If any to the world indeed return,

Clear he from wrong my memory, that lies
Yet prostrate under envy's cruel blow."

First somewhat pausing, till the mournful words
Were ended, then to me the bard began:
"Lose not the time; but speak, and of him ask,
If more thou wish to learn." Whence I replied:
"Question thou him again of whatsoe'er
Will, as thou think'st, content me; for no power
Have I to ask, such pity is at my heart."

He thus resumed: "So may he do for thee
Freely what thou entreatest, as thou yet
Be pleased, imprisoned spirit! to declare,
How in these gnarled joints the soul is tied;
And whether any ever from such frame
Be loosened, if thou canst, that also tell."

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Thereat the trunk breathed hard, and the wind soon

Changed into sounds articulate like these:

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"Briefly ye shall be answered. When departs

97.

The fierce soul from the body, by itself
Thence torn asunder, to the seventh gulf
By Minos doomed, into the wood it falls,
No place assigned, but wheresoever chance
Hurls it; there sprouting, as a grain of spelt,
It rises to a sapling, growing thence
A savage plant. The Harpies, on its leaves
Then feeding, cause both pain, and for the pain
A vent to grief. We, as the rest, shall come
For our own spoils, yet not so that with them
We may again be clad; for what a man
Takes from himself it is not just he have.

Here we perforce shall drag them; and throughout
The dismal glade our bodies shall be hung,
Each on the wild thorn of his wretched shade."
Attentive yet to listen to the trunk

We stood, expecting further speech, when us
A noise surprised; as when a man perceives
The wild boar and the hunt approach his place
Of stationed watch, who of the beasts and boughs
Loud rustling round him hears. And lo! there came
Two naked, torn with briers, in headlong flight,
That they before them broke each fan o' th' wood.
"Haste now," the foremost cried, "now haste thee, death!"
The other, as seemed, impatient of delay,

"The fierce soul" of the suicide. 105. At the Last Judgment we, like all other souls, shall receive our human forms, but shall not, be allowed to wear them. Michael Angelo has made use of this idea in one of the central

figures of his famous fresco in the Sistine Chapel.

118. The violent against themselves, in that they squandered the blessings God had given them.

Exclaiming, "Lano! not so bent for speed
Thy sinews, in the lists of Toppo's field."
And then, for that perchance no longer breath
Sufficed him, of himself and of a bush

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One group he made. Behind them was the wood
Full of black female mastiffs, gaunt and fleet,
As greyhounds that have newly slipt the leash.

On him, who squatted down, they stuck their fangs,
And having rent him piecemeal bore away
The tortured limbs. My guide then seized my hand,
And led me to the thicket, which in vain
Mourned through its bleeding wounds:
Of Sant' Andrea! what avails it thee,"
It cried, "that of me thou hast made thy screen?
For thy ill life, what blame on me recoils?"

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"O Giacomo

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When o'er it he had paused, my master spake :
"Say who wast thou, that at so many points
Breathest out with blood thy lamentable speech?”

He answered: "O ye spirits! arrived in time
To spy the shameful havoc that from me
My leaves hath severed thus, gather them up,
And at the foot of their sad parent-tree
Carefully lay them. In that city I dwelt,
Who for the Baptist her first patron changed,
Whence he for this shall cease not with his art
To work her woe: and if there still remained not
On Arno's passage some faint glimpse of him,
Those citizens, who reared once more her walls
Upon the ashes left by Attila,

Had labored without profit of their toil.

I slung the fatal noose from my own roof."

122. Lano, a Sienese, who, being reduced by prodigality to a state of extreme want, found his existence no longer supportable; and having been sent by his countrymen on a military expedition to assist the Florentines against the Aretines, took that opportunity of exposing himself to certain death, in the engagement which took place at Toppo near Arezzo.

