The Divine Comedy Volume I Part 14

[2] This is supposed to be one Griffolino, of whom nothing is known but what Dante tells.

[3] The Bishop of Siena.

[4] Ironical; these youths all being members of the company known as the brigata G.o.dereccia or spendereccia, the joyous or spendthrift brigade.

[5] The use of rich and expensive spices in cookery.

CANTO x.x.x. Eighth Circle: tenth pit: falsifiers of all sorts.--Myrrha.--Gianni Schicchi.--Master Adam.--Sinon of Troy.

At the time when Juno was wroth because of Semele against the Theban blood, as she showed more than once, Athamas became so insane, that seeing his wife come laden on either hand with her two sons, cried out, "Spread we the nets, so that I may take the lioness and the young lions at the pa.s.s," and then he stretched out his pitiless talons, taking the one who was named Learchus, and whirled him and struck him on a rock; and she drowned herself with her other burden. And when Fortune turned downward the all-daring loftiness of the Trojans, so that together with the kingdom the king was undone, Hecuba, sad, wretched, and captive, when she saw Polyxena dead, and woeful descried her Polydorus on the sea-bank, frantic, barked like a dog,--to such degree had grief distraught her mind.

But neither the furies of Thebes, nor the Trojan, were ever seen toward any one so cruel, whether in goading beasts or human limbs,[1] as I saw two shades pallid and naked who, biting, were running in the way that a boar does when from the sty he breaks loose. One came at Capocchio, and on the nape of his neck struck his teeth, so that dragging him he made his belly scratch along the solid bottom. And the Aretine,[2] who remained trembling, said to me, "That goblin is Gianni Schicchi, and rabid he goes thus maltreating others." "Oh," said I to him, "so may time other not fix his teeth on thee, let it not weary thee to tell who it is ere it start hence." And he to me, "That is the ancient soul of profligate Myrrha, who became her father's lover beyond rightful love. She came to sinning with him by falsifying herself in another's form, even as the other, who goes off there, undertook, in order to gain the lady of the herd,[3] to counterfeit Buoso Donati, making a will and giving to the will due form."

[1] No mad rages were ever so merciless as those of these furious spirits.

[2] Griffolino.

[3] Buoso Donati had died without making a will, whereupon his nephew suborned Gianni Schicchi to personate the dead man in bed, and to dictate a will in his favor. This Gianni did, but with a clause leaving to himself a favorite mare of Buoso's, the best in all Tuscany.

And after the two rabid ones upon whom I had kept my eye had disappeared, I turned it to look at the other miscreants. I saw one made in fas.h.i.+on of a lute, had he but only had his groin cut off at the part where man is forked. The heavy hydropsy which, with the humor that it ill digests, so unmates the members that the face corresponds not with the belly, was making him hold his lips open as the hectic does, who for thirst turns one toward his chin, the other upward.

"Oh ye, who are without any punishment, and I know not why, in the dismal world," said he to us, "look and attend to the misery of Master Adam. Living, I had enough of what I wished, and now, alas! I long for a drop of water. The rivulets that from the green hills of the Casentino descend into the Arno, making their channels cool and soft, stand ever before me, and not in vain; for their image dries me up far more than the disease which strips my face of flesh. The rigid justice that scourges me draws occasion from the place where I sinned to put my sighs the more in flight. There is Romena, where I falsified the alloy stamped with the Baptist,[1] for which on earth I left my body burned.

But if here I could see the wretched soul of Guido or of Alessandro, or of their brother,[2] for Fount Branda[3] I would not give the sight. One of them is here within already, if the rating shades who go around speak true. But what does it avail me who have my limbs bound? If I were only yet so light that in a hundred years I could go an inch, I should already have set out along the path, seeking for him among this disfigured folk, although it circles round eleven miles, and is not less than half a mile across. Because of them I am among such a family; they induced me to strike the forms that had full three carats of base metal." And I to him, "Who are the two poor wretches that are smoking like a wet hand in winter, lying close to your confines on the right?" "Here I found them," he answered, "when I rained down into this trough, and they have not since given a turn, and I do not believe they will give one to all eternity.

One is the false woman that accused Joseph, the other is the false Sinon the Greek, from Troy; because of their sharp fever they throw out such great reek."

[1] The florin which bore on the obverse the figure of John the Baptist, the protecting saint of Florence.

[2] Counts of Romena.

[3] The noted fountain in Siena, or perhaps one in Romena.

