" "I should
like to see him smothering in it," said Dante, "before we go.
like to see him smothering in it," said Dante, "before we go.
Stories from the Italian Poets
In the second circle the torments commence with the
sin of incontinence; and the punishment goes deepening with the crime
from circle to circle, through gluttony, avarice, prodigality, wrath,
sullenness, or unwillingness to be pleased with the creation, disbelief
in God and the soul (with which the punishment by fire commences),
usury, murder, suicide, blasphemy, seduction and other carnal
enormities, adulation, simony, soothsaying, astrology, witchcraft,
trafficking with the public interest, hypocrisy, highway robbery (on
the great Italian scale), sacrilege, evil counsel, disturbance of the
Church, heresy, false apostleship, alchemy, forgery, coining (all these,
from seduction downwards, in one circle); then, in the frozen or lowest
circle of all, treachery; and at the bottom of this is Satan, stuck into
the centre of the earth.
With the centre of the globe commences the antipodean attraction of its
opposite side, together with a rocky ascent out of it, through a
huge ravine. The poet and his guide, on their arrival at this spot,
accordingly find their position reversed; and so conclude their
_downward_ journey _upwards_, till they issue forth to light on the
borders of the sea which contains the island of Purgatory.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL.
Dante says, that when he was half-way on his pilgrimage through this
life, he one day found himself, towards nightfall, in a wood where he
could no longer discern the right path. It was a place so gloomy and
terrible, every thing in it growing in such a strange and savage manner,
that the horror he felt returned on him whenever he thought of it. The
pass of death could hardly be more bitter. Travelling through it all
night with a beating heart, he at length came to the foot of a hill, and
looking up, as he began to ascend it, he perceived the shoulders of the
hill clad in the beams of morning; a sight which gave him some little
comfort. He felt like a man who has buffeted his way to land out of a
shipwreck, and who, though still anxious to get farther from his peril,
cannot help turning round to gaze on the wide waters. So did he stand
looking back on the pass that contained that dreadful wood. After
resting a while, he again betook him up the hill; but had not gone far
when he beheld a leopard bounding in front of him, and hindering his
progress. After the leopard came a lion, with his head aloft, mad with
hunger, and seeming to frighten the very air;[1] and after the lion,
more eager still, a she-wolf, so lean that she appeared to be sharpened
with every wolfish want. The pilgrim fled back in terror to the wood,
where he again found himself in a darkness to which the light never
penetrated. In that place, he said, the sun never spoke word. [2] But the
wolf was still close upon him. [3]
While thus flying, he beheld coming towards him a man, who spoke
something, but he knew not what. The voice sounded strange and feeble,
as if from disuse. Dante loudly called out to him to save him, whether
he was a man or only a spirit. The apparition, at whose sight the wild
beasts disappeared, said that he was no longer man, though man he
had been in the time of the false gods, and sung the history of the
offspring of Anchises.
"And art thou, then, that Virgil," said Dante, "who has filled the world
with such floods of eloquence? O glory and light of all poets, thou art
my master, and thou mine _author_; thou alone the book from which I have
gathered beauties that have gained me praise. Behold the peril I am in,
and help me, for I tremble in every vein and pulse. "
Virgil comforted Dante. He told him that he must quit the wood by
another road, and that he himself would be his guide, leading him first
to behold the regions of woe underground, and then the spirits that
lived content in fire because it purified them for heaven; and then that
he would consign him to other hands worthier than his own, which should
raise him to behold heaven itself; for as the Pagans, of whom he was
one, had been rebels to the law of him that reigns there, nobody could
arrive at Paradise by their means. [4]
So saying, Virgil moved on his way, and Dante closely followed. He
expressed a fear, however, as they went, lest being "neither Æneas nor
St. Paul," his journey could not be worthily undertaken, nor end in
wisdom. But Virgil, after sharply rebuking him for his faintheartedness,
told him, that the spirit of her whom he loved, Beatrice, had come down
from heaven on purpose to commend her lover to his care; upon which the
drooping courage of the pilgrim was raised to an undaunted confidence;
as flowers that have been closed and bowed down by frosty nights, rise
all up on their stems in the morning sun. [5]
"Non vuol che 'n sua città per me sì vegna. "
The Pagans could not be rebels to a law they never heard of, any
more than Dante could be a rebel to Luther. But this is one of the
absurdities with which the impious effrontery or scarcely less
impious admissions of Dante's teachers avowedly set reason at
defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of contempt for the
impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd," as the poet says;
for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued, much more so, they
had at least an equal claim on the submission of the reason; since the
greater the irrationality, the higher the theological triumph.
"Through me is the road to the dolorous city;
Through me is the road to the everlasting sorrows;
Through me is the road to the lost people.
Justice was the motive of my exalted maker;
I was made by divine power, by consummate wisdom, and by primal love;
Before me was no created thing, if not eternal; and eternal am I also.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter. "
Such were the words which Dante beheld written in dark characters over a
portal. "Master," said he to Virgil, "I find their meaning hard. "
"A man," answered Virgil, "must conduct himself at this door like one
prepared. Hither must he bring no mistrust. Hither can come and live no
cowardice. We have arrived at the place I told thee of. Here thou art to
behold the dolorous people who have lost all intellectual good. " [6]
So saying, Virgil placed his hand on Dante's, looking on him with a
cheerful countenance; and the Florentine passed with him through the
dreadful gate.
They entered upon a sightless gulf, in which was a black air without
stars; and immediately heard a hubbub of groans; and wailings, and
terrible things said in many languages, words of wretchedness, outcries
of rage, voices loud and hoarse, and sounds of the smitings of hands one
against another. Dante began to weep. The sound was as if the sand in
a whirlwind were turned into noises, and filled the blind air with
incessant conflict.
Yet these were not the souls of the wicked. They were those only who had
lived without praise or blame, thinking of nothing but themselves. These
miserable creatures were mixed with the angels who stood neutral in the
war with Satan. Heaven would not dull its brightness with those angels,
nor would lower hell receive them, lest the bad ones should triumph in
their company.
"And what is it," said Dante, "which makes them so grievously suffer? "
"Hopelessness of death," said Virgil. "Their blind existence here, and
immemorable former life, make them so wretched, that they envy every
other lot. Mercy and justice alike disdain them. Let us speak of them no
more. Look, and pass. "
The companions went on till they came to a great river with a multitude
waiting on the banks. A hoary old man appeared crossing the river
towards them in a boat; and as he came, he said, "Woe to the wicked.
Never expect to see heaven. I come to bear you across to the dark
regions of everlasting fire and ice. " Then looking at Dante, he said,
"Get thee away from the dead, thou who standest there, live spirit. "
"Torment thyself not, Charon," said Virgil. "He has a passport beyond
thy power to question. "
The shaggy cheeks of the boatman of the livid lake, who had wheels of
fire about his eyes, fell at these words; and he was silent. But the
naked multitude of souls whom he had spoken to changed colour, and
gnashed their teeth, blaspheming God, and their parents, and the human
species, and the place, and the hour, and the seed of the sowing of
their birth; and all the while they felt themselves driven onwards, by a
fear which became a desire, towards the cruel river-side, which awaits
every one destitute of the fear of God. The demon Charon, beckoning to
them with eyes like brasiers, collected them as they came, giving blows
to those that lingered, with his oar. One by one they dropped into the
boat like leaves from a bough in autumn, till the bough is left bare; or
as birds drop into the decoy at the sound of the bird-call.
There was then an earthquake, so terrible that the recollection of it
made the poet burst into a sweat at every pore. A whirlwind issued from
the lamenting ground, attended by vermilion flashes; and he lost his
senses, and fell like a man stupefied.
A crash of thunder through his brain woke up the pilgrim so hastily,
that he shook himself like a person roused by force. He found that he
was on the brink of a gulf, from which ascended a thunderous sound of
innumerable groanings. He could see nothing down it. It was too dark
with sooty clouds. Virgil himself turned pale, but said, "We are to go
down here. I will lead the way. "
"O master," said Dante, "if even thou fearest, what is to become of
myself? " "It is pity, not fear," replied Virgil, "that makes me change
colour. "
With these words his guide led him into the first circle of hell,
surrounding the abyss. The great noise gradually ceased to be heard, as
they journeyed inwards, till at last they became aware of a world of
sighs, which produced a trembling in the air. They were breathed by the
souls of such as had died without baptism, men, women, and infants; no
matter how good; no matter if they worshipped God before the coming of
Christ, for they worshipped him not "properly. " Virgil himself was
one of them. They were all lost for no other reason; and their "only
suffering" consisted in "hopeless desire! "
Dante was struck with great sorrow when he heard this, knowing how many
good men must be in that place. He inquired if no one had ever been
taken out of it into heaven. Virgil told him there had, and he named
them; to wit, Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, King David, obedient Abraham the
patriarch, and Isaac, and Jacob, with their children, and Rachel, for
whom Jacob did so much,--and "many more;" adding, however, that there
was no instance of salvation before theirs.
Journeying on through spirits as thick as leaves, Dante perceived a
lustre at a little distance, and observing shapes in it evidently of
great dignity, inquired who they were that thus lived apart from the
rest. Virgil said that heaven thus favoured them by reason of their
renown on earth. A voice was then heard exclaiming, "Honour and glory to
the lofty poet! Lo, his shade returns. " Dante then saw four other noble
figures coming towards them, of aspect neither sad nor cheerful.
"Observe him with the sword in his hand," said Virgil, as they were
advancing. "That is Homer, the poets' sovereign. Next to him comes
Horace the satirist; then Ovid; and the last is Lucan. "
"And thus I beheld," says Dante, "the bright school of the loftiest of
poets, who flies above the rest like an eagle. "
For a while the illustrious spirits talked together, and then turned to
the Florentine with a benign salutation, at which his master smiled and
"further honour they did me," adds the father of Italian poetry, "for
they admitted me of their tribe; so that to a band of that high account
I added a sixth. " [7]
The spirits returned towards the bright light in which they lived,
talking with Dante by the way, and brought him to a magnificent castle,
girt with seven lofty walls, and further defended with a river, which
they all passed as if it had been dry ground. Seven gates conducted them
into a meadow of fresh green, the resort of a race whose eyes moved with
a deliberate soberness, and whose whole aspects were of great authority,
their voices sweet, and their speech seldom. [8] Dante was taken apart to
an elevation in the ground, so that he could behold them all distinctly;
and there, on the "enamelled green," [9] were pointed out to him the
great spirits, by the sight of whom he felt exalted in his own esteem.
