The Inferno (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Dante Alighieri

  11 (p. 49) of the mysterious verses: This is the second address to the reader in the poem (the first begins in canto VIII: 94) and has puzzled commentators. Some readers of the poem believe the “mysterious verses” allude to the Furies and Medusa, previously mentioned in this canto. Medusa would thus represent some form of fear or despair. The Three Furies might suggest the three categories of sin punished in Hell. Other scholars believe the “mysterious verses” refer us forward to the angel that arrives at the Gates of Dis to clear the obstruction from the path of the Pilgrim and his guide. While commentators have not arrived at one single satisfying explanation of the lines, all modern interpreters of Dante agree that there are no secret doctrines concealed under the “veil” of Dante’s poetry. Such notions were common in the nineteenth century: Some Rosicrucians, for example, believed that Dante’s entire poem contained hidden doctrines that corresponded to their beliefs and even that Dante himself was a Rosicrucian.

  12 (p. 49) Was passing o‘er the Styx with soles unwet: The angelic messenger walks on water in imitation of Christ.

  13 (p. 49) “O banished out of Heaven, people despised!”: These are the rebel angels, who have been thrown out of heaven and guard the City of Dis.

  14 (p. 49) “For that still bears bis chin and gullet peeled”: The angelic messenger reminds Cerberus that when he was dragged out of Hell by Hercules, the chain employed by the Greek hero rubbed his throat raw; the source of this anecdote is Virgil’s Aeneid, Book VI.

  15 (p. 50) Even as at Arles ... near to the Qwarnaro: Here Dante refers to two ancient Roman cemeteries, one near the Rhone River at Arles, France, and one near the Quarnaro Gulf at Pola in Istria (Croatia). The physical shape of these sarcophagi—raised, stone monuments containing the dead—sets the stage for the scene to follow in the sixth circle of Hell.

  16 (p. 50) the Heresiarchs: The Arch Heretics are enclosed in various kinds of sepulchers, all of which will be closed forever after the Last Judgment. For Dante, heretics denied the immortality of the soul. Their sin was one of pride and obstinate refusal to accept the Christian conception of the world. Heresy is thus a sin of the intellect: more serious than simple sins of the flesh but less serious than some other violent sins involving action. The punishment of heretics fits the crime, for those who believed that the soul perished with the body now have their souls entombed for eternity where their bodies were laid to rest.

  17 (p. 50) to the right: Normally Virgil and the Pilgrim move to the left, but on two occasions in the poem (here and in canto XVII: 32) they head in the opposite direction.

  CANTO X

  1 (p. 51) jebosaphat: A valley in the Holy Land where, according to the Old Testament, Joel 3: 2, souls will gather for the Last Judgment.

  2 (p. 51) Epicurus: This Greek philosopher and founder of the Epicurean school (342-270 B.C.) taught that the highest good was happiness. Dante believed Epicurus denied the immortality of the soul, a belief that many pious pagans shared with Christians.

  3 (p. 51) “O Tuscan’-- Recognizing the Pilgrim by his Florentine speech, Farinata degli Uberti (d. 1264) rises up from his tomb (thereby in his action, ironically negating his disbelief in the Resurrection) and asks the Pilgrim to pause and speak to him. Farinata was the head of the Ghibelline faction that expelled the Guelphs from Florence in 1248. The Guelphs returned in 1251 and eventually expelled Farinata in 1258. Led by Farinata, the Ghibellines routed their opponents at the disastrous battle of Montaperti in 1260 and subsequently proposed razing of the city of Florence. By his objections, Farinata saved Dante’s native city from destruction. However, the Florentines showed little appreciation for Farinata’s deeds. In 1266 the Guelphs once again returned to power and crushed the Ghibellines and the Uberti family, razing their homes in the city’s center to the ground.

  4 (p· 53) ”So that two several times I scattered them“: As the leader of the Florentine Ghibellines, Farinata took part in driving the Guelphs out of Florence in 1248 (although the Ghibellines were themselves expelled three years later). Subsequently, Farinata led Tuscan Ghibellines to a great military victory over their Guelf adversaries at the battle of Montaperti in 1260.

  5 (p. 53) ”the first time and the second“: The Guelphs returned twice, in 1251 and again in 1266.