And one of them who took it ill perchance at being named so darkly, with his fist struck him on his stiff paunch; it sounded as if it were a drum; and Master Adam struck him on the face with his arm that did not seem less hard, saying to him, "Though, because of my heavy limbs, moving hence be taken from me, I have an arm free for such need." Whereon he replied, "When thou wast going to the fire thou hadst it not thus ready, but so and more thou hadst it when thou wast coining." And the hydropic, "Thou sayst true in this, but thou wast not so true a witness there where thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy." "If I spake false, thou didst falsify the coin," said Sinon, "and I am here for a single sin, and thou for more than any other demon."

"Remember, perjured one, the horse," answered he who had the puffed up paunch, "and be it ill for thee that the whole world knows it." "And be ill for thee the thirst which cracks thy tongue," said the Greek, "and the putrid water that makes thy belly thus a hedge before thine eyes." Then the coiner, "So yawns thy mouth for its own harm as it is wont, for if I am thirsty, and humor stuffs me out, thou hast the burning, and the head that pains thee, and to lick the mirror of Narcissus thou wouldst not want many words of invitation."

To listen to them was I wholly fixed, when the Master said to me, "Now then look, for it wants but little that I quarrel with thee." When I heard him speak to me with anger, I turned me toward him with such shame that still it circles through my memory. And as is he that dreams of his harm, and, dreaming, desires to dream, so that that which is he craves as if it were not, such I became, not being able to speak, for I desired to excuse myself, and I was indeed excusing myself, and did not think that I was doing it. "Less shame doth wash away a greater fault than thine hath been," said the Master; therefore disburden thyself of all regret, and make reckoning that I am always at thy side, if again it happen that fortune find thee where people are in similar brawl; for the wish to hear it is a base wish."

CANTO x.x.xI. The Giants around the Eighth Circle.--Nimrod.

--Ephialtes.--Antaeus sets the Poets down in the Ninth Circle.

One and the same tongue first stung me, so that it tinged both my cheeks, and then supplied the medicine to me. Thus do I hear[1] that the lance of Achilles and of his father was wont to be cause first of a sad and then of a good gift. We turned our back to the wretched valley,[2] up along the bank that girds it round, crossing without any speech. Here it was less than night and less than day, so that my sight went little forward; but I heard a horn sounding so loud that it would have made every thunder faint, which directed my eyes, following its course counter to it,[3] wholly to one place.

[1] Probably from Ovid, who more than once refers to the magic power of the spear which had been given to Peleus by Chiron.

Shakespeare too had heard of it, and applies it, precisely as Dante does, to one

Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles' spear, Is able with the charge to kill and cure.

2 Henry VI. v. i.

[2] The tenth and last pit. My eyes went in the direction whence the sound came.

After the dolorous rout when Charlemagne lost the holy gest, Roland sounded not so terribly.[1] Shortwhile did I carry my head turned thitherward, when it seemed to me I saw many high towers; whereon I, "Master, say, what city is this?" And he to me, "Because too far away thou peerest through the darkness, it happens that thou dost err in thy imagining. Thou shalt see well, if thou arrivest there, how much the sense at distance is deceived; therefore somewhat more spur thyself on;" Then tenderly he took me by the hand, and said, "Before we go further forward, in order that the fact may seem less strange to thee, know that they are not towers, but giants, and they are in the abyss[2] round about the bank, from the navel downward, one and all of them."

[1] At Roncesvalles.

Rollanz ad mis l'olifan a sa buche, Empeint le bien, par grant vertut le sunet.

Halt sunt li pui e la voiz est mult lunge, Granz x.x.x. liwes l'oirent-il respundre, Carles l'oit e ses c.u.mpaignes tutes.

Chanson de Roland, 1753-57.

[2] The central deep of h.e.l.l, dividing the eighth circle from the ninth,--the lowest.

As when the mist is dissipating, the look little by little shapes out what the vapor that thickens the air conceals, so, as I pierced the gross and dark air as we drew nearer and nearer to the verge, error fled from me and fear grew upon me. For as above its circular enclosure Montereggione [1] crowns itself with towers, so with half their body the horrible giants, whom Jove still threatens from heaven when he thunders, betowered the bank that surrounds the abyss.

[1] The towers of Montereggione in ruin still crown its broken wall, and may be seen from the railroad not far from Siena, on the way to Florence.