He saw Electra with many companions, among whom were Hector and Æneas,
and Cæsar in armour with his hawk's eyes; and on another side he beheld
old King Latinus with his daughter Lavinia, and the Brutus that expelled
Tarquin, and Lucretia, and Julia, and Cato's wife Marcia, and the mother
of the Gracchi, and, apart by himself, the Sultan Saladin. He then
raised his eyes a little, and beheld the "master of those who know" [10]
(Aristotle), sitting amidst the family of philosophers, and honoured
by them all. Socrates and Plato were at his side. Among the rest was
Democritus, who made the world a chance, and Diogenes, and Heraclitus,
&c. and Dioscorides, the good gatherer of simples. Orpheus also he saw,
and Cicero, and the moral Seneca, and Euclid, and Hippocrates, and
Avicen, and Averroes, who wrote the great commentary, and others too
numerous to mention. The company of six became diminished to two, and
Virgil took him forth on a far different road, leaving that serene air
for a stormy one; and so they descended again into darkness.
It was the second circle into which they now came--a sphere narrower
than the first, and by so much more the wretcheder. Minos sat at the
entrance, gnarling--he that gives sentence on every one that comes, and
intimates the circle into which each is to be plunged by the number of
folds into which he casts his tail round about him. Minos admonished
Dante to beware how he entered unbidden, and warned him against his
conductor; but Virgil sharply rebuked the judge, and bade him not set
his will against the will that was power.
The pilgrims then descended through hell-mouth, till they came to a
place dark as pitch, that bellowed with furious cross-winds, like a sea
in a tempest. It was the first place of torment, and the habitation of
carnal sinners. The winds, full of stifled voices, buffeted the souls
for ever, whirling them away to and fro, and dashing them against one
another. Whenever it seized them for that purpose, the wailing and the
shrieking was loudest, crying out against the Divine Power. Sometimes a
whole multitude came driven in a body like starlings before the wind,
now hither and thither, now up, now down; sometimes they went in a line
like cranes, when a company of those birds is beheld sailing along in
the air, uttering its dolorous clangs.
Dante, seeing a group of them advancing, inquired of Virgil who they
were. "Who are these," said he, "coming hither, scourged in the blackest
part of the hurricane? "
"She at the head of them," said Virgil, "was empress over many nations.
So foul grew her heart with lust, that she ordained license to be law,
to the end that herself might be held blameless. She is Semiramis, of
whom it is said that she gave suck to Ninus, and espoused him. Leading
the multitude next to her is Dido, she that slew herself for love, and
broke faith to the ashes of Sichaeus; and she that follows with the next
is the luxurious woman, Cleopatra. "
Dante then saw Helen, who produced such a world of misery; and the great
Achilles, who fought for love till it slew him; and Paris; and Tristan;
and a thousand more whom his guide pointed at, naming their names, every
one of whom was lost through love.
The poet stood for a while speechless for pity, and like one bereft of
his wits. He then besought leave to speak to a particular couple who
went side by side, and who appeared to be borne before the wind with
speed lighter than the rest. His conductor bade him wait till they came
nigher, and then to entreat them gently by the love which bore them in
that manner, and they would stop and speak with him. Dante waited his
time, and then lifted up his voice between the gusts of wind, and
adjured the two "weary souls" to halt and have speech with him, if none
forbade their doing so; upon which they came to him, like doves to the
nest. [11]
There was a lull in the tempest, as if on purpose to let them speak;
and the female addressed Dante, saying, that as he showed such pity for
their state, they would have prayed heaven to give peace and repose to
his life, had they possessed the friendship of heaven. [12]
"Love," she said, "which is soon kindled in a gentle heart, seized this
my companion for the fair body I once inhabited--how deprived of it, my
spirit is bowed to recollect. Love, which compels the beloved person
upon thoughts of love, seized me in turn with a delight in his passion
so strong, that, as thou seest, even here it forsakes me not. Love
brought us both to one end. The punishment of Cain awaits him that slew
us. "
The poet was struck dumb by this story. He hung down his head, and stood
looking on the ground so long, that his guide asked him what was in his
mind. "Alas! " answered he, "such then was this love, so full of sweet
thoughts; and such the pass to which it brought them! Oh, Francesca! " he
cried, turning again to the sad couple, "thy sufferings make me weep.
But tell me, I pray thee, what was it that first made thee know, for a
certainty, that his love was returned? --that thou couldst refuse him
thine no longer? "
"There is not a greater sorrow," answered she, "than calling to mind
happy moments in the midst of wretchedness. [13] But since thy desire is
so great to know our story to the root, hear me tell it as well as I
may for tears. It chanced, one day, that we sat reading the tale of
Sir Launcelot, how love took him in thrall. We were alone, and had no
suspicion. Often, as we read, our eyes became suspended,[14] and we
changed colour; but one passage alone it was that overcame us. When we
read how Genevra smiled, and how the lover, out of the depth of his
love, could not help kissing that smile, he that is never more to be
parted from me kissed me himself on the mouth, all in a tremble. Never
had we go-between but that book. The writer was the betrayer. That day
we read no more. "
While these words were being uttered by one of the spirits, the other
wailed so bitterly, that the poet thought he should have died for pity.
His senses forsook him, and he fell flat on the ground, as a dead body
falls. [15]
On regaining his senses, the poet found himself in the third circle of
hell, a place of everlasting wet, darkness, and cold, one heavy slush of
hail and mud, emitting a squalid smell. The triple-headed dog Cerberus,
with red eyes and greasy black beard, large belly, and hands with claws,
barked above the heads of the wretches who floundered in the mud,
tearing, skinning, and dismembering them, as they turned their sore and
soddened bodies from side to side. When he saw the two living men, he
showed his fangs, and shook in every limb for desire of their flesh.
Virgil threw lumps of dirt into his mouth, and so they passed him.
It was the place of Gluttons. The travellers passed over them, as if
they had been ground to walk upon. But one of them sat up, and addressed
the Florentine as his acquaintance. Dante did not know him, for the
agony in his countenance. He was a man nicknamed Hog (Ciacco), and by no
other name does the poet, or any one else, mention him. His countryman
addressed him by it, though declaring at the same time that he wept to
see him. Hog prophesied evil to his discordant native city, adding
that there were but two just men in it--all the rest being given up to
avarice, envy, and pride. Dante inquired by name respecting the fate of
five other Florentines, _who had done good_, and was informed that they
were all, for various offences, _in lower gulfs of hell_. Hog then
begged that he would mention having seen him when he returned to the
sweet world; and so, looking at him a little, bent his head, and
disappeared among his blinded companions.
"Satan! hoa, Satan! " roared the demon Plutus, as the poets were
descending into the fourth circle.
"Peace! " cried Virgil, "with thy swollen lip, thou accursed wolf. No one
can hinder his coming down. God wills it. " [16]
Flat fell Plutus, collapsed, like the sails of a vessel when the mast is
split.
This circle was the most populous one they had yet come to. The
sufferers, gifted with supernatural might, kept eternally rolling round
it, one against another, with terrific violence, and so dashing apart,
and returning. "Why grasp? " cried the one--"Why throw away? " cried the
other; and thus exclaiming, they dashed furiously together.
They were the Avaricious and the Prodigal. Multitudes of them were
churchmen, including cardinals and popes. Not all the gold beneath the
moon could have purchased them a moment's rest. Dante asked if none of
them were to be recognised by their countenances. Virgil said, "No;" for
the stupid and sullied lives which they led on earth swept their faces
away from all distinction for ever.
In discoursing of fortune, they descend by the side of a torrent, black
as ink, into the fifth circle, or place of torment for the Angry, the
Sullen, and the Proud. Here they first beheld a filthy marsh, full of
dirty naked bodies, that in everlasting rage tore one another to pieces.
In a quieter division of the pool were seen nothing but bubbles, carried
by the ascent, from its slimy bottom, of the stifled words of the
sullen. They were always saying, "We were sad and dark within us in the
midst of the sweet sunshine, and now we live sadly in the dark bogs. "
The poets walked on till they came to the foot of a tower, which hung
out two blazing signals to another just discernible in the distance. A
boat came rapidly towards them, ferried by the wrathful Phlegyas;[17]
who cried out, "Aha, felon! and so thou hast come at last! "
"Thou errest," said Virgil. "We come for no longer time than it will
take thee to ferry us across thy pool. "
Phlegyas looked like one defrauded of his right; but proceeded to convey
them. During their course a spirit rose out of the mire, looking Dante
in the face, and said, "Who art thou, that comest before thy time? "
"Who art thou? " said Dante.
"Thou seest who I am," answered the other; "one among the mourners. "
"Then mourn still, and howl, accursed spirit," returned the Florentine.
"I know thee, all over filth as thou art. "
The wretch in fury laid hold of the boat, but Virgil thrust him back,
exclaiming, "Down with thee! down among the other dogs! "
Then turning to Dante, he embraced and kissed him, saying, "O soul, that
knows how to disdain, blessed be she that bore thee! Arrogant, truly,
upon earth was this sinner, nor is his memory graced by a single virtue.
Hence the furiousness of his spirit now. How many kings are there at
this moment lording it as gods, who shall wallow here, as he does, like
swine in the mud, and be thought no better of by the world!
" "I should
like to see him smothering in it," said Dante, "before we go. "
"A right wish," said Virgil, "and thou shalt, to thy heart's content. "
On a sudden the wretch's muddy companions seized and drenched him so
horribly that (exclaims Dante) "I laud and thank God for it now at this
moment. "
"Have at him! " cried they; "have at Filippo Argenti;" and the wild fool
of a Florentine dashed his teeth for rage into his own flesh. [18]
The poet's attention was now drawn off by a noise of lamentation, and
he perceived that he was approaching the city of Dis. [19] The turrets
glowed vermilion with the fire within it, the walls appeared to be of
iron, and moats were round about them. The boat circuited the walls till
the travellers came to a gate, which Phlegyas, with a loud voice, told
them to quit the boat and enter. But a thousand fallen angels crowded
over the top of the gate, refusing to open it, and making furious
gestures. At length they agreed to let Virgil speak with them inside;
and he left Dante for a while, standing in terror without. The parley
was in vain. They would not let them pass. Virgil, however, bade his
companion be of good cheer, and then stood listening and talking to
himself; disclosing by his words his expectation of some extraordinary
assistance, and at the same time his anxiety for its arrival. On a
sudden, three raging figures arose over the gate, coloured with gore.
Green hydras twisted about them; and their fierce temples had snakes
instead of hair.
"Look," said Virgil. "The Furies! The one on the left is Megæra; Alecto
is she that is wailing on the right; and in the middle is Tisiphone. "
Virgil then hushed. The Furies stood clawing their breasts, smiting
their hands together, and raising such hideous cries, that Dante clung
to his friend.
"Bring the Gorgon's head! " cried the Furies, looking down; "turn him to
adamant! "
"Turn round," said Virgil, "and hide thy face; for if thou beholdest
the Gorgon, never again wilt thou see the light of day. " And with these
words he seized Dante and turned him round himself, clapping his hands
over his companion's eyes.
