13 (p. 64) ”Now be be first to thee, and second I“: In cantos X and XI, the Pilgrim has been warned to pay attention and not to waste words, and it has become clear that Virgil even answers unanswered questions. Here he responds to the unspoken question of which of the three (the Pilgrim, his guide, or the Centaur, who will carry the Pilgrim) should go first.
14 (p. 64) ”He cleft asunder... the heart that still upon the Thames is honored“: Guy de Montfort (1243-1298) murdered Henry, earl of Cornwall, cousin of King Edward I of England, reportedly while Henry attended Mass at a church in Viterbo, Italy. (De Montfort was avenging his father’s death at the hands of Edward.) Henry’s heart was apparently returned to England and, according to Dante, at the time of the poem still drips blood from a column on the Thames Bridge in London, because the murder has not yet been avenged.
15 (p. 64) there across the moat our passage was: Dante is actually crossing the river of blood on the back of the Centaur Nessus, and they cross at the place where the river is most shallow. Sinners in this area are punished according to the gravity of their violence: Tyrants lie in deeper blood than murderers, who directed their crimes against individuals rather than entire nations.
16 (p. 65) ”That Attila ... in Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzo, who made upon the highways so much war“: Dante names five individuals here. Three are ancient rulers: Attila the Hun (c.405-453), known as the ”scourge of God,“ conquered much of Italy; King Pyrrhus of Epirus (319-272 B.C.) opposed the Romans in a number of wars (some commentators believe this figure is, instead, Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles); and Sextus, the son of Pompey the Great, engaged in piracy that endangered the food supply of Rome, according to Lucan’s Pharsalia, Book VI; others believe this Sextus is the Sextus Tar quinius Superbus who raped Lucretia, thus bringing about the expulsion of the tyrannical Tarquin kings from Rome and the establishment of the Roman Republic. Rinier da Coreto and Rinier Pazzo were highwaymen who lived during Dante’s day.
CANTO XIII
1 (p. 66) ‘Twixt Cecina and Corneto: Dante compares this part of Hell, where the suicides are punished, to the wild, marshy, and for ested area in the Maremma district of Tuscany between the river of Cecina in the north and the town of Corneto in the south.
2 (p. 66) the hideous Harpies ... who chased the Trojans from the Strophades: Harpies are birds with the faces of women and claws who, according to Virgil’s Aeneid, Book III, lived in the islands of the Strophades and befouled the food of the Trojans. Like so many other monsters in this region of Hell, they are half-animal, half human.
3 (p. 66) I think he thought that I perhaps might think: This famous and complex line (cred’io ch‘ei credette ch’io credesse, in the original) is the kind of verse that medieval rhetoricians and poets of the Sicilian School would appreciate. Indeed, shortly after the Pilgrim utters it to himself, we meet an important representative of the Sicilian School (11. 54-78). He is not identified specifically by name but is obviously Pier della Vigne (1190-1249), minister to Frederick II of Sicily, who imprisoned and blinded Pier, driving him to suicide. Pier’s literary talents (reflected in the style of this canto) included not only Italian poetry but a highly ornate Latin employed in the government chancery.
4 (p. 68) ”What only in my verses he has seen“: The talking trees of this canto are obviously inspired by a similar passage in Virgil’s Aeneid, Book III, where Aeneas pulls a leaf off a myrtle tree, causing it to bleed, and as he does so hears the voice of one of his friends who has been treacherously killed. In Dante’s version of the episode, the Harpies attack the plants, tearing off the leaves and torturing the souls within in them. But as Virgil instructs the Pilgrim to tear off a piece of the plant to hear an explanation for the punishment (11. 28-30), it is also clear that the only way the souls have of speaking is to be torn asunder.
5 (p. 68) The courtesan: She is the personification of Envy, the force that helped turn Frederick (called ”Caesar“ in 1. 65) against Pier.
6 (p. 68) ”And they, inflamed, did so inflame Augustus“: This is another line typical of the style of the Sicilian School; Augustus is Frederick.