123. The thicket contains the soul of Rocco de' Mozzi or Lotto degli Agli. He tells his story in lines 144 ff.

133. Jacopo da Sant' Andrea, a Paduan, who, having wasted his property in the most wanton acts of profusion, killed himself in despair.

144. "I was an inhabitant of Florence, that city which changed her first patron Mars for St. John the Baptist; for which reason the vengeance of the deity thus slighted will never be

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145

150

appeased; and if some remains of his statue were not still visible on the bridge over the Arno, she would have been already levelled to the ground; and thus the citizens, who raised her again from the ashes to which Attila had reduced her, would have labored in vain." See Paradise, Canto xvi. 45. The relic of antiquity, to which the superstition of Florence attached so high an importance, was carried away by a flood, that destroyed the bridge on which it stood, in the year 1337, but without the ill effects that were apprehended from the loss of their fancied Palladium.

150. It was believed in Dante's time that Attila had destroyed Florence, and that the city had been rebuilt by Charlemagne. This is, however, only a tradition.

CANTO XIV.

ARGUMENT.

They arrive at the beginning of the third of those compartments into which this seventh circle is divided. It is a plain of dry and hot sand, where three kinds of violence are punished; namely, against God, against Nature, and against Art; and those who have thus sinned, are tormented by flakes of fire, which are eternally showering down upon them. Among the violent against God is found Capaneus, whose blasphemies they hear. Next, turning to the left along the forest of selfslayers, and having journeyed a little onwards, they meet with a streamlet of blood that issues from the forest and traverses the sandy plain. Here Virgil speaks to our Poet of a huge ancient statue that stands within Mount Ida in Crete, from a fissure in which statue there is a dripping of tears, from which the said streamlet, together with the three other infernal rivers, are formed.

SOON as the charity of native land

Wrought in my bosom, I the scattered leaves
Collected, and to him restored, who now
Was hoarse with utterance. To the limit thence
We came, which from the third the second round
Divides, and where of justice is displayed
Contrivance horrible. Things then first seen
Clearlier to manifest, I tell how next

A plain we reached, that from its sterile bed
Each plant repelled.

Its garland on all sides, as round the wood

5

The mournful wood waves round

IO

Spreads the sad foss.

There, on the very edge,

Our steps we stayed.

It was an area wide

Of arid sand and thick, resembling most

The soil that erst by Cato's foot was trod.

Vengeance of heaven! Oh! how shouldst thou be feared

By all, who read what here mine eyes beheld.

Of naked spirits many a flock I saw,

All weeping piteously, to different laws
Subjected; for on the earth some lay supine,
Some crouching close were seated, others paced
Incessantly around; the latter tribe

More numerous, those fewer who beneath
The torment lay, but louder in their grief.
O'er all the sand fell slowly wafting down
Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow
On Alpine summit, when the wind is hushed.

1. The spirit contained in the bush had said that he was a Florentine. See Canto xiii. 144.

15. The Libyan desert, traversed by Cato when he led the remnant of Pompey's army to Juba, king of Numidia. Cf. Lucan, Pharsalia, ix.

H

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25

19. The violent against God, or blasphemers, lie supine; the violent against Art, or usurers, sit still; the violent against Nature, or Sodomites, run over the plain unceasingly.

As, in the torrid Indian clime, the son

Of Ammon saw, upon his warrior band

Descending, solid flames, that to the ground

Came down; whence he bethought him with his troop

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To trample on the soil; for easier thus

The vapor was extinguished, while alone:

So fell the eternal fiery flood, wherewith

The marle glowed underneath, as under stove
The viands, doubly to augment the pain.
Unceasing was the play of wretched hands,
Now this, now that way glancing, to shake off
The heat, still falling fresh. I thus began:
"Instructor! thou who all things overcomest,
Except the hardy demons that rushed forth
To stop our entrance at the gate, say who
Is yon huge spirit, that, as seems, heeds not
The burning, but lies writhen in proud scorn,
As by the sultry tempest immatured?