And now was heard coming over the water a terrible crashing noise, that
made the banks on either side of it tremble. It was like a hurricane
which comes roaring through the vain shelter of the woods, splitting and
hurling away the boughs, sweeping along proudly in a huge cloud of dust,
and making herds and herdsmen fly before it. "Now stretch your eyesight
across the water," said Virgil, letting loose his hands;--"there, where
the smoke of the foam is thickest. " Dante looked; and saw a thousand of
the rebel angels, like frogs before a serpent, swept away into a heap
before the coming of a single spirit, who flew over the tops of the
billows with unwet feet. The spirit frequently pushed the gross air
from before his face, as if tired of the base obstacle; and as he came
nearer, Dante, who saw it was a messenger from heaven, looked anxiously
at Virgil. Virgil motioned him to be silent and bow down.
The angel, with a face full of scorn, as soon as he arrived at the gate,
touched it with a wand that he had in his hand, and it flew open.
"Outcasts of heaven," said he; "despicable race! whence this fantastical
arrogance? Do ye forget that your torments are laid oil thicker every
time ye kick against the Fates? Do ye forget how your Cerberus was bound
and chained till he lost the hair off his neck like a common dog? "
So saying he turned swiftly and departed the way he came, not addressing
a word to the travellers. His countenance had suddenly a look of some
other business, totally different from the one he had terminated.
The companions passed in, and beheld a place full of tombs red-hot. It
was the region of Arch heretics and their followers. Dante and his guide
passed round betwixt the walls and the sepulchres as in a churchyard,
and came to the quarter which held Epicurus and his sect, who denied the
existence of spirit apart from matter. The lids of the tombs remaining
unclosed till the day of judgment, the soul of a noble Florentine,
Farinata degli Uberti, hearing Dante speak, addressed him as a
countryman, asking him to stop. [20] Dante, alarmed, beheld him rise half
out of his sepulchre, looking as lofty as if he scorned hell itself.
Finding who Dante was, he boasted of having three times expelled the
Guelphs. "Perhaps so," said the poet; "but they came back again each
time; an art which their enemies have not yet acquired. "
A visage then appeared from out another tomb, looking eagerly, as if it
expected to see some one else. Being disappointed, the tears came into
its eyes, and the sufferer said, "If it is thy genius that conducts thee
hither, where is my son, and why is he not with thee? "
"It is not my genius that conducts me," said Dante, "but that of one,
whom perhaps thy son held in contempt. "
"How sayest thou? " cried the shade;--"_held_ in contempt? He is dead
then? He beholds no longer the sweet light? " And with these words
he dropped into his tomb, and was seen no more. It was Cavalcante
Cavalcanti, the father of the poet's friend, Guido. [21]
The shade of Farinata, who had meantime been looking on, now replied to
the taunt of Dante, prophesying that he should soon have good reason to
know that the art he spoke of _had_ been acquired; upon which Dante,
speaking with more considerateness to the lofty sufferer, requested to
know how the gift of prophecy could belong to spirits who were ignorant
of the time present. Farinata answered that so it was; just as there was
a kind of eyesight which could discern things at a distance though
not at hand. Dante then expressed his remorse at not having informed
Cavalcante that his son was alive. He said it was owing to his being
overwhelmed with thought on the subject he had just mentioned, and
entreated Farinata to tell him so.
Quitting this part of the cemetery, Virgil led him through the midst
of it towards a descent into a valley, from which there ascended a
loathsome odour. They stood behind one of the tombs for a while, to
accustom themselves to the breath of it; and then began to descend a
wild fissure in a rock, near the mouth of which lay the infamy of Crete,
the Minotaur. The monster beholding them gnawed himself for rage; and
on their persisting to advance, began plunging like a bull when he
is stricken by the knife of the butcher. They succeeded, however, in
entering the fissure before he recovered sufficiently from his madness
to run at them; and at the foot of the descent, came to a river of
boiling blood, on the strand of which ran thousands of Centaurs armed
with bows and arrows. In the blood, more or less deep according to the
amount of the crime, and shrieking as they boiled, were the souls of the
Inflicters of Violence; and if any of them emerged from it higher than
he had a right to do, the Centaurs drove him down with their arrows.
Nessus, the one that bequeathed Hercules the poisoned garment, came
galloping towards the pilgrims, bending his bow, and calling out from
a distance to know who they were; but Virgil, disdaining his hasty
character, would explain himself only to Chiron, the Centaur who
instructed Achilles. Chiron, in consequence, bade Nessus accompany
them along the river; and there they saw tyrants immersed up to the
eyebrows;--Alexander the Great among them, Dionysius of Syracuse, and
Ezzelino the Paduan. There was one of the Pazzi of Florence, and Rinieri
of Corneto (infestors of the public ways), now shedding bloody tears,
and Attila the Scourge, and Pyrrhus king of Epirus. Further on, among
those immersed up to the throat, was Guy de Montfort the Englishman, who
slew his father's slayer, Prince Henry, during divine service, in
the bosom of God; and then by degrees the river became shallower and
shallower till it covered only the feet; and here the Centaur quitted
the pilgrims, and they crossed over into a forest.
The forest was a trackless and dreadful forest--the leaves not green,
but black--the boughs not freely growing, but knotted and twisted--the
fruit no fruit, but thorny poison. The Harpies wailed among the trees,
occasionally showing their human faces; and on every side of him Dante
heard lamenting human voices, but could see no one from whom they came.
"Pluck one of the boughs," said Virgil. Dante did so; and blood and a
cry followed it.
"Why pluckest thou me? " said the trunk. "Men have we been, like thyself;
but thou couldst not use us worse, had we been serpents. " The blood and
words came out together, as a green bough hisses and spits in the fire.
The voice was that of Piero delle Vigne, the good chancellor of the
Emperor Frederick the Second. Just though he had been to others, he
was thus tormented for having been unjust to himself; for, envy having
wronged him to his sovereign, who sentenced him to lose his eyes, he
dashed his brains out against a wall. Piero entreated Dante to vindicate
his memory. The poet could not speak for pity; so Virgil made the
promise for him, inquiring at the same time in what manner it was that
Suicides became thus identified with trees, and how their souls were to
rejoin their bodies at the day of judgment. Piero said, that the moment
the fierce self-murderer's spirit tore itself from the body, and passed
before Charon, it fell, like a grain of corn, into that wood, and so
grew into a tree. The Harpies then fed on its leaves, causing both pain
and a vent for lamentation. The body it would never again enter, having
thus cast away itself, but it would finally drag the body down to it by
a violent attraction; and every suicide's carcass will be hung upon the
thorn of its wretched shade.
The naked souls of two men, whose profusion had brought them to a
violent end, here came running through the wood from the fangs of black
female mastiff's--leaving that of a suicide to mourn the havoc which
their passage had made of his tree. He begged his countryman to gather
his leaves up, and lay them at the foot of his trunk, and Dante did so;
and then he and Virgil proceeded on their journey.
They issued from the wood on a barren sand, flaming hot, on which
multitudes of naked souls lay down, or sat huddled up, or restlessly
walked about, trying to throw from them incessant flakes of fire, which
came down like a fall of snow. They were the souls of the Impious. Among
them was a great spirit, who lay scornfully submitting himself to the
fiery shower, as though it had not yet ripened him. [22] Overhearing
Dante ask his guide who he was, he answered for himself, and said, "The
same dead as living. Jove will tire his flames out before they conquer
me. "
"Capaneus," exclaimed Virgil, "thy pride is thy punishment. No martyrdom
were sufficient for thee, equal to thine own rage. " The besieger of
Thebes made no reply.
In another quarter of the fiery shower the pilgrims met a crowd of
Florentines, mostly churchmen, whose offence is not to be named; after
which they beheld Usurers; and then arrived at a huge waterfall, which
fell into the eighth circle, or that of the Fraudulent. Here Virgil, by
way of bait to the monster Geryon, or Fraud, let down over the side
of the waterfall the cord of St. Francis, which Dante wore about his
waist,[23] and presently the dreadful creature came up, and sate on the
margin of the fall, with his serpent's tail hanging behind him in
the air, after the manner of a beaver; but the point of the tail was
occasionally seen glancing upwards. He was a gigantic reptile, with the
face of a just man, very mild. He had shaggy claws for arms, and a body
variegated all over with colours that ran in knots and circles, each
within the other, richer than any Eastern drapery. Virgil spoke apart
to him, and then mounted on his back, bidding his companion, who was
speechless for terror, do the salve. Geryon pushed back with them from
the edge of the precipice, like a ship leaving harbour; and then,
turning about, wheeled, like a sullen successless falcon, slowly down
through the air in many a circuit. Dante would not have known that he
was going downward, but for the air that struck up wards on his face.
Presently they heard the crash of the waterfall on the circle below,
and then distinguished flaming fires and the noises of suffering.
The monster Geryon, ever sullen as the falcon who seats himself at a
distance from his dissatisfied master, shook his riders from off his
back to the water's side, and then shot away like an arrow.
This eighth circle of hell is called Evil-Budget,[24] and consists of
ten compartments, or gulfs of torment, crossed and connected with
one another by bridges of flint. In the first were beheld Pimps and
Seducers, scourged like children by horned devils; in the second,
Flatterers, begrimed with ordure; in the third, Simonists, who were
stuck like plugs into circular apertures, with their heads downwards,
and their legs only discernible, the soles of their feet glowing with a
fire which made them incessantly quiver. Dante, going down the side of
the gulf with Virgil, was allowed to address one of them who seemed in
greater agony than the rest; and, doing so, the sufferer cried out in a
malignant rapture, "Aha, is it thou that standest there, Boniface? [25]
Thou hast come sooner than it was prophesied. " It was the soul of Pope
Nicholas the Third that spoke. Dante undeceived and then sternly
rebuked him for his avarice and depravity, telling him that nothing but
reverence for the keys of St. Peter hindered him from using harsher
words, and that it was such as he that the Evangelist beheld in the
vision, when he saw the woman with seven heads and ten horns, who
committed whoredom with the kings of the earth.
"O Constantine! " exclaimed the poet, "of what a world of evil was that
dowry the mother, which first converted the pastor of the church into a
rich man! " [26] The feet of the guilty pope spun with fiercer agony at
these words; and Virgil, looking pleased on Dante, returned with him
the way he came, till they found themselves on the margin of the fourth
gulf, the habitation of the souls of False Prophets.
It was a valley, in which the souls came walking along, silent and
weeping, at the pace of choristers who chant litanies. Their faces were
turned the wrong way, so that the backs of their heads came foremost,
and their tears fell on their loins. Dante was so overcome at the sight,
that he leant against a rock and wept; but Virgil rebuked him, telling
him that no pity at all was the only pity fit for that place. [27] There
was Amphiaraus, whom the earth opened and swallowed up at Thebes; and
Tiresias, who was transformed from sex to sex; and Aruns, who lived in
a cavern on the side of the marble mountains of Carrara, looking out on
the stars and ocean; and Manto, daughter of Tiresias (her hind tresses
over her bosom), who wandered through the world till she came and lived
in the solitary fen, whence afterwards arose the city of Mantua; and
Michael Scot, the magician, with his slender loins;[28] and Eurypylus,
the Grecian augur, who gave the signal with Calchas at Troy when to cut
away the cables for home. He came stooping along, projecting his face
over his swarthy shoulders. Guido Bonatti, too, was there, astrologer of
Forli; and Ardente, shoemaker of Parma, who now wishes he had stuck to
his last; and the wretched women who quit the needle and the distaff to
wreak their malice with herbs and images. Such was the punishment of
those who, desiring to see too far before them, now looked only behind
them, and walked the reverse way of their looking.
