So on the rim, that fenced the sand with rock, 25 With sting like scorpion's armed. Then thus my guide: Far as to that ill beast, who couches there." Thereat, toward the right our downward course 30 Near to the void. Forthwith my master spake : 35 The mien these wear: but hold not long discourse. 40 The aid of his strong shoulders." Thus alone, Yet forward on the extremity I paced Of that seventh circle, where the mournful tribe Were seated. At the eyes forth gushed their pangs. Against the vapors and the torrid soil 45 Alternately their shifting hands they plied. Thus use the dogs in summer still to ply Their jaws and feet by turns, when bitten sore By gnats, or flies, or gadflies swarming round. 50 On which it seemed as if their eye did feed. 55 And when, amongst them, looking round I came, A yellow purse I saw with azure.wrought, 23. The whole inner edge of the seventh circle forms, as it were, a continuation of the stony border of Phlegethon. 34. The violent against Art, or usurers. The reader will remember that the blasphemers lie supine, and the Sodomites run about over the plain. 53. A purse whereon the armorial bearings of each were emblazoned. According to Landino, our Poet implies that the usurer can pretend to no other honor than such as he derives from 60 his purse and his family. The description of persons by their heraldic insignia is remarkable, both on the present and several other occasions in this poem. 57. The arms of the Gianfigliazzi of Florence. 60. The arms of the Ubbriachi, another Florentine family of high distinction. Dante's impartiality can be seen in the fact that this family is Ghibelline, while the Gianfigliazzi were Guelphs. And one, who bore a fat and azure swine Pictured on his white scrip, addressed me thus: "What dost thou in this deep? Go now and know, 65 A Paduan with these Florentines am I. Oft-times they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming, 'Oh! haste that noble knight, he who the pouch With the three goats will bring.' This said, he writhed Ás one, who hath an ague fit so near, 70 75 80 Such was my cheer at hearing of his words. But shame soon interposed her threat, who makes 85 The servant bold in presence of his lord. I settled me upon those shoulders huge, And would have said, but that the words to aid My purpose came not, "Look thou clasp me firm." 90 Soon as I mounted, in his arms aloft, 66 Embracing, held me up; and thus he spake : Think on the unusual burden thou sustainest." 95 62. The arms of the Scrovigni, a noble family who, expecting the return of a quartan ague, of Padua. shakes even at the sight of a place made cool 66. Vitaliano del Dente, a rich nobleman of by the shade. Padua. 69. Giovanni Buiamonte, a nobleman of Florence, and famous, or rather infamous, for his usury. He died in poverty. His arms were three becchi, a word which means either beaks or goats. Cary in older editions translated beaks, which in his last revision he changed to goats. Longfellow and Norton use the last expression. 81. Dante trembled with fear, like a man 85. The original is, — "Ma vergogna mi fêr le sue minacce," "His (Virgil's) threats (or reproaches) produced shame in me." Cary reads fe, and makes vergogna the subject of the sentence. Scartazzini, Philalethes, Longfellow, and Norton all adopt the first reading. 95. The usual reference to Dante's being alive. There, where the breast had been, his forked tail. Not greater was the dread, when Phaethon By liquefaction of the scalded wax, The trusted pennons loosened from his loins, 100 105 ΠΟ Save the fell beast. He, slowly sailing, wheels His downward motion, unobserved of me, But that the wind, arising to my face, Breathes on me from below. Now on our right I heard the cataract beneath us leap With hideous crash; whence bending down to explore, For flames I saw, and wailings smote mine ear: So that, all trembling, close I crouched my limbs, 102. The son of Helios. He obtained permission from his father to drive his chariot (the sun) across the heavens; but, being unable to check his horses, nearly set the earth on fire, and was slain by Jupiter with a thunderbolt. Ovid, Met. ii. 47-324. 104. In the Convito, ii. 15, Dante alludes to the theory of the Pythagoreans that the sun going out of its course produced the burnt appearance in the heavens called the Milky Way. Dante, himself, however, follows Aristotle in looking on the latter as formed by an agglomeration of minute stars. 105. Son of Dædalus, drowned in the Icarian Sea (named, according to the legend, after him), near Samos, in his flight from Crete, by flying so near the sun that his wings of wax, made by Dædalus, melted. 115 I 20 125 130 Ovid, Met. viii 113. Cary does not give the full force of the original here, where Dante, in a single line, says that the circular and the descending motion only made itself perceptible by the air which struck his face in front, and also came up from below. The line is an admirable example of the Poet's conciseness. 123. The trained hawk is carried on the wrist, with its head covered by a hood. When its master goes hunting, he takes off the hood, and the hawk flies after the game, remaining in the air until the game is caught, or the hunter calls him back by means of the lure, a contrivance somewhat resembling a bird. Dante seems to allude here to a hawk not thoroughly trained. CANTO XVIII. ARGUMENT. The Poet describes the situation and form of the eighth circle, divided into ten gulfs, which contain as many different descriptions of fraudulent sinners; but in the present Canto he treats only of two sorts: the first is of those who, either for their own pleasure, or for that of another, have seduced any woman from her duty; and these are scourged of demons in the first gulf: the other sort is of flatterers, who in the second gulf are condemned to remain immersed in filth. THERE is a place within the depths of hell That round it circling winds. Right in the midst A spacious gulf profound, whereof the frame As where, to guard the walls, full many a foss The bard to left Held on his way, and I behind him moved. New pains, new executioners of wrath, = = wallet "V. = Barterers, Canto xx. xxi.-xxii. "VI. " VII. Hypocrites, = Evil Counsellors, Schismatics, xxviii.-xxix. 2. Dante has formed the word Malebolge Pit IV. Soothsayers, himself from male = evil, and bolgia or pocket, here pit. Hence the whole word means evil pits. Malebolge consists of ten concentric ditches, in which are punished ten different kinds of fraud against mankind in general. The following scheme, taken from Scarbe of service. = Falsifiers, 6. The gulf leading down to the ninth circle. 25. The first evil pit, that of the panders and seducers. With us beyond, but with a larger stride. The thronging multitudes, their means devise 30 Ah! how they made them bound at the first stripe! Saint Peter's fane, on the other towards the mount. 35 Meantime, as on I passed, one met my sight, 40 45 50 55 60 28. Beyond the middle point they tended the same way with us, but their pace was quicker than ours. 29. In the year 1300, Pope Boniface VIII., to remedy the inconvenience occasioned by the press of people who were passing over the bridge of Sant'Angelo during the time of the Jubilee, caused it to be divided lengthwise by a partition; and ordered that all those who were going to St. Peter's should keep one side, and those returning the other. G. Villani, who was present, describes the order that was preserved, viii. 36. It was at this time, and on this occasion, as the honest historian tells us, that he first conceived the design of "compiling his book." mole (or mausoleum) of Adrian, and changed to a citadel in the Middle Ages. 50. Venedico Caccianimico, a Bolognese, who prevailed on his sister Ghisola to give herself to Obizzo da Este, marquis of Ferrara, whom we have seen among the tyrants, Canto xii. 51. The original salse is interpreted by some to mean "bitter torment," by others, a lonely valley about fifteen miles from Bologna, where were thrown the bodies of suicides, malefactors, and the excommunicated, used figuratively for Malebolge. The meaning in either case is, "for what sin are you here?" 59. Dante says here that the Bolognese were celebrated for this vice, being led thereto by 33. The castle of Sant' Angelo, originally the their avariciousness. |