  6 (P. 53) ”Whom in disdain perhaps your Guido bad“: The soul who rises out of Farinata’s tomb to interrogate the Pilgrim is Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti (d. C.1280), a Florentine Guelph and father of the poet Guido Cavalcanti, one of Dante’s best friends. Guido was betrothed to Beatrice degli Uberti, Farinata’s daughter, in 1267. Thus two in-laws from Florence on different sides of the internecine political struggles of the times are being punished in the same location in Hell. Guido Cavalcanti does not appear in the poem because he has not yet died at the time of the action (March 1300); he will die in exile in August 1300, banished from Florence by the city’s government during the period (June—August 1300) Dante served in the communal government. Dante the Poet, of course, writes about all this in exile himself The ”disdain,“ or scorn, the Pilgrim says Guido expresses is a problematic reference. Some scholars believe Guido, according to Dante, held the works of Virgil in contempt. Others feel Guido disapproved of Dante’s love for Beatrice, his poetic muse and the woman who is assisting him in his journey in the afterlife (and, of course, not to be confused with the Beatrice mentioned above).

  7 (p. 54) ”But fifty times ... the countenance of the Lady who reigns here“. Farinata predicts that in fifty moons, or months, Dante himself will be exiled. Dante actually first went into exile in January 1302, but his banishment became virtually final in July 1304, approximately fifty months from March 1300. This length of time is established by the face of the lady reigning in Hell (Hecate, or Proserpina), who is also the goddess of the moon.

  8 (p. 54) the Arbia: A river near the site of the battle of Montaperti, in which the Ghibellines defeated the Guelphs.

  9 (p. 54) ”solve for me that knot“: Realizing that Cavalcanti does not know that his son Guido is still alive while Farinata, seemingly in contrast, knows Dante’s distant future, the Pilgrim asks for clarification. He is told that the condemned souls are ignorant of the present or the near future and know only distant things, like those who suffer from ”imperfect sight“ (1. 100). After the Final Judgment, their minds will be completely void in timelessness. While some commentators believe this condition is ubiquitous in Hell, others believe it refers only to the heretics.

  10 (p. 55) the second Frederick, and the Cardinal: Dante places Frederick II (1194—1250), king of Sicily and Naples and known in his time as the ”wonder of the world,“ in Hell because he was reputed to be an Epicurean. Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini (d. 1272), a member of an important Ghibelline family, was reputed to have declared that ”if I have a soul, I have lost it a thousand times for the Ghibellines,“ thereby qualifying him for membership in the region where heretics are punished. Other relatives of the Cardinal who appear in the afterlife are his nephew, Archbishop Ruggieri (Inferno XXXIII: 14), and his brother, Ubaldino della Pila (Purgatory XXIV: 29).

  11 (p. 55) From her: Although Virgil tells Dante the Pilgrim that he will learn about his future life from Beatrice (as he points his finger upward to where Beatrice resides), in fact the Pilgrim learns about his future career from Cacciaguida in Paradise XVII: 46-75. This is yet another case of Virgil’s fallibility, undermining the thesis that he represents pure Reason in the poem. His mistakes become more frequent as the action of the Inferno develops.

  CANTO XI

  1 (p. 56) great rocks broken: This is more evidence of the change in Hell’s geography after the earthquake that followed the death of Christ and during upheavals caused by the Harrowing of Hell.

  2 (p. 56) ”Pope Anastasius I hold, wbom out of the rigbt way Photinus drew“: Dante probably confused Pope Anastasius II, who held the office between 496 and 498, with Emperor Anastasius I of Byzan tium, who ruled between 491 and 518. This period coincides with the schism between the Roman
and the Byzantine churches. Photinus was either a deacon of Thessalonica or the bishop of Sirmium who held the heretical belief that Jesus was born from a natural union of Mary and Joseph, thus denying the divine paternity of Christ. It was the emperor, not the pope, who was persuaded of this heretical position.

  3 (p. 56) three small circles: Standing on the cliff that marks off the sixth circle, the two travelers can see three smaller circles below them—the seventh, the eighth, and the ninth—that make up the structure of lower Hell. The first part of the Pilgrim’s journey took him through Limbo and the first six circles, where the sins of the she-wolf, based on Incontinence, were punished in cantos IV-XI. The second major division involves sins of the lion, based upon force or violence: violence against others, against oneself, or against God. These sins are punished in the seventh circle in cantos XII—XVII. In the third section, the sins of fraud (the sins of the leopard) are punished. Here, in the eighth circle, there are ten additional subdivisions of the area called Malebolge (literally ”evil pockets“), where so-called simple fraud is punished (fraud against people who have no special trusting relationship to the defrauder). This section comprises cantos XVIII through XXXI. In the ninth circle, itself divided into four sections—Caina, Antenora, Ptolomaea, and Judecca—a more complex fraud against people who have a special trusting relationship to the sinner is punished. The Pilgrim visits this region in cantos XXXII through XXXIV, concluding the Inferno.