The fifth gulf was a lake of boiling pitch, constantly heaving and
subsiding throughout, and bubbling with the breath of those within it.
They were Public Peculators. Winged black devils were busy about the
lake, pronging the sinners when they occasionally darted up their backs
for relief like dolphins, or thrust out their jaws like frogs. Dante
at first looked eagerly down into the gulf, like one who feels that he
shall turn away instantly out of the very horror that attracts him.
"See--look behind thee! " said Virgil, dragging him at the same time from
the place where he stood, to a covert behind a crag. Dante looked round,
and beheld a devil coming up with a newly-arrived sinner across his
shoulders, whom he hurled into the lake, and then dashed down after him,
like a mastiff let loose on a thief. It was a man from Lucca, where
every soul was a false dealer except Bonturo. [29] The devil called out
to other devils, and a heap of them fell upon the wretch with hooks as
he rose to the surface; telling him, that he must practise there in
secret, if he practised at all; and thrusting him back into the boiling
pitch, as cooks thrust back flesh into the pot. The devils were of the
lowest and most revolting habits, of which they made disgusting jest and
parade.
Some of them, on a sudden, perceived Dante and his guide, and were going
to seize them, when Virgil resorted to his usual holy rebuke. For a
while they let him alone; and Dante saw one of them haul a sinner out of
the pitch by the clotted locks, and hold him up sprawling like an otter.
The rest then fell upon him and flayed him.
It was Ciampolo, a peculator in the service of the good Thiebault, king
of Navarre. One of his companions under the pitch was Friar Gomita,
governor of Gallura; and another, Michael Zanche, also a Sardinian.
Ciampolo ultimately escaped by a trick out of the hands of the devils,
who were so enraged that they turned upon the two pilgrims; but Virgil,
catching up Dante with supernatural force, as a mother does a child in
a burning house, plunged with him out of their jurisdiction into the
borders of gulf the sixth, the region of Hypocrites.
The hypocrites, in perpetual tears, walked about in a wearisome and
exhausted manner, as if ready to faint. They wore huge cowls, which hung
over their eyes, and the outsides of which were gilded, but the insides
of lead. Two of them had been rulers of Florence; and Dante was
listening to their story, when his attention was called off by the sight
of a cross, on which Caiaphas the High Priest was writhing, breathing
hard all the while through his beard with sighs. It was his office to
see that every soul which passed him, on its arrival in the place, was
oppressed with the due weight. His father-in-law, Annas, and all his
council, were stuck in like manner on crosses round the borders of the
gulf. The pilgrims beheld little else in this region of weariness, and
soon passed into the borders of one of the most terrible portions of
Evil-budget, the land of the transformation of Robbers.
The place was thronged with serpents of the most appalling and unwonted
description, among which ran tormented the naked spirits of the
robbers, agonised with fear. Their hands were bound behind them with
serpents--their bodies pierced and enfolded with serpents. Dante saw one
of the monsters leap up and transfix a man through the nape of the neck;
when, lo! sooner than a pen could write _o_, or _i_, the sufferer burst
into flames, burnt up, fell to the earth a heap of ashes--was again
brought together, and again became a man, aghast with his agony, and
staring about him, sighing. [30] Virgil asked him who he was.
"I was but lately rained down into this dire gullet," said the man,
"amidst a shower of Tuscans. The beast Vanni Fucci am I, who led a
brutal life, like the mule that I was, in that den Pistoia. "
"Compel him to stop," said Dante, "and relate what brought him hither. I
knew the bloody and choleric wretch when he was alive. "
The sinner, who did not pretend to be deaf to these words, turned round
to the speaker with the most painful shame in his face, and said, "I
feel more bitterly at being caught here by thee in this condition, than
when I first arrived. A power which I cannot resist compels me to let
thee know, that I am here because I committed sacrilege and charged
another with the crime; but now, mark me, that thou mayest hear
something not to render this encounter so pleasant: Pistoia hates thy
party of the Whites, and longs for the Blacks back again. It will have
them, and so will Florence; and there will be a bloody cloud shall burst
over the battlefield of Piceno, which will dash many Whites to the
earth. I tell thee this to make thee miserable. "
So saying, the wretch gave a gesture of contempt with his thumb and
finger towards heaven, and said, "Take it, God--a fig for thee! " [31]
"From that instant," said Dante, "the serpents and I were friends; for
one of them throttled him into silence, and another dashed his hands
into a knot behind his back. O Pistoia! Pistoia! why art not thou
thyself turned into ashes, and swept from the face of the earth, since
thy race has surpassed in evil thine ancestors? Never, through the
whole darkness of hell, beheld I a blasphemer so dire as this--not even
Capaneus himself. "
The Pistoian fled away with the serpents upon him, followed by a
Centaur, who came madly galloping up, crying, "Where is the caitiff? " It
was the monster-thief Cacus, whose den upon earth often had a pond of
blood before it, and to whom Hercules, in his rage, when he slew him,
gave a whole hundred blows with his club, though the wretch perceived
nothing after the ninth. He was all over adders up to the mouth; and
upon his shoulders lay a dragon with its wings open, breathing fire on
whomsoever it met.
The Centaur tore away; and Dante and Virgil were gazing after him, when
they heard voices beneath the bank on which they stood, crying, "Who are
ye? " The pilgrims turned their eyes downwards, and beheld three spirits,
one of whom, looking about him, said, "Where's Cianfa? " Dante made a
sign to Virgil to say nothing.
Cianfa came forth, a man lately, but now a serpent with six feet. [32]
"If thou art slow to believe, reader, what I am about to tell thee,"
says the poet, "be so; it is no marvel; for I myself, even now, scarcely
credit what I beheld. "
The six-footed serpent sprang at one of the three men front to front,
clasping him tightly with all its legs, and plunging his fangs into
either cheek. Ivy never stuck so close to a tree as the horrible monster
grappled with every limb of that pinioned man. The two forms then
gradually mingled into one another like melting wax, the colours of
their skin giving way at the same time to a third colour, as the white
in a piece of burning paper recedes before the brown, till it all
becomes black. The other two human shapes looked on, exclaiming,
"Oh, how thou changest, Agnello! See, thou art neither two nor yet one. "
And truly, though the two heads first became one, there still remained
two countenances in the face. The four arms then became but two, and
such also became the legs and thighs; and the two trunks became such a
body as was never beheld; and the hideous twofold monster walked slowly
away. [33]
A small black serpent on fire now flashed like lightning on to the body
of one of the other two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling on
the ground, and lying stretched before him. The wounded man, fascinated
and mute, stood looking at the adder's eyes, and endeavouring to stand
steady on his legs, yawning the while as if smitten with lethargy or
fever; the adder, on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man, and
both of them breathed hard, and sent forth a smoke that mingled into one
volume.
And now, let Lucan never speak more of the wretched Sabellus or
Nisidius, but listen and be silent; and now, let Ovid be silent, nor
speak again of his serpent that was Cadmus, or his fountain that was
Arethusa; for, says the Tuscan poet, I envy him not. Never did he change
the natures of two creatures face to face, so that each received the
form of the other.
With corresponding impulse, the serpent split his train into a fork,
while the man drew his legs together into a train; the skin of the
serpent grew soft, while the man's hardened; the serpent acquired
tresses of hair, the man grew hairless; the claws of the one projected
into legs, while the arms of the other withdrew into his shoulders; the
face of the serpent, as it rose from the ground, retreated towards the
temples, pushing out human ears; that of the man, as he fell to the
ground, thrust itself forth into a muzzle, withdrawing at the same time
its ears into its head, as the slug does its horns; and each creature
kept its impious eyes fixed on the other's, while the features beneath
the eyes were changing. The soul which had become the serpent then
turned to crawl away, hissing in scorn as he departed; and the serpent,
which had become the man, spat after him, and spoke words at him. The
new human-looking soul then turned his back on his late adversary, and
said to the third spirit, who remained unchanged, "Let Buoso now take to
his crawl, as I have done. "
The two then hastened away together, leaving Dante in a state of
bewildered amazement, yet not so confused but that he recognised the
unchanged one for another of his countrymen, Puccio the Lame. "Joy to
thee, Florence! " cried the poet; "not content with having thy name
bruited over land and sea, it flourishes throughout hell. "
The pilgrims now quitted the seventh, and looked down from its barrier
into the eighth gulf, where they saw innumerable flames, distinct from
one another, flickering all over the place like fire-flies.
"In those flames," said Virgil, "are souls, each tormented with the fire
that swathes it. "
"I observe one," said Dante, "divided at the summit. Are the Theban
brothers in it? "
"No," replied Virgil; "in that flame are Diomed and Ulysses. " The
sinners punished in this gulf were Evil Counsellors; and those two were
the advisers of the stratagem of the Trojan horse.
Virgil addressed Ulysses, who told him the conclusion of his adventures,
not to be found in books: how he tired of an idle life, and sailed forth
again into the wide ocean; and how he sailed so far that he came into a
region of new stars, and in sight of a mountain, the loftiest he ever
saw; when, unfortunately, a hurricane fell upon them from the shore,
thrice whirled their vessel round, then dashed the stern up in air and
the prow under water, and sent the billows over their heads.
"Enough," said Virgil; "I trouble thee no more. " The soul of Guido di
Montefeltro, overhearing the great Mantuan speak in a Lombard dialect,
asked him news of the state of things in Romagna; and then told him how
he had lost his chance of paradise, by thinking Pope Boniface could at
once absolve him from his sins, and use them for his purposes. [34] He
was going to heaven, he said, by the help of St. Francis, who came on
purpose to fetch him, when a black angel met them, and demanded his
absolved, indeed, but unrepented victim. "To repent evil, and to will
to do it, at one and the same time, are," said the dreadful angel,
"impossible: therefore wrong me not. "
"Oh, how I shook," said the unhappy Guido, "when he laid his hands upon
me! " And with these words the flame writhed and beat itself about for
agony, and so took its way.
The pilgrims crossed over to the banks of the ninth gulf, where the
Sowers of Scandal, the Schismatics, Heretics, and Founders of False
Religions, underwent the penalties of such as load themselves with the
sins of those whom they seduce.