7 (p. 69) ”I, by the roots unwonted of this wood“: Here ”unwonted“ means not ”unwanted“ but ”new,“ referring to the fact that since Pier della Vigne committed suicide only a few years earlier, the roots of his plant are not yet very deep.
8 (p. 69) ”such pity is in my heart“: Dante’s pity here is for the fact that Pier claims to have been wrongly accused of theft, not for Pier’s just punishment as a suicide. Some modern commentators claim that Pier was actually guilty of the crime for which he was imprisoned, but Dante apparently thought him innocent.
9 (p. 70) And two behold!: The two souls who appear represent the profligates, who did violence to their material goods by not placing sufficient value upon them, just as the suicides did not value their earthly bodies. The first figure is believed to be a certain Lano from Siena, who went into battle at Pieve al Toppo near Arezzo in 1287, apparently intending to die at what Dante calls the ”joustings of the Toppo“ (1. 121) because he had wasted his fortune. The second figure is Jacopo da Sant‘Andrea from Padua, who jeers at Lano (11. 120-121) and accuses him of not running as fast at the battle where he was killed as he does now in Hell. Jacopo was famous for being a spendthrift.
10 (p. 70) As greyhounds ... him they lacerated piece by piece, thereafter bore away those aching members: These hounds of Hell are also found in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, Day V, Story 6, a scene illustrated by Botticelli. The punishment of the Profligates is to be driven naked through the thorny wood by the hounds that tear them apart, carrying off their limbs. Implicit in this punishment is the fact that the body recomposes in order that the punishment may be repeated over and over for eternity.
11 (pp. 70—71) ”I of that city was which to the Baptist ... some glimpses of him are remaining still“: The anonymous soul whose leaves are being rent asunder is a Florentine; the city was first dedicated to the god Mars, then afterward to the patronage of John the Baptist. A piece of what was supposed to be the statue of Mars (pieces of which ”are remaining still“) stood on the Ponte Vecchio (”the pass of the Arno“) until the flood of 1333. One explanation of why the anonymous suicide claims that the change from Mars to John the Baptist was ”sad“ is that the change in patron implies a passage from a skill in arms to a skill in business (since the picture of John the Baptist was on the most famous coin of the medieval period, the Florentine gold florin).
12 (p. 71) ”Upon the ashes left by Attila“: It was not Atilla but King Totila of the Ostrogoths (d. 552) who attacked Florence in 542.
CANTO XIV
1 (p. 72) Because the charity of my native place ... second round is from the third: We have now reached the border between the second ring (girone) of the seventh circle (violence against oneself) and the third ring of the eighth circle (violence against God). While Dante often concludes an action at the end of a canto, he also frequently carries action through from the end of one canto to the opening of the next canto, as he does here, showing the Pilgrim gathering up the remains of the anonymous suicide because of their common Florentine heritage.
2 (p. 72) The soil was of an arid and thick sand... which by the feet of Cato once was pressed: Cato of Utica, also known as Cato the Younger (95-46 B.C.), supported Pompey against Julius Caesar in the Roman civil wars, and after he and his allies lost the battle of Pharsalus (48 B.C.), he killed himself to avoid capture. According to Lucan’s Pharsalia, Book IX, rather than let himself be carried across the barren sands of Libya by slaves, as was the custom for Roman generals, Cato set out on foot with his enlisted men. Dante places Cato in Purgatory, canto I (and not in the region of the suicides of Hell), because of his selfless devotion to Roman republican liberty.
3 (pp. 72-73) Supine upon the ground... had their tongues more loosed to lamentation: Here Dante neatly summarizes the different punishments of the three kinds of sinners being tortured in the third round of the seventh circle.
Blasphemers lie supine, are the smallest group, and cry the loudest because they cursed God. Usurers, the next largest group, are crouching or sitting hunched up. The largest group is made up of homosexuals, who move about constantly.
4 (p. 73) As Alexander ... whereby the sand was set on fire: According to the De Meteoris, I:IV, of Albertus Magnus, thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian, Alexander the Great encountered a heavy snowstorm and then a rain of fire in India and ordered his men to march on the snow. Following Albertus’s error in reporting this event, Dante has Alexander marching over the fire. The rain of fire may also suggest the similar downpour inflicted on Sodom and Go morrah, cities identified with unnatural sexual practices, in the Bible, Genesis 19:24.