  4 (p. 56) ”Of every malice ... either by force or fraud“: All sins in Lower Hell are sins of malice (malizia), since the sin is committed by a sinner who willfully intends to do injury or harm to others. Dante found a distinction between injury by force or by violence and fraud (1. 24) in Cicero’s De Officiis, Book I.

  5 (p. 57) In three rounds: Sins involving force or violence against others, oneself, or God are grouped into three different gironi (”rounds“ or ”circles“; the singular is girone).

  6 (p. 57) Sodom and Cahors: Sodom is the biblical city identified with perverse sexual activity, while Cahors is a city in southern France that was once notorious for its usury. The two cities represent the Sodomites and Usurers punished in the smallest girone of the seventh circle.

  7 (p. 57) within the second circle nestle... and the like filth: Virgil provides a list of eight of the ten sins punished in the ten Malebolge, leaving out two of the specific sins punished there that the reader will encounter later. He refers to these unspecified sins as ”the like filth.“

  8 (p. 58) in the smallest circle: In the Ptolomaic system of the universe, Earth is at the center of the universe, and the bottom of Hell is located at the center of Earth, which makes it the ”smallest circle.“

  9 (p. 58) ”Wherefore are they inside of the red city... wherifore in such fashion?“: Even though the Pilgrim initially claims to have understood Virgil’s explanation (”My Master, clear enough proceeds thy reasoning,“ 11. 67-69), he is puzzled by why those being punished for the sins of Incontinence (such as the angry, the gluttons, the avaricious and prodigal, and the others in the first six circles of Hell) are not inside the City of Dis.

  10 (p. 58) ”Incontinence, and Malice, and insane Bestiality?“: In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, VII: I (a book the Pilgrim is supposed to know so well that Virgil refers to it as ”thine Ethics“ in 1. 79), the Greek philosopher discusses Incontinence, Malice (Dante’s malizia), and ”insane Bestiality“ (what Dante calls in the original matta bes tialitade). Malice in Aristotle would correspond to the sins of the lion in Dante’s seventh and eighth circles—those involving violence or force and simple fraud. ”Insane Bestiality“ does not really correspond to Dante’s divisions and may be best understood as another name for treachery, the complex sort of fraud punished in the ninth circle. It might console the general reader who is confused by this system to know that the problem has vexed scholarly commentators for years. What is most interesting about the system of punishments in Hell as outlined by Virgil to Dante here is that the ideas are based on thinking from the classical world (Aristotle and Cicero) and not the traditional notion of the seven deadly sins.

  11 (p. 58) ”There where thou sayest that usury offends goodness divine, and disengage the knot“: While claiming to understand perfectly, the Pilgrim once again asks his guide to clarify why usury offends divine goodness. Such a question was of great importance to a man from Florence, since one of the main sources of the city’s wealth was banking and, therefore, usury.

  12 (p. 59) ”And if thy Physics ... for elsewhere he puts his hope“: Virgil describes the sins of usury. Referring to Aristotle’s Physics, II: 2, where the imitation of Nature by Art is described, he argues that Art (that is, craft or human industry) is the child of Nature and thus the grandchild of God. By doing violence to human industry, usurers do violence indirectly to God. ”Genesis at the beginning“ (1. 107) refers to the biblical dictum in Genesis 3: 19, that man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.

  13 (p. 59) ”wholly over Caurus lies“: Virgil usually tells time by the heavens, although it is not clear how he does this, since the stars are not visible from Hell. Pisces, the Fish, is on the horizon, while the Great Bear, or Great Dipper (the ”Wain“), is in the northwestern part of the heavens (Caurus is the northwest wind). We know from canto I that the sun is rising in Aries, and since each Zodiac sign comprises about two hours, it should be roughly two hours before sunrise, or 4:00 A.M. on Holy Saturday.

  CANTO XII

  1 (p. 60) Such as that ruin ... on this side of Trent, the Adige: Dante compares the way down the cliff to the seventh circle to the remains of a huge landslide (in Italian called the Slavini di Marco) that took place in the late ninth century near the city of Trent in northern Italy. It changed the course of the Adige River. The landscape here in Hell is the result of the earthquake that struck Hell after the death of Christ and just before the Harrowing of Hell.