The first sight they beheld was Mahomet, tearing open his own bowels,
and calling out to them to mark him. Before him walked his son-in-law,
Ali, weeping, and cloven to the chin; and the divisions in the church
were punished in like manner upon all the schismatics in the place.
sin of incontinence; and the punishment goes deepening with the crime
from circle to circle, through gluttony, avarice, prodigality, wrath,
sullenness, or unwillingness to be pleased with the creation, disbelief
in God and the soul (with which the punishment by fire commences),
usury, murder, suicide, blasphemy, seduction and other carnal
enormities, adulation, simony, soothsaying, astrology, witchcraft,
trafficking with the public interest, hypocrisy, highway robbery (on
the great Italian scale), sacrilege, evil counsel, disturbance of the
Church, heresy, false apostleship, alchemy, forgery, coining (all these,
from seduction downwards, in one circle); then, in the frozen or lowest
circle of all, treachery; and at the bottom of this is Satan, stuck into
the centre of the earth.
With the centre of the globe commences the antipodean attraction of its
opposite side, together with a rocky ascent out of it, through a
huge ravine. The poet and his guide, on their arrival at this spot,
accordingly find their position reversed; and so conclude their
_downward_ journey _upwards_, till they issue forth to light on the
borders of the sea which contains the island of Purgatory.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL.
Dante says, that when he was half-way on his pilgrimage through this
life, he one day found himself, towards nightfall, in a wood where he
could no longer discern the right path. It was a place so gloomy and
terrible, every thing in it growing in such a strange and savage manner,
that the horror he felt returned on him whenever he thought of it. The
pass of death could hardly be more bitter. Travelling through it all
night with a beating heart, he at length came to the foot of a hill, and
looking up, as he began to ascend it, he perceived the shoulders of the
hill clad in the beams of morning; a sight which gave him some little
comfort. He felt like a man who has buffeted his way to land out of a
shipwreck, and who, though still anxious to get farther from his peril,
cannot help turning round to gaze on the wide waters. So did he stand
looking back on the pass that contained that dreadful wood. After
resting a while, he again betook him up the hill; but had not gone far
when he beheld a leopard bounding in front of him, and hindering his
progress. After the leopard came a lion, with his head aloft, mad with
hunger, and seeming to frighten the very air;[1] and after the lion,
more eager still, a she-wolf, so lean that she appeared to be sharpened
with every wolfish want. The pilgrim fled back in terror to the wood,
where he again found himself in a darkness to which the light never
penetrated. In that place, he said, the sun never spoke word. [2] But the
wolf was still close upon him. [3]
While thus flying, he beheld coming towards him a man, who spoke
something, but he knew not what. The voice sounded strange and feeble,
as if from disuse. Dante loudly called out to him to save him, whether
he was a man or only a spirit. The apparition, at whose sight the wild
beasts disappeared, said that he was no longer man, though man he
had been in the time of the false gods, and sung the history of the
offspring of Anchises.
"And art thou, then, that Virgil," said Dante, "who has filled the world
with such floods of eloquence? O glory and light of all poets, thou art
my master, and thou mine _author_; thou alone the book from which I have
gathered beauties that have gained me praise. Behold the peril I am in,
and help me, for I tremble in every vein and pulse. "
Virgil comforted Dante. He told him that he must quit the wood by
another road, and that he himself would be his guide, leading him first
to behold the regions of woe underground, and then the spirits that
lived content in fire because it purified them for heaven; and then that
he would consign him to other hands worthier than his own, which should
raise him to behold heaven itself; for as the Pagans, of whom he was
one, had been rebels to the law of him that reigns there, nobody could
arrive at Paradise by their means. [4]
So saying, Virgil moved on his way, and Dante closely followed. He
expressed a fear, however, as they went, lest being "neither Æneas nor
St. Paul," his journey could not be worthily undertaken, nor end in
wisdom. But Virgil, after sharply rebuking him for his faintheartedness,
told him, that the spirit of her whom he loved, Beatrice, had come down
from heaven on purpose to commend her lover to his care; upon which the
drooping courage of the pilgrim was raised to an undaunted confidence;
as flowers that have been closed and bowed down by frosty nights, rise
all up on their stems in the morning sun. [5]
"Non vuol che 'n sua città per me sì vegna. "
The Pagans could not be rebels to a law they never heard of, any
more than Dante could be a rebel to Luther. But this is one of the
absurdities with which the impious effrontery or scarcely less
impious admissions of Dante's teachers avowedly set reason at
defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of contempt for the
impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd," as the poet says;
for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued, much more so, they
had at least an equal claim on the submission of the reason; since the
greater the irrationality, the higher the theological triumph.
"Through me is the road to the dolorous city;
Through me is the road to the everlasting sorrows;
Through me is the road to the lost people.
Justice was the motive of my exalted maker;
I was made by divine power, by consummate wisdom, and by primal love;
Before me was no created thing, if not eternal; and eternal am I also.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter. "
Such were the words which Dante beheld written in dark characters over a
portal. "Master," said he to Virgil, "I find their meaning hard. "
"A man," answered Virgil, "must conduct himself at this door like one
prepared. Hither must he bring no mistrust. Hither can come and live no
cowardice. We have arrived at the place I told thee of. Here thou art to
behold the dolorous people who have lost all intellectual good. " [6]
So saying, Virgil placed his hand on Dante's, looking on him with a
cheerful countenance; and the Florentine passed with him through the
dreadful gate.
They entered upon a sightless gulf, in which was a black air without
stars; and immediately heard a hubbub of groans; and wailings, and
terrible things said in many languages, words of wretchedness, outcries
of rage, voices loud and hoarse, and sounds of the smitings of hands one
against another. Dante began to weep. The sound was as if the sand in
a whirlwind were turned into noises, and filled the blind air with
incessant conflict.
Yet these were not the souls of the wicked. They were those only who had
lived without praise or blame, thinking of nothing but themselves. These
miserable creatures were mixed with the angels who stood neutral in the
war with Satan. Heaven would not dull its brightness with those angels,
nor would lower hell receive them, lest the bad ones should triumph in
their company.
"And what is it," said Dante, "which makes them so grievously suffer? "
"Hopelessness of death," said Virgil. "Their blind existence here, and
immemorable former life, make them so wretched, that they envy every
other lot. Mercy and justice alike disdain them. Let us speak of them no
more. Look, and pass. "
The companions went on till they came to a great river with a multitude
waiting on the banks. A hoary old man appeared crossing the river
towards them in a boat; and as he came, he said, "Woe to the wicked.
Never expect to see heaven. I come to bear you across to the dark
regions of everlasting fire and ice. " Then looking at Dante, he said,
"Get thee away from the dead, thou who standest there, live spirit. "
"Torment thyself not, Charon," said Virgil. "He has a passport beyond
thy power to question. "
The shaggy cheeks of the boatman of the livid lake, who had wheels of
fire about his eyes, fell at these words; and he was silent. But the
naked multitude of souls whom he had spoken to changed colour, and
gnashed their teeth, blaspheming God, and their parents, and the human
species, and the place, and the hour, and the seed of the sowing of
their birth; and all the while they felt themselves driven onwards, by a
fear which became a desire, towards the cruel river-side, which awaits
every one destitute of the fear of God. The demon Charon, beckoning to
them with eyes like brasiers, collected them as they came, giving blows
to those that lingered, with his oar. One by one they dropped into the
boat like leaves from a bough in autumn, till the bough is left bare; or
as birds drop into the decoy at the sound of the bird-call.
There was then an earthquake, so terrible that the recollection of it
made the poet burst into a sweat at every pore. A whirlwind issued from
the lamenting ground, attended by vermilion flashes; and he lost his
senses, and fell like a man stupefied.
A crash of thunder through his brain woke up the pilgrim so hastily,
that he shook himself like a person roused by force. He found that he
was on the brink of a gulf, from which ascended a thunderous sound of
innumerable groanings. He could see nothing down it. It was too dark
with sooty clouds. Virgil himself turned pale, but said, "We are to go
down here. I will lead the way. "
"O master," said Dante, "if even thou fearest, what is to become of
myself? " "It is pity, not fear," replied Virgil, "that makes me change
colour. "
With these words his guide led him into the first circle of hell,
surrounding the abyss. The great noise gradually ceased to be heard, as
they journeyed inwards, till at last they became aware of a world of
sighs, which produced a trembling in the air. They were breathed by the
souls of such as had died without baptism, men, women, and infants; no
matter how good; no matter if they worshipped God before the coming of
Christ, for they worshipped him not "properly. " Virgil himself was
one of them. They were all lost for no other reason; and their "only
suffering" consisted in "hopeless desire! "
Dante was struck with great sorrow when he heard this, knowing how many
good men must be in that place. He inquired if no one had ever been
taken out of it into heaven. Virgil told him there had, and he named
them; to wit, Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, King David, obedient Abraham the
patriarch, and Isaac, and Jacob, with their children, and Rachel, for
whom Jacob did so much,--and "many more;" adding, however, that there
was no instance of salvation before theirs.
Journeying on through spirits as thick as leaves, Dante perceived a
lustre at a little distance, and observing shapes in it evidently of
great dignity, inquired who they were that thus lived apart from the
rest. Virgil said that heaven thus favoured them by reason of their
renown on earth. A voice was then heard exclaiming, "Honour and glory to
the lofty poet! Lo, his shade returns. " Dante then saw four other noble
figures coming towards them, of aspect neither sad nor cheerful.
"Observe him with the sword in his hand," said Virgil, as they were
advancing. "That is Homer, the poets' sovereign. Next to him comes
Horace the satirist; then Ovid; and the last is Lucan. "
"And thus I beheld," says Dante, "the bright school of the loftiest of
poets, who flies above the rest like an eagle. "
For a while the illustrious spirits talked together, and then turned to
the Florentine with a benign salutation, at which his master smiled and
"further honour they did me," adds the father of Italian poetry, "for
they admitted me of their tribe; so that to a band of that high account
I added a sixth. " [7]
The spirits returned towards the bright light in which they lived,
talking with Dante by the way, and brought him to a magnificent castle,
girt with seven lofty walls, and further defended with a river, which
they all passed as if it had been dry ground. Seven gates conducted them
into a meadow of fresh green, the resort of a race whose eyes moved with
a deliberate soberness, and whose whole aspects were of great authority,
their voices sweet, and their speech seldom. [8] Dante was taken apart to
an elevation in the ground, so that he could behold them all distinctly;
and there, on the "enamelled green," [9] were pointed out to him the
great spirits, by the sight of whom he felt exalted in his own esteem.
