If reverence of the keys restrained me not,
Which thou in happier time didst hold, I yet
Severer speech might use. Your avarice

O'ercasts the world with mourning, under foot
Treading the good, and raising bad men up.
Of shepherds like to you, the Evangelist
Was ware, when her, who sits upon the waves,
With kings in filthy whoredom he beheld;

She who with seven heads towered at her birth,
And from ten horns her proof of glory drew,
Long as her spouse in virtue took delight.
Of gold and silver ye have made your god,
Differing wherein from the idolater,
But that he worships one, a hundred ye?
Ah, Constantine! to how much ill gave birth,
Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dower,
Which the first wealthy Father gained from thee."
Meanwhile, as thus I sung, he, whether wrath
Or conscience smote him, violent upsprang
Spinning on either sole. I do believe

My teacher well was pleased, with so composed
A lip he listened ever to the sound

Of the true words I uttered. In both arms
He caught, and, to his bosom lifting me,
Upward retraced the way of his descent.

Nor weary of his weight, he pressed me close,
Till to the summit of the rock we came,
Our passage from the fourth to the fifth pier.
His cherished burden there gently he placed

pas

112. It is not the woman who has the seven heads and ten horns, but the beast on which she sits (Rev. xvii. 3). Many interpretations have been given of the allegory contained in this sage of Revelation, but Dante probably conceived the seven heads to mean the seven sacraments, and the ten horns to stand for the ten commandments.

118. He alludes to the pretended gift of the Lateran by Constantine to Sylvester, of which Dante himself seems to imply a doubt, in his treatise "De Monarchiâ."-"Ergo scindere Imperium, Imperatori non licet. Si ergo aliquæ dignitates per Constantinum essent alienatæ (ut dicunt) ab Imperio," etc., lib. iii. 10. "Therefore to make a rent in the empire exceeds the lawful power of the emperor himself. If, then, some dignities were by Constantine alienated (as they report) from the empire," etc. In another part of the same treatise he speaks of the alienation with less doubt indeed, but not with less disapprobation: "O felicem populum! O Ausoniam

te gloriosam! si vel numquam infirmator imperii tui extitisset; vel numquam sua pia intentio ipsum fefellisset.' "-"O happy people! O glorious Italy! if either he who thus weakened thine empire had never been born, or had never suffered his own pious intentions to mislead him.” Lib. ii. ad finem. The gift is by Ariosto very humorously placed in the moon, among the things lost or abused on earth. O. F. xxxiv. 80. Milton has translated both this passage and that in the text,

Upon the rugged rock and steep, a path
Not easy for the clambering goat to mount.
Thence to my view another vale appeared.

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CANTO XX.

ARGUMENT.

The Poet relates the punishment of such as presumed, while living, to predict future events. It is to have their faces reversed and set the contrary way on their limbs, so that, being deprived of the power to see before them, they are constrained ever to walk backwards. Among these Virgil points out to him Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, and Manto (from the mention of whom he takes occasion to speak of the origin of Mantua), together with several others, who had practised the arts of divination and astrology.

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AND now the verse proceeds to torments new,
Fit argument of this the twentieth strain-
Of the first song, whose awful theme records
The spirits whelmed in woe. Earnest I looked
Into the depth, that opened to my view,
Moistened with tears of anguish, and beheld
A tribe, that came along the hollow vale,
In silence weeping: such their step as walk
Quires, chanting solemn litanies, on earth.

As on them more direct mine eye descends,
Each wonderously seemed to be reversed
At the neck-bone, so that the countenance
Was from the reins averted; and because
None might before him look, they were compelled
To advance with backward gait. Thus one perhaps
Hath been by force of palsy clean transposed,
But I ne'er saw it nor believe it so.

Now, reader! think within thyself, so God
Fruit of thy reading give thee! how I long
Could keep my visage dry, when I beheld
Near me our form distorted in such guise,
That on the hinder parts fallen from the face
The tears down-streaming rolled. Against a rock
I leant and wept, so that my guide exclaimed:

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"What, and art thou, too, witless as the rest?
Here pity most doth show herself alive,
When she is dead. What guilt exceedeth his,

Who with Heaven's judgment in his passion strives?
Raise up thy head, raise up, and see the man

Before whose eyes earth gaped in Thebes, when all
Cried out Amphiaraus, whither rushest?

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Why leavest thou the war?' He not the less
Fell ruining far as to Minos down,

Whose grapple none eludes. Lo! how he makes
The breast his shoulders; and who once too far
Before him wished to see, now backward looks,
And treads reverse his path. Tiresias note,
Who semblance changed, when woman he became
Of male, through every limb transformed; and then
Once more behoved him with his rod to strike
The two entwining serpents, ere the plumes,
That marked the better sex, might shoot again.
"Aruns, with rere his belly facing, comes.
On Luni's mountains, midst the marbles white,
Where delves Carrara's hind, who wones beneath,
A cavern was his dwelling, whence the stars
And main-sea wide in boundless view he held.
"The next, whose loosened tresses overspread
Her bosom, which thou seest not (for each hair
On that side grows) was Manto, she who searched
Through many regions, and at length her seat
Fixed in my native land: whence a short space
My words detain thy audience. When her sire

From life departed, and in servitude
The city dedicate to Bacchus mourned,

Long time she went a wanderer through the world.
Aloft in Italy's delightful land

A lake there lies, at foot of that proud Alp

26. There is a play on words in the original, — 'Qui vive la pietá quando è ben morta." Pietà in Italian has two meanings, one = pity, the other = piety. Virgil means to say that since God has condemned these souls, Dante's pity for them is not consistent with piety toward God.