And I discerned now the face of one, his shoulders, and his breast, and great part of his belly, and down along his sides both his arms. Nature, surely, when she left the art of such like creatures, did exceeding well in taking such executers from Mars; and if she repent not of elephants and of whales, he who looks subtly holds her more just and more discreet therefor;[1] for where the faculty of the mind is added to evil will and to power, the human race can make no defense against it. His face seemed to me long and huge as the pine-cone[2] of St. Peter at Rome, and in its proportion were his other bones; so that the bank, which was an ap.r.o.n from his middle downward, showed of him fully so much above, that to reach to his hair three Frieslanders[3] would have made ill vaunt. For I saw of him thirty great palms down from the place where one buckles his cloak.

[1] For no longer creating giants.

[2] Of bronze, that came from the Mausoleum of Hadrian, and in Dante's time stood in the fore-court of St. Peter's, and is now in the Vatican gardens.

[3] Supposed to be tall men.

"Raphel mai amech zabi almi," the fierce mouth, to which sweeter psalms were not befitting, began to cry. And my Leader toward him, "Foolish soul! Keep to thy horn, and with that vent thyself when anger or other pa.s.sion touches thee; seek at thy neck, and thou wilt find the cord that holds it tied, O soul confused! and see it lying athwart thy great breast." Then he said to me, "He himself accuses himself; this is Nimrod, because of whose evil thought the world uses not one language only. Let us leave him, and let us not speak in vain, for so is every language to him, as his to others, which to no one is known."

Then turning to the left, we pursued our way, and at a crossbow's shot we found the next, far more fierce and larger.

Who the master was for binding him I cannot tell; but he had his right arm fastened behind, and the other in front, by a chain that held him entwined from the neck downward, so that upon his uncovered part it was wound as far as the fifth coil. "This proud one wished to make trial of his power against the supreme Jove," said my Leader, "wherefore he has such reward; Ephialtes[1] is his name, and he made his great endeavors when the giants made the G.o.ds afraid; the arms which he plied he moves nevermore."

[1] Iphimedeia bore to Poseidon two sons, "but they were short- lived, G.o.dlike Otus and far-famed Ephialtes whom the fruitful Earth nourished to be the tallest and much the most beautiful of mortals except renowned Orion, for at nine years old they were nine cubits in breadth, and nine fathoms tall. They even threatened the immortals, raising the din of tumultuous war on Olympus, and strove to set Ossa upon Olympus and wood-clad Pelion upon Ossa, in order to scale heaven. But Jove destroyed them both." Odyssey, xi. 306-317.

And I to him, "If it may be, I should like my eyes to have experience of the huge Briareus." [1] Whereon he answered, "Thou shalt see Antaeus close at hand here, who speaks, and is unbound,[2] and will set us at the bottom of all sin. Him whom thou wishest to see is much farther on, and is bound and fas.h.i.+oned like this one, save that he seems more ferocious in his look."

[1] "Him of the hundred hands whom the G.o.ds call Briareus."

Iliad, i. 402.

[2] Because he took no part in the war of his brethren against the G.o.ds. What Dante tells of him is derived from Lucan, Pharsalia, iv. 597 sqq.

Never was earthquake so mighty that it shook a tower as violently as Ephialtes was quick to shake himself. Then more than ever did I fear death; and there had been no need of more than the fright, if I had not seen his bonds. We then proceeded further forward, and came to Antaeus, who full five ells, besides his head, issued forth from the cavern. "O thou that, in the fateful valley which made Scipio the heir of glory when Hannibal and his followers turned their backs, didst bring of old a thousand lions for booty,--and it still seems credible that hadst thou been at the high war of thy brothers, the sons of the Earth would have conquered,--set us below, and disdain thou not to do so, where the cold locks up Cocytus. Make us not go to t.i.tyus, nor to Typhon;[1] this one can give of that which here is longed for; [2] therefore stoop, and curl not thy snout. He yet can restore fame to thee in the world; for he is living, and still expects long life, if Grace doth not untimely call him to itself." Thus said the Master; and he in haste stretched out those hands, whose strong grip Hercules once felt, and took my Leader. Virgil, when he felt himself taken up, said to me, "Come hither so that I take thee." Then he made one bundle of himself and me. As beneath its leaning side, the Carisenda[3] seems to look when a cloud is going over so that the tower hangs counter to it, thus seemed Antaeus to me that stood attent to see him bend; and it was a moment when I could have wished to go by another road. But lightly on the bottom that swallows Lucifer with Judas he set us down; nor, thus bent, did he there make stay, and like a mast in a s.h.i.+p he raised himself.