Straight he himself, who was aware I asked
My guide of him, exclaimed: “Such as I was
When living, dead such now I am.
If Jove
Weary his workman out, from whom in ire

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40

45

He snatched the lightnings, that at my last day
Transfixed me; if the rest he weary out,

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At their black smithy laboring by turns,

In Mongibello, while he cries aloud,

'Help, help, good Mulciber!' as erst he cried
In the Phlegræan warfare; and the bolts

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Launch he, full aimed at me, with all his might;
He never should enjoy a sweet revenge."

Then thus my guide, in accent higher raised
Than I before had heard him: 66
Capaneus!
Thou art more punished, in that this thy pride
Lives yet unquenched: no torment, save thy rage,
Were to thy fury pain proportioned full."

28. In the pretended letter of Alexander the Great ("Son of Ammon") to Aristotle, it is told how first snow, then fire, fell upon his army. He ordered his soldiers to trample down the snow as it fell in order that it might not cover them; but he ordered them to spread out their garments against the fire. Dante seems to have confused these two supposed facts.

42. At the gate of the city of Dis.

43. This is Capaneus, one of the seven kings who besieged Thebes. Having mounted the walls, he defied Jupiter himself to help the city, and was destroyed for his presumption. Statius, Theb. x. 845 ff. 49. Vulcan, who made the thunderbolts for Jupiter.

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53. Mongibello Mount Etna in Sicily, where the poets place the smithy of Vulcan. "More hot than Ætn' or flaming Mongibell." Spenser, F. Q. ii. 9, 29.

Next turning round to me, with milder lip
He spake: "This of the seven kings was one,
Who girt the Theban walls with siege, and held,
As still he seems to hold, God in disdain,
And sets his high omnipotence at naught.
But, as I told him, his despiteful mood

Is ornament well suits the breast that wears it.
Follow me now; and look thou set not yet
Thy foot in the hot sand, but to the wood
Keep ever close." Silently on we passed
To where there gushes from the forest's bound
A little brook, whose crimsoned wave yet lifts
My hair with horror. As the rill, that runs
From Bulicame, to be portioned out

Among the sinful women, so ran this

Down through the sand; its bottom and each bank
Stone-built, and either margin at its side,

Whereon I straight perceived our passage lay.

"Of all that I have shown thee, since that gate
We entered first, whose threshold is to none
Denied, naught else so worthy of regard,
As is this river, has thine eye discerned,
O'er which the flaming volley all is quenched.”

So spake my guide; and I him thence besought,
That having given me appetite to know,
The food he too would give, that hunger craved.
"In midst of ocean," forthwith he began,
"A desolate country lies, which Crete is named;
Under whose monarch, in old times, the world
Lived pure and chaste. A mountain rises there,
Called Ida, joyous once with leaves and streams,
Deserted now like a forbidden thing.

It was the spot which Rhea, Saturn's spouse,
Chose for the secret cradle of her son;

And better to conceal him, drowned in shouts
His infant cries. Within the mount, upright
An ancient form there stands, and huge, that turns

74. Phlegethon.

76. A warm medicinal spring near Viterbo, a very popular resort in Dante's time. It seems to have been especially frequented by women of ill fame.

81. The entrance to Hell.

90. Crete, an island of the Mediterranean, birthplace of Jupiter, from whom the Trojans, and hence the Romans, draw their origin.

91. The reign of Saturn was the golden age. Cf. Æn. viii. 319 ff.

96. Rhea concealed her son Jupiter from his father Saturn, who devoured his children, and in

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85

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95

order to prevent the child's cries from being heard commanded the Corybantes to make loud noises.

99. Virgil describes here the origin of the Infernal rivers. The statue of the old man is taken from Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the Book of Daniel, only its meaning is different. The latter represents the four monarchies of antiquity, the former the different ages of man, the gradual deterioration of which is represented by the gold, silver, brass, and iron. The foot of clay represents the present age, the worst of all. The back turned to Damietta and face