31. Amphiaraus, a soothsayer, one of the seven kings against Thebes, who, foreseeing his death, refused at first to join the expedition against that city. But, betrayed by his wife, he was finally forced to do so, and during the battle was swallowed up by the earth, which opened to receive him.

37. Tiresias was a Theban soothsayer, who accompanied the Greeks to Troy. By striking two serpents entwined together he became

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changed to a woman, and only after seven years, by striking the same serpents, did he recover his former shape. Ovid, Met. iii. 320 ff.

43. Famous Etruscan diviner who, at the time of the civil wars between Cæsar and Pompey, foretold the victory of the former. Lucan, Pharsalia, i. 586 ff.

50. The daughter of Tiresias, and the founder of Mantua.

54. Thebes had fallen into the power of Creon, uncle to Polynices and Eteocles. It was to escape his tyranny that Manto fled to Italy.

58. In the following lines, Dante gives a beautiful description of the rise and progress of the river Mincio, and the location of the city of Mantua.

That o'er the Tyrol locks Germania in,

Its name Benacus, from whose ample breast

A thousand springs, methinks, and more, between
Camonica and Garda, issuing forth,

Water the Apennine. There is a spot

At midway of that lake, where he who bears

Of Trento's flock the pastoral staff, with him
Of Brescia, and the Veronese, might each
Passing that way his benediction give.
A garrison of goodly site and strong
Peschiera stands, to awe with front opposed

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The Bergamese and Brescian, whence the shore

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More slope each way descends. There, whatsoe'er
Benacus' bosom holds not, tumbling o'er
Down falls, and winds a river flood beneath

Through the green pastures. Soon as in his course

The stream makes head, Benacus then no more
They call the name, but Mincius, till at last
Reaching Governo, into Po he falls.

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Not far his course hath run, when a wide flat

It finds, which overstretching as a marsh

It covers, pestilent in summer oft.

Hence journeying, the savage maiden saw
Midst of the fen a territory waste
And naked of inhabitants. To shun

All human converse, here she with her slaves,
Plying her arts, remained, and lived, and left
Her body tenantless. Thenceforth the tribes,
Who round were scattered, gathering to that place,
Assembled; for its strength was great, enclosed
On all parts by the fen. On those dead bones
They reared themselves a city, for her sake
Calling it Mantua, who first chose the spot,
Nor asked another omen for the name;
Wherein more numerous the people dwelt,
Ere Casalodi's madness by deceit

59. Which divides Germany from Italy. 62. Val Camonica is one of the largest valleys of Lombardy. It is formed by branches of the Rhætian Alps, and in its bottom flows the river which descends to form the lake Iseo.

63. The Pennine Alps; not to be confused with the chain of the Apennines which divide Italy lengthwise into two parts.

The "spot" referred to is variously given as the island of Lecchi, Peschiera, etc. The meaning is, the place where the three dioceses of Trento, Verona, and Brescia meet.

69. Peschiera is a fortified town in the province of Verona, situated at the exit of the

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Was wronged of Pinamonte. If thou hear
Henceforth another origin assigned

Of that my country, I forewarn thee now,
That falsehood none beguile thee of the truth."

I answered, “ Teacher, I conclude thy words

So certain, that all else shall be to me

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As embers lacking life. But now of these,
Who here proceed, instruct me, if thou see
Any that merit more especial note.

For thereon is my mind alone intent."

He straight replied: "That spirit, from whose cheek

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The beard sweeps o'er his shoulders brown, what time

Græcia was emptied of her males, that scarce
The cradles were supplied, the seer was he
In Aulis, who with Calchas gave the sign
When first to cut the cable. Him they named
Eurypilus so sings my tragic strain,

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In which majestic measure well thou know'st,
Who know'st it all. That other, round the loins
So slender of his shape, was Michael Scot,
Practised in every slight of magic wile.
"Guido Bonatti see: Asdente mark,

Who now were willing he had tended still
The thread and cordwain, and too late repents.
"See next the wretches, who the needle left,
The shuttle and the spindle, and became
Diviners baneful witcheries they wrought
With images and herbs. But onward now:

of Casalodi to banish a large number of nobles, and then, putting himself at the head of the people, usurped the power for himself.

107. On account of the Trojan War, which carried away all males in Greece, except those of tender age.

109. Aulis is a city in Boeotia where Agamemnon gathered his army. Calchas was a soothsayer who accompanied the expedition against Troy. The reference in the words, "to cut the cable," is as follows. The fleet which was to sail against Troy was becalmed at Aulis, and the oracle declared that the death of Iphigenia was the only means of propitiating the goddess Artemis, through whose anger the fleet was detained.

111. Æn. ii. 114 ff.

114. A Scottish schoolman, with posthumous fame as a wizard and magician. He is said to have studied at Oxford and Paris, and to have learned Arabic at Toledo. On the invitation of the Emperor Frederick II. he superintended a translation of Aristotle and his commentators

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from Arabic to Latin. The traditional date of his death is about 1291.

116. Bonatti was an astrologer of Forli, on whose skill Guido da Montefeltro, lord of that place, so much relied, that he is reported never to have gone into battle, except in the hour recommended to him as fortunate by Bonatti. He lived toward the end of the 13th century.

Asdente was a shoemaker at Parma, who deserted his business to practise the arts of divination. How much this man had attracted the public notice appears from a passage in our author's Convito, iv. 16, where it is said, in speaking of the derivation of the word noble, that "if those who were best known were accounted the most noble, Asdente, the shoemaker of Parma, would be more noble than any one in that city."

122. A favorite method of bewitching in the Middle Ages was to form wax images, and to stick pins into them or place them in the fire, thus producing pain or death in the person represented.