He saw Electra with many companions, among whom were Hector and Æneas,
and Cæsar in armour with his hawk's eyes; and on another side he beheld
old King Latinus with his daughter Lavinia, and the Brutus that expelled
Tarquin, and Lucretia, and Julia, and Cato's wife Marcia, and the mother
of the Gracchi, and, apart by himself, the Sultan Saladin. He then
raised his eyes a little, and beheld the "master of those who know" [10]
(Aristotle), sitting amidst the family of philosophers, and honoured
by them all. Socrates and Plato were at his side. Among the rest was
Democritus, who made the world a chance, and Diogenes, and Heraclitus,
&c. and Dioscorides, the good gatherer of simples. Orpheus also he saw,
and Cicero, and the moral Seneca, and Euclid, and Hippocrates, and
Avicen, and Averroes, who wrote the great commentary, and others too
numerous to mention. The company of six became diminished to two, and
Virgil took him forth on a far different road, leaving that serene air
for a stormy one; and so they descended again into darkness.
It was the second circle into which they now came--a sphere narrower
than the first, and by so much more the wretcheder. Minos sat at the
entrance, gnarling--he that gives sentence on every one that comes, and
intimates the circle into which each is to be plunged by the number of
folds into which he casts his tail round about him. Minos admonished
Dante to beware how he entered unbidden, and warned him against his
conductor; but Virgil sharply rebuked the judge, and bade him not set
his will against the will that was power.
The pilgrims then descended through hell-mouth, till they came to a
place dark as pitch, that bellowed with furious cross-winds, like a sea
in a tempest. It was the first place of torment, and the habitation of
carnal sinners. The winds, full of stifled voices, buffeted the souls
for ever, whirling them away to and fro, and dashing them against one
another. Whenever it seized them for that purpose, the wailing and the
shrieking was loudest, crying out against the Divine Power. Sometimes a
whole multitude came driven in a body like starlings before the wind,
now hither and thither, now up, now down; sometimes they went in a line
like cranes, when a company of those birds is beheld sailing along in
the air, uttering its dolorous clangs.
Dante, seeing a group of them advancing, inquired of Virgil who they
were. "Who are these," said he, "coming hither, scourged in the blackest
part of the hurricane? "
"She at the head of them," said Virgil, "was empress over many nations.
So foul grew her heart with lust, that she ordained license to be law,
to the end that herself might be held blameless. She is Semiramis, of
whom it is said that she gave suck to Ninus, and espoused him. Leading
the multitude next to her is Dido, she that slew herself for love, and
broke faith to the ashes of Sichaeus; and she that follows with the next
is the luxurious woman, Cleopatra. "
Dante then saw Helen, who produced such a world of misery; and the great
Achilles, who fought for love till it slew him; and Paris; and Tristan;
and a thousand more whom his guide pointed at, naming their names, every
one of whom was lost through love.
The poet stood for a while speechless for pity, and like one bereft of
his wits. He then besought leave to speak to a particular couple who
went side by side, and who appeared to be borne before the wind with
speed lighter than the rest. His conductor bade him wait till they came
nigher, and then to entreat them gently by the love which bore them in
that manner, and they would stop and speak with him. Dante waited his
time, and then lifted up his voice between the gusts of wind, and
adjured the two "weary souls" to halt and have speech with him, if none
forbade their doing so; upon which they came to him, like doves to the
nest. [11]
There was a lull in the tempest, as if on purpose to let them speak;
and the female addressed Dante, saying, that as he showed such pity for
their state, they would have prayed heaven to give peace and repose to
his life, had they possessed the friendship of heaven. [12]
"Love," she said, "which is soon kindled in a gentle heart, seized this
my companion for the fair body I once inhabited--how deprived of it, my
spirit is bowed to recollect. Love, which compels the beloved person
upon thoughts of love, seized me in turn with a delight in his passion
so strong, that, as thou seest, even here it forsakes me not. Love
brought us both to one end. The punishment of Cain awaits him that slew
us. "
The poet was struck dumb by this story. He hung down his head, and stood
looking on the ground so long, that his guide asked him what was in his
mind. "Alas! " answered he, "such then was this love, so full of sweet
thoughts; and such the pass to which it brought them! Oh, Francesca! " he
cried, turning again to the sad couple, "thy sufferings make me weep.
But tell me, I pray thee, what was it that first made thee know, for a
certainty, that his love was returned? --that thou couldst refuse him
thine no longer? "
"There is not a greater sorrow," answered she, "than calling to mind
happy moments in the midst of wretchedness. [13] But since thy desire is
so great to know our story to the root, hear me tell it as well as I
may for tears. It chanced, one day, that we sat reading the tale of
Sir Launcelot, how love took him in thrall. We were alone, and had no
suspicion. Often, as we read, our eyes became suspended,[14] and we
changed colour; but one passage alone it was that overcame us. When we
read how Genevra smiled, and how the lover, out of the depth of his
love, could not help kissing that smile, he that is never more to be
parted from me kissed me himself on the mouth, all in a tremble. Never
had we go-between but that book. The writer was the betrayer. That day
we read no more. "
While these words were being uttered by one of the spirits, the other
wailed so bitterly, that the poet thought he should have died for pity.
His senses forsook him, and he fell flat on the ground, as a dead body
falls. [15]
On regaining his senses, the poet found himself in the third circle of
hell, a place of everlasting wet, darkness, and cold, one heavy slush of
hail and mud, emitting a squalid smell. The triple-headed dog Cerberus,
with red eyes and greasy black beard, large belly, and hands with claws,
barked above the heads of the wretches who floundered in the mud,
tearing, skinning, and dismembering them, as they turned their sore and
soddened bodies from side to side. When he saw the two living men, he
showed his fangs, and shook in every limb for desire of their flesh.
Virgil threw lumps of dirt into his mouth, and so they passed him.
It was the place of Gluttons. The travellers passed over them, as if
they had been ground to walk upon. But one of them sat up, and addressed
the Florentine as his acquaintance. Dante did not know him, for the
agony in his countenance. He was a man nicknamed Hog (Ciacco), and by no
other name does the poet, or any one else, mention him. His countryman
addressed him by it, though declaring at the same time that he wept to
see him. Hog prophesied evil to his discordant native city, adding
that there were but two just men in it--all the rest being given up to
avarice, envy, and pride. Dante inquired by name respecting the fate of
five other Florentines, _who had done good_, and was informed that they
were all, for various offences, _in lower gulfs of hell_. Hog then
begged that he would mention having seen him when he returned to the
sweet world; and so, looking at him a little, bent his head, and
disappeared among his blinded companions.
"Satan! hoa, Satan! " roared the demon Plutus, as the poets were
descending into the fourth circle.
"Peace! " cried Virgil, "with thy swollen lip, thou accursed wolf. No one
can hinder his coming down. God wills it. " [16]
Flat fell Plutus, collapsed, like the sails of a vessel when the mast is
split.
This circle was the most populous one they had yet come to. The
sufferers, gifted with supernatural might, kept eternally rolling round
it, one against another, with terrific violence, and so dashing apart,
and returning. "Why grasp? " cried the one--"Why throw away? " cried the
other; and thus exclaiming, they dashed furiously together.
They were the Avaricious and the Prodigal. Multitudes of them were
churchmen, including cardinals and popes. Not all the gold beneath the
moon could have purchased them a moment's rest. Dante asked if none of
them were to be recognised by their countenances. Virgil said, "No;" for
the stupid and sullied lives which they led on earth swept their faces
away from all distinction for ever.
In discoursing of fortune, they descend by the side of a torrent, black
as ink, into the fifth circle, or place of torment for the Angry, the
Sullen, and the Proud. Here they first beheld a filthy marsh, full of
dirty naked bodies, that in everlasting rage tore one another to pieces.
In a quieter division of the pool were seen nothing but bubbles, carried
by the ascent, from its slimy bottom, of the stifled words of the
sullen. They were always saying, "We were sad and dark within us in the
midst of the sweet sunshine, and now we live sadly in the dark bogs. "
The poets walked on till they came to the foot of a tower, which hung
out two blazing signals to another just discernible in the distance. A
boat came rapidly towards them, ferried by the wrathful Phlegyas;[17]
who cried out, "Aha, felon! and so thou hast come at last! "
"Thou errest," said Virgil. "We come for no longer time than it will
take thee to ferry us across thy pool. "
Phlegyas looked like one defrauded of his right; but proceeded to convey
them. During their course a spirit rose out of the mire, looking Dante
in the face, and said, "Who art thou, that comest before thy time? "
"Who art thou? " said Dante.
"Thou seest who I am," answered the other; "one among the mourners. "
"Then mourn still, and howl, accursed spirit," returned the Florentine.
"I know thee, all over filth as thou art. "
The wretch in fury laid hold of the boat, but Virgil thrust him back,
exclaiming, "Down with thee! down among the other dogs! "
Then turning to Dante, he embraced and kissed him, saying, "O soul, that
knows how to disdain, blessed be she that bore thee! Arrogant, truly,
upon earth was this sinner, nor is his memory graced by a single virtue.
Hence the furiousness of his spirit now. How many kings are there at
this moment lording it as gods, who shall wallow here, as he does, like
swine in the mud, and be thought no better of by the world!
" "I should
like to see him smothering in it," said Dante, "before we go. "
"A right wish," said Virgil, "and thou shalt, to thy heart's content. "
On a sudden the wretch's muddy companions seized and drenched him so
horribly that (exclaims Dante) "I laud and thank God for it now at this
moment. "
"Have at him! " cried they; "have at Filippo Argenti;" and the wild fool
of a Florentine dashed his teeth for rage into his own flesh. [18]
The poet's attention was now drawn off by a noise of lamentation, and
he perceived that he was approaching the city of Dis. [19] The turrets
glowed vermilion with the fire within it, the walls appeared to be of
iron, and moats were round about them. The boat circuited the walls till
the travellers came to a gate, which Phlegyas, with a loud voice, told
them to quit the boat and enter. But a thousand fallen angels crowded
over the top of the gate, refusing to open it, and making furious
gestures. At length they agreed to let Virgil speak with them inside;
and he left Dante for a while, standing in terror without. The parley
was in vain. They would not let them pass. Virgil, however, bade his
companion be of good cheer, and then stood listening and talking to
himself; disclosing by his words his expectation of some extraordinary
assistance, and at the same time his anxiety for its arrival. On a
sudden, three raging figures arose over the gate, coloured with gore.
Green hydras twisted about them; and their fierce temples had snakes
instead of hair.
"Look," said Virgil. "The Furies! The one on the left is Megæra; Alecto
is she that is wailing on the right; and in the middle is Tisiphone. "
Virgil then hushed. The Furies stood clawing their breasts, smiting
their hands together, and raising such hideous cries, that Dante clung
to his friend.
"Bring the Gorgon's head! " cried the Furies, looking down; "turn him to
adamant! "
"Turn round," said Virgil, "and hide thy face; for if thou beholdest
the Gorgon, never again wilt thou see the light of day. " And with these
words he seized Dante and turned him round himself, clapping his hands
over his companion's eyes.