  2 (p. 60) The infamy of Crete: The Minotaur of Crete (identified by name in 1. 25), the half-man, half-bull was born as the result of the union between the wife of King Minos of Crete, Pasiphae (who crawled inside a wooden cow), and a bull. The Minotaur lived in the labyrinth constructed by Daedalus, where it was given a yearly human sacrifice. It was finally killed by Theseus, the Duke of Athens mentioned in 1. 17, with the assistance of Ariadne, Pasiphae’s daughter (and therefore the half-sister of the Minotaur).

  3 (p. 61) the unwonted burden: Once again, the Pilgrim’s weight is underlined by his effect on the physical structure of Hell and is contrasted to the weightlessness of the damned.

  4 (p. 61) the other time: See canto IX: 22-30 for Virgil’s account of his earlier visit through the Underworld. It should be recalled that Virgil witnessed the Harrowing of Hell after he reached Limbo (see canto IV: 52-63), so he is able to compare the geography in Hell before and after the Harrowing of Hell and the earthquake that changed the landscape.

  5 (p. 61) ”who the mighty spoil bore off from Dis, in the supernal circle“: Christ carried off the virtuous pagans and the patriarchs (”the mighty spoil“) from Dis (here meaning Lucifer, not the city of Dis) to the Empyrean (”the supernal circle“).

  6 (p. 61) converted into chaos: Because he is a pagan, Virgil must explain the Harrowing of Hell by Christ in a non-Christian manner. According to Empedocles (mentioned in canto IV: 138), the universe is constructed not only by the four basic elements but by two opposing forces—Hate and Love—that operate in a circular fashion. This timeless view of the universe is diametrically opposed to the Christian vision of the universe as dominated by God’s love and controlled by an eschatological theory that foresees an end to history after the Last Judgment takes place.

  7 (p. 61) The river of blood: Phlegethon (later identified by name in canto XIV: 116) is a river of boiling blood that runs through the first girone, of the seventh circle, then through the second round, and finally through the third round before pouring over the Great Cliff into the eighth circle then to the bottom of Hell (Cocytus).

  8 (p. 61)
Centaurs: The Centaurs, which Dante takes from classical mythology, guard the tyrants and murderers punished in this section of Hell. Like the Minotaur, the centaurs are a mixture of the bestial and the human (half-human, half-horse) and are therefore appropriate for the sins in question.

  9 (p. 62) ”Our answer will we make to Chiron.... That other Pholus is“: Dante mentions three Centaurs by name. Chiron, in classical mythology the son of Saturn and Philyra and supposedly the tutor of Achilles, is the leader of the Centaurs. According to Ovid’s Metamorpboses, IX, Nesus tries to rape Dejanira, the wife of Hercules, and Hercules kills him with a poison arrow. Before Nesus dies, he gives Dejanira a shirt stained with his poisoned blood, telling her that it will cause whoever wears it to fall in love with her. Later, when Hercules falls in love with Iole, Dejanira gives Hercules the shirt and it causes his death. Little is known of Pholus, except that he was involved with the attack of the drunken Centaurs against the Lapiths during the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia.

  10 (p. 62) ”Are you ware that he behind moveth whate‘er he touches?“: Once again, the fact that the Pilgrim’s body has weight amazes the denizens of Hell.

  11 (p. 64) ”Is Alexander, and fierce Dionysius“: This Alexander is either Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.), the Macedonian conqueror of most of the ancient world, or Alexander, the tyrant of Pherae (ruled 369-359 B.C.). Dionysius may be either of two tyrants of Syracuse, Dionysius the Elder (ruled 405-367 B.C.), or his son, Dionysius the Younger (ruled 367-356 B.C. and 354-343 B.C.). Both father and son had well-deserved reputations for bloodthirsty cruelty.

  12 (p. 64) ”Azzolin ... Obizzo is of Esti, who, in truth, up in the world was by his step-son slain“: Azzolino, or Ezzelino III da Romano (1194- 1259), was the cruel Ghibelline tyrant who became famous for his actions while he ruled in Padua for Frederick II of Sicily. Obizzo II d’Este (1264-1293), Marquis of Ferrara, was said to have been murdered by his own son, who Dante here calls ”step-son“ (figliastro), possibly suggesting he was illegitimate.