to supper, and had armed retainers in the chambers round the supper room. It was in summer-time, and he gave orders to his servants that, when after the meats he should order the fruit, the chambers should be opened, and the armed men should come forth and should murder all the guests. And so it was done. And he did the like the year before at Castello delle Mura at Pistoia. These are the fruits of the Garden of Treason, of which he speaks." Benvenuto says that his guests were his brother Manfred and his (Manfred's) son. Other commentators say they were certain members of the Order of Frati Gaudenti. In 1300, the date of the poem, Alberigo was still living. 120. A Rowland for an Oliver. 124. This division of Cocytus, the Lake of Lamentation, is called Ptolomea from Ptolomeus, 1 Maccabees, xvi. 11, where "the captain of Jericho inviteth Simon and two of his sons into his castle, and there treacherously murdereth them;" for "when Simon and his sons had drunk largely, Ptolomee and his men rose up, and took their weapons, and came upon Simon into the banqueting-place, and slew him, and his two sons, and certain of his servants," Or perhaps from Ptolemy, who murdered Pompey after the battle of Phar. salia. ceived the might of Hercules, an image; for he himself amongst the immortal gods is delighted with banquets, and has the fair-legged Hebe, daughter of mighty Jove, and golden-sandalled Juno.' 137. Ser Branca d'Oria was a Genoese, and a member of the celebrated Doria family of that city. Nevertheless he murdered at table his fatherin-law, Michel Zanche, who is mentioned Canto XXII. 88. 151. This vituperation of the Genoese reminds one of the bitter Tuscan proverb against them: "Sea without fish ; mountains without trees; men without faith; and women without shame." 154. Friar Alberigo. I. Ninth CANTO XXXIV. The fourth and last division of the "the smallest circle, at the point The first line, "The banners of the king of Hell come forth," is a parody of the first line of a Latin hymn of the sixth century, sung in the churches during Passion week, and written by Fortunatus, an Italian by birth, but who died Bishop of Poitiers in 600. The first stanza of this hymn is, "Vexilla regis prodeunt, und Gesänge aus dem Mittelalter, 64. 18. Milton, Parad. Lost, V. 708 :-"His countenance as the morning star, that guides The starry flock." 28. Compare Milton's descriptions of IV. 985:Satan, Parad. Lost, I. 192, 589, II. 636 "Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, That sparkling blazed; his other With head uplift above the wave, and eyes parts besides Prone on the flood, extended long and large, Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, Created hugest that swim the ocean stream: |