And now was heard coming over the water a terrible crashing noise, that
made the banks on either side of it tremble. It was like a hurricane
which comes roaring through the vain shelter of the woods, splitting and
hurling away the boughs, sweeping along proudly in a huge cloud of dust,
and making herds and herdsmen fly before it. "Now stretch your eyesight
across the water," said Virgil, letting loose his hands;--"there, where
the smoke of the foam is thickest. " Dante looked; and saw a thousand of
the rebel angels, like frogs before a serpent, swept away into a heap
before the coming of a single spirit, who flew over the tops of the
billows with unwet feet. The spirit frequently pushed the gross air
from before his face, as if tired of the base obstacle; and as he came
nearer, Dante, who saw it was a messenger from heaven, looked anxiously
at Virgil. Virgil motioned him to be silent and bow down.
The angel, with a face full of scorn, as soon as he arrived at the gate,
touched it with a wand that he had in his hand, and it flew open.
"Outcasts of heaven," said he; "despicable race! whence this fantastical
arrogance? Do ye forget that your torments are laid oil thicker every
time ye kick against the Fates? Do ye forget how your Cerberus was bound
and chained till he lost the hair off his neck like a common dog? "
So saying he turned swiftly and departed the way he came, not addressing
a word to the travellers. His countenance had suddenly a look of some
other business, totally different from the one he had terminated.
The companions passed in, and beheld a place full of tombs red-hot. It
was the region of Arch heretics and their followers. Dante and his guide
passed round betwixt the walls and the sepulchres as in a churchyard,
and came to the quarter which held Epicurus and his sect, who denied the
existence of spirit apart from matter. The lids of the tombs remaining
unclosed till the day of judgment, the soul of a noble Florentine,
Farinata degli Uberti, hearing Dante speak, addressed him as a
countryman, asking him to stop. [20] Dante, alarmed, beheld him rise half
out of his sepulchre, looking as lofty as if he scorned hell itself.
Finding who Dante was, he boasted of having three times expelled the
Guelphs. "Perhaps so," said the poet; "but they came back again each
time; an art which their enemies have not yet acquired. "
A visage then appeared from out another tomb, looking eagerly, as if it
expected to see some one else. Being disappointed, the tears came into
its eyes, and the sufferer said, "If it is thy genius that conducts thee
hither, where is my son, and why is he not with thee? "
"It is not my genius that conducts me," said Dante, "but that of one,
whom perhaps thy son held in contempt. "
"How sayest thou? " cried the shade;--"_held_ in contempt? He is dead
then? He beholds no longer the sweet light? " And with these words
he dropped into his tomb, and was seen no more. It was Cavalcante
Cavalcanti, the father of the poet's friend, Guido. [21]
The shade of Farinata, who had meantime been looking on, now replied to
the taunt of Dante, prophesying that he should soon have good reason to
know that the art he spoke of _had_ been acquired; upon which Dante,
speaking with more considerateness to the lofty sufferer, requested to
know how the gift of prophecy could belong to spirits who were ignorant
of the time present. Farinata answered that so it was; just as there was
a kind of eyesight which could discern things at a distance though
not at hand. Dante then expressed his remorse at not having informed
Cavalcante that his son was alive. He said it was owing to his being
overwhelmed with thought on the subject he had just mentioned, and
entreated Farinata to tell him so.
Quitting this part of the cemetery, Virgil led him through the midst
of it towards a descent into a valley, from which there ascended a
loathsome odour. They stood behind one of the tombs for a while, to
accustom themselves to the breath of it; and then began to descend a
wild fissure in a rock, near the mouth of which lay the infamy of Crete,
the Minotaur. The monster beholding them gnawed himself for rage; and
on their persisting to advance, began plunging like a bull when he
is stricken by the knife of the butcher. They succeeded, however, in
entering the fissure before he recovered sufficiently from his madness
to run at them; and at the foot of the descent, came to a river of
boiling blood, on the strand of which ran thousands of Centaurs armed
with bows and arrows. In the blood, more or less deep according to the
amount of the crime, and shrieking as they boiled, were the souls of the
Inflicters of Violence; and if any of them emerged from it higher than
he had a right to do, the Centaurs drove him down with their arrows.
Nessus, the one that bequeathed Hercules the poisoned garment, came
galloping towards the pilgrims, bending his bow, and calling out from
a distance to know who they were; but Virgil, disdaining his hasty
character, would explain himself only to Chiron, the Centaur who
instructed Achilles. Chiron, in consequence, bade Nessus accompany
them along the river; and there they saw tyrants immersed up to the
eyebrows;--Alexander the Great among them, Dionysius of Syracuse, and
Ezzelino the Paduan. There was one of the Pazzi of Florence, and Rinieri
of Corneto (infestors of the public ways), now shedding bloody tears,
and Attila the Scourge, and Pyrrhus king of Epirus. Further on, among
those immersed up to the throat, was Guy de Montfort the Englishman, who
slew his father's slayer, Prince Henry, during divine service, in
the bosom of God; and then by degrees the river became shallower and
shallower till it covered only the feet; and here the Centaur quitted
the pilgrims, and they crossed over into a forest.
The forest was a trackless and dreadful forest--the leaves not green,
but black--the boughs not freely growing, but knotted and twisted--the
fruit no fruit, but thorny poison. The Harpies wailed among the trees,
occasionally showing their human faces; and on every side of him Dante
heard lamenting human voices, but could see no one from whom they came.
"Pluck one of the boughs," said Virgil. Dante did so; and blood and a
cry followed it.
"Why pluckest thou me? " said the trunk. "Men have we been, like thyself;
but thou couldst not use us worse, had we been serpents. " The blood and
words came out together, as a green bough hisses and spits in the fire.
The voice was that of Piero delle Vigne, the good chancellor of the
Emperor Frederick the Second. Just though he had been to others, he
was thus tormented for having been unjust to himself; for, envy having
wronged him to his sovereign, who sentenced him to lose his eyes, he
dashed his brains out against a wall. Piero entreated Dante to vindicate
his memory. The poet could not speak for pity; so Virgil made the
promise for him, inquiring at the same time in what manner it was that
Suicides became thus identified with trees, and how their souls were to
rejoin their bodies at the day of judgment. Piero said, that the moment
the fierce self-murderer's spirit tore itself from the body, and passed
before Charon, it fell, like a grain of corn, into that wood, and so
grew into a tree. The Harpies then fed on its leaves, causing both pain
and a vent for lamentation. The body it would never again enter, having
thus cast away itself, but it would finally drag the body down to it by
a violent attraction; and every suicide's carcass will be hung upon the
thorn of its wretched shade.
The naked souls of two men, whose profusion had brought them to a
violent end, here came running through the wood from the fangs of black
female mastiff's--leaving that of a suicide to mourn the havoc which
their passage had made of his tree. He begged his countryman to gather
his leaves up, and lay them at the foot of his trunk, and Dante did so;
and then he and Virgil proceeded on their journey.
They issued from the wood on a barren sand, flaming hot, on which
multitudes of naked souls lay down, or sat huddled up, or restlessly
walked about, trying to throw from them incessant flakes of fire, which
came down like a fall of snow. They were the souls of the Impious. Among
them was a great spirit, who lay scornfully submitting himself to the
fiery shower, as though it had not yet ripened him. [22] Overhearing
Dante ask his guide who he was, he answered for himself, and said, "The
same dead as living. Jove will tire his flames out before they conquer
me. "
"Capaneus," exclaimed Virgil, "thy pride is thy punishment. No martyrdom
were sufficient for thee, equal to thine own rage. " The besieger of
Thebes made no reply.
In another quarter of the fiery shower the pilgrims met a crowd of
Florentines, mostly churchmen, whose offence is not to be named; after
which they beheld Usurers; and then arrived at a huge waterfall, which
fell into the eighth circle, or that of the Fraudulent. Here Virgil, by
way of bait to the monster Geryon, or Fraud, let down over the side
of the waterfall the cord of St. Francis, which Dante wore about his
waist,[23] and presently the dreadful creature came up, and sate on the
margin of the fall, with his serpent's tail hanging behind him in
the air, after the manner of a beaver; but the point of the tail was
occasionally seen glancing upwards. He was a gigantic reptile, with the
face of a just man, very mild. He had shaggy claws for arms, and a body
variegated all over with colours that ran in knots and circles, each
within the other, richer than any Eastern drapery. Virgil spoke apart
to him, and then mounted on his back, bidding his companion, who was
speechless for terror, do the salve. Geryon pushed back with them from
the edge of the precipice, like a ship leaving harbour; and then,
turning about, wheeled, like a sullen successless falcon, slowly down
through the air in many a circuit. Dante would not have known that he
was going downward, but for the air that struck up wards on his face.
Presently they heard the crash of the waterfall on the circle below,
and then distinguished flaming fires and the noises of suffering.
The monster Geryon, ever sullen as the falcon who seats himself at a
distance from his dissatisfied master, shook his riders from off his
back to the water's side, and then shot away like an arrow.
This eighth circle of hell is called Evil-Budget,[24] and consists of
ten compartments, or gulfs of torment, crossed and connected with
one another by bridges of flint. In the first were beheld Pimps and
Seducers, scourged like children by horned devils; in the second,
Flatterers, begrimed with ordure; in the third, Simonists, who were
stuck like plugs into circular apertures, with their heads downwards,
and their legs only discernible, the soles of their feet glowing with a
fire which made them incessantly quiver. Dante, going down the side of
the gulf with Virgil, was allowed to address one of them who seemed in
greater agony than the rest; and, doing so, the sufferer cried out in a
malignant rapture, "Aha, is it thou that standest there, Boniface? [25]
Thou hast come sooner than it was prophesied. " It was the soul of Pope
Nicholas the Third that spoke. Dante undeceived and then sternly
rebuked him for his avarice and depravity, telling him that nothing but
reverence for the keys of St. Peter hindered him from using harsher
words, and that it was such as he that the Evangelist beheld in the
vision, when he saw the woman with seven heads and ten horns, who
committed whoredom with the kings of the earth.
"O Constantine! " exclaimed the poet, "of what a world of evil was that
dowry the mother, which first converted the pastor of the church into a
rich man! " [26] The feet of the guilty pope spun with fiercer agony at
these words; and Virgil, looking pleased on Dante, returned with him
the way he came, till they found themselves on the margin of the fourth
gulf, the habitation of the souls of False Prophets.
It was a valley, in which the souls came walking along, silent and
weeping, at the pace of choristers who chant litanies. Their faces were
turned the wrong way, so that the backs of their heads came foremost,
and their tears fell on their loins. Dante was so overcome at the sight,
that he leant against a rock and wept; but Virgil rebuked him, telling
him that no pity at all was the only pity fit for that place. [27] There
was Amphiaraus, whom the earth opened and swallowed up at Thebes; and
Tiresias, who was transformed from sex to sex; and Aruns, who lived in
a cavern on the side of the marble mountains of Carrara, looking out on
the stars and ocean; and Manto, daughter of Tiresias (her hind tresses
over her bosom), who wandered through the world till she came and lived
in the solitary fen, whence afterwards arose the city of Mantua; and
Michael Scot, the magician, with his slender loins;[28] and Eurypylus,
the Grecian augur, who gave the signal with Calchas at Troy when to cut
away the cables for home. He came stooping along, projecting his face
over his swarthy shoulders. Guido Bonatti, too, was there, astrologer of
Forli; and Ardente, shoemaker of Parma, who now wishes he had stuck to
his last; and the wretched women who quit the needle and the distaff to
wreak their malice with herbs and images. Such was the punishment of
those who, desiring to see too far before them, now looked only behind
them, and walked the reverse way of their looking.
The fifth gulf was a lake of boiling pitch, constantly heaving and
subsiding throughout, and bubbling with the breath of those within it.
They were Public Peculators. Winged black devils were busy about the
lake, pronging the sinners when they occasionally darted up their backs
for relief like dolphins, or thrust out their jaws like frogs. Dante
at first looked eagerly down into the gulf, like one who feels that he
shall turn away instantly out of the very horror that attracts him.
"See--look behind thee! " said Virgil, dragging him at the same time from
the place where he stood, to a covert behind a crag. Dante looked round,
and beheld a devil coming up with a newly-arrived sinner across his
shoulders, whom he hurled into the lake, and then dashed down after him,
like a mastiff let loose on a thief. It was a man from Lucca, where
every soul was a false dealer except Bonturo. [29] The devil called out
to other devils, and a heap of them fell upon the wretch with hooks as
he rose to the surface; telling him, that he must practise there in
secret, if he practised at all; and thrusting him back into the boiling
pitch, as cooks thrust back flesh into the pot. The devils were of the
lowest and most revolting habits, of which they made disgusting jest and
parade.
Some of them, on a sudden, perceived Dante and his guide, and were going
to seize them, when Virgil resorted to his usual holy rebuke. For a
while they let him alone; and Dante saw one of them haul a sinner out of
the pitch by the clotted locks, and hold him up sprawling like an otter.
The rest then fell upon him and flayed him.
It was Ciampolo, a peculator in the service of the good Thiebault, king
of Navarre. One of his companions under the pitch was Friar Gomita,
governor of Gallura; and another, Michael Zanche, also a Sardinian.
Ciampolo ultimately escaped by a trick out of the hands of the devils,
who were so enraged that they turned upon the two pilgrims; but Virgil,
catching up Dante with supernatural force, as a mother does a child in
a burning house, plunged with him out of their jurisdiction into the
borders of gulf the sixth, the region of Hypocrites.
The hypocrites, in perpetual tears, walked about in a wearisome and
exhausted manner, as if ready to faint. They wore huge cowls, which hung
over their eyes, and the outsides of which were gilded, but the insides
of lead. Two of them had been rulers of Florence; and Dante was
listening to their story, when his attention was called off by the sight
of a cross, on which Caiaphas the High Priest was writhing, breathing
hard all the while through his beard with sighs. It was his office to
see that every soul which passed him, on its arrival in the place, was
oppressed with the due weight. His father-in-law, Annas, and all his
council, were stuck in like manner on crosses round the borders of the
gulf. The pilgrims beheld little else in this region of weariness, and
soon passed into the borders of one of the most terrible portions of
Evil-budget, the land of the transformation of Robbers.
The place was thronged with serpents of the most appalling and unwonted
description, among which ran tormented the naked spirits of the
robbers, agonised with fear. Their hands were bound behind them with
serpents--their bodies pierced and enfolded with serpents. Dante saw one
of the monsters leap up and transfix a man through the nape of the neck;
when, lo! sooner than a pen could write _o_, or _i_, the sufferer burst
into flames, burnt up, fell to the earth a heap of ashes--was again
brought together, and again became a man, aghast with his agony, and
staring about him, sighing. [30] Virgil asked him who he was.
"I was but lately rained down into this dire gullet," said the man,
"amidst a shower of Tuscans. The beast Vanni Fucci am I, who led a
brutal life, like the mule that I was, in that den Pistoia. "
"Compel him to stop," said Dante, "and relate what brought him hither. I
knew the bloody and choleric wretch when he was alive. "
The sinner, who did not pretend to be deaf to these words, turned round
to the speaker with the most painful shame in his face, and said, "I
feel more bitterly at being caught here by thee in this condition, than
when I first arrived. A power which I cannot resist compels me to let
thee know, that I am here because I committed sacrilege and charged
another with the crime; but now, mark me, that thou mayest hear
something not to render this encounter so pleasant: Pistoia hates thy
party of the Whites, and longs for the Blacks back again. It will have
them, and so will Florence; and there will be a bloody cloud shall burst
over the battlefield of Piceno, which will dash many Whites to the
earth. I tell thee this to make thee miserable. "
So saying, the wretch gave a gesture of contempt with his thumb and
finger towards heaven, and said, "Take it, God--a fig for thee! " [31]
"From that instant," said Dante, "the serpents and I were friends; for
one of them throttled him into silence, and another dashed his hands
into a knot behind his back. O Pistoia! Pistoia! why art not thou
thyself turned into ashes, and swept from the face of the earth, since
thy race has surpassed in evil thine ancestors? Never, through the
whole darkness of hell, beheld I a blasphemer so dire as this--not even
Capaneus himself. "
The Pistoian fled away with the serpents upon him, followed by a
Centaur, who came madly galloping up, crying, "Where is the caitiff? " It
was the monster-thief Cacus, whose den upon earth often had a pond of
blood before it, and to whom Hercules, in his rage, when he slew him,
gave a whole hundred blows with his club, though the wretch perceived
nothing after the ninth. He was all over adders up to the mouth; and
upon his shoulders lay a dragon with its wings open, breathing fire on
whomsoever it met.
The Centaur tore away; and Dante and Virgil were gazing after him, when
they heard voices beneath the bank on which they stood, crying, "Who are
ye? " The pilgrims turned their eyes downwards, and beheld three spirits,
one of whom, looking about him, said, "Where's Cianfa? " Dante made a
sign to Virgil to say nothing.
Cianfa came forth, a man lately, but now a serpent with six feet. [32]
"If thou art slow to believe, reader, what I am about to tell thee,"
says the poet, "be so; it is no marvel; for I myself, even now, scarcely
credit what I beheld. "
The six-footed serpent sprang at one of the three men front to front,
clasping him tightly with all its legs, and plunging his fangs into
either cheek. Ivy never stuck so close to a tree as the horrible monster
grappled with every limb of that pinioned man. The two forms then
gradually mingled into one another like melting wax, the colours of
their skin giving way at the same time to a third colour, as the white
in a piece of burning paper recedes before the brown, till it all
becomes black. The other two human shapes looked on, exclaiming,
"Oh, how thou changest, Agnello! See, thou art neither two nor yet one. "
And truly, though the two heads first became one, there still remained
two countenances in the face. The four arms then became but two, and
such also became the legs and thighs; and the two trunks became such a
body as was never beheld; and the hideous twofold monster walked slowly
away. [33]
A small black serpent on fire now flashed like lightning on to the body
of one of the other two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling on
the ground, and lying stretched before him. The wounded man, fascinated
and mute, stood looking at the adder's eyes, and endeavouring to stand
steady on his legs, yawning the while as if smitten with lethargy or
fever; the adder, on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man, and
both of them breathed hard, and sent forth a smoke that mingled into one
volume.
And now, let Lucan never speak more of the wretched Sabellus or
Nisidius, but listen and be silent; and now, let Ovid be silent, nor
speak again of his serpent that was Cadmus, or his fountain that was
Arethusa; for, says the Tuscan poet, I envy him not. Never did he change
the natures of two creatures face to face, so that each received the
form of the other.
With corresponding impulse, the serpent split his train into a fork,
while the man drew his legs together into a train; the skin of the
serpent grew soft, while the man's hardened; the serpent acquired
tresses of hair, the man grew hairless; the claws of the one projected
into legs, while the arms of the other withdrew into his shoulders; the
face of the serpent, as it rose from the ground, retreated towards the
temples, pushing out human ears; that of the man, as he fell to the
ground, thrust itself forth into a muzzle, withdrawing at the same time
its ears into its head, as the slug does its horns; and each creature
kept its impious eyes fixed on the other's, while the features beneath
the eyes were changing. The soul which had become the serpent then
turned to crawl away, hissing in scorn as he departed; and the serpent,
which had become the man, spat after him, and spoke words at him. The
new human-looking soul then turned his back on his late adversary, and
said to the third spirit, who remained unchanged, "Let Buoso now take to
his crawl, as I have done. "
The two then hastened away together, leaving Dante in a state of
bewildered amazement, yet not so confused but that he recognised the
unchanged one for another of his countrymen, Puccio the Lame. "Joy to
thee, Florence! " cried the poet; "not content with having thy name
bruited over land and sea, it flourishes throughout hell. "
The pilgrims now quitted the seventh, and looked down from its barrier
into the eighth gulf, where they saw innumerable flames, distinct from
one another, flickering all over the place like fire-flies.
"In those flames," said Virgil, "are souls, each tormented with the fire
that swathes it. "
"I observe one," said Dante, "divided at the summit. Are the Theban
brothers in it? "
"No," replied Virgil; "in that flame are Diomed and Ulysses. " The
sinners punished in this gulf were Evil Counsellors; and those two were
the advisers of the stratagem of the Trojan horse.
Virgil addressed Ulysses, who told him the conclusion of his adventures,
not to be found in books: how he tired of an idle life, and sailed forth
again into the wide ocean; and how he sailed so far that he came into a
region of new stars, and in sight of a mountain, the loftiest he ever
saw; when, unfortunately, a hurricane fell upon them from the shore,
thrice whirled their vessel round, then dashed the stern up in air and
the prow under water, and sent the billows over their heads.
"Enough," said Virgil; "I trouble thee no more. " The soul of Guido di
Montefeltro, overhearing the great Mantuan speak in a Lombard dialect,
asked him news of the state of things in Romagna; and then told him how
he had lost his chance of paradise, by thinking Pope Boniface could at
once absolve him from his sins, and use them for his purposes. [34] He
was going to heaven, he said, by the help of St. Francis, who came on
purpose to fetch him, when a black angel met them, and demanded his
absolved, indeed, but unrepented victim. "To repent evil, and to will
to do it, at one and the same time, are," said the dreadful angel,
"impossible: therefore wrong me not. "
"Oh, how I shook," said the unhappy Guido, "when he laid his hands upon
me! " And with these words the flame writhed and beat itself about for
agony, and so took its way.
The pilgrims crossed over to the banks of the ninth gulf, where the
Sowers of Scandal, the Schismatics, Heretics, and Founders of False
Religions, underwent the penalties of such as load themselves with the
sins of those whom they seduce.
The first sight they beheld was Mahomet, tearing open his own bowels,
and calling out to them to mark him. Before him walked his son-in-law,
Ali, weeping, and cloven to the chin; and the divisions in the church
were punished in like manner upon all the schismatics in the place.