5 (p. 73) Without repose forever was the dance oj miserable hands: Dante compares the movements of the tortured sinners to a Neapolitan dance called the tresca. In this dance, a leader touches a part of the body and is imitated by the other dancers, a process that becomes more and more complicated as more and more body parts are indicated and imitated rapidly by the dancers.
6 (p. 74) ”All things except the demons dire“: While praising his guide, the Pilgrim is not above reminding Virgil that he was unsuccessful in overcoming the demons that obstructed their path at the gate of Dis.
7 (P. 74) ”seems not to ripen him“: While many translators and editors of the text construe the Italian word here to mean ”ripen“ or ”soften,“ it may also mean ”torture.“
8 (P. 74) ”O Capaneus“: One of the seven kings who warred against Thebes, Capaneus scaled the walls of the city and blasphemed Jove by daring the god to protect the city, and he was struck by a thunderbolt. Still arrogant, Capaneus boasted that Jove would be unable to overcome him if he employed the entire production of thunderbolts made by Vulcan in his forge in Mount Etna (at the battle of Phlegra, Jove used Vulcan’s supply of thunderbolts to overcome the rebellious Titans attempting to storm Mount Olympus).
9 (P. 75) a little rivulet ... the sinful women later share among them: This little stream of boiling, blood-red water derives from the overflow of Phlegethon that descends the Wood of the Suicides and the Burning Plain to fall over a great cliff into the eighth circle and into frozen Cocytus (we learn this later, in 11. 115-117). Dante compares the rivulet to the Bulicame, a hot sulphur spring near Viterbo, Italy, that prostitutes (the ”sinful women“) employed, since they were not permitted to use the other public baths. Because of its mineral content, the Bulicame was also reddish in color.
10 (p. 75) That he would give me ... largess of desire: Virgil has piqued the Pilgrim’s appetite (”largess of desire“) about the rivers of Hell, and now the Pilgrim begs Virgil to supply him with additional information about them (”largess of food“).
11 (p. 75) ”Rhea ... had clamors made“: Wife of Cronos and mother of Zeus in Greek mythology (Saturn and Jupiter, respectively, in Roman mythology), Rhea hid Zeus on Mount Ida in Crete to save him from being killed by her husband, who had received the prophecy that one of his children would depose him. The Bacchantes served as guards and their loud celebratory screams (”clamors made“) covered up the infant’s cries to prevent Cronos from hearing them.
12 (pp. 75-76) ”A grand old man ... so here ’tis not narrated“: Dante’s gran veglio, or the Old Man of Crete, is one of his most unusual poetic inventions. From Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book I, Dante borrows the Roman poet’s outline of four ages following the creation of the world: the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. The Old Man himself is taken from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in the biblical book of Daniel, 2: 31-35. The Old Man turns toward the West and Rome (the center of Christian and Roman civilization) and away from Damietta (a city in Egypt), symbolizing the East. The parts of the Old Man of Crete are made up of the dif ferent metals described in part by Ovid. This appears to be one of the few instances in the Inferno where some kind of allegorical interpretation is demanded to make sense of the image. It has been suggested that the golden head represents the Golden Age of man (in Christian terms, the Eden before the Fall of Man; in classical terms, the Golden Age celebrated by pastoral poets). The other metals (silver, bronze, and iron) may represent the three deteriorating ages of man. Some see the invention of the clay foot as a representation of the weakness of the Roman Catholic Church. The tears of the Old Man form the rivers of Hell called Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon, and they eventually pool to form Cocytus at the bottom of Hell. Virgil informs the pilgrim that he will not describe Cocytus because Dante will eventually see that for himself
13 (p. 76) ”Lethe and Phlegethon ... sin repented of has been removed“: Because of Dante’s knowledge of classical literature and mythology, he naturally inquires about the locations of two rivers in Hell he recalls from his readings. He is told that Lethe, the famous river of forgetfulness mentioned by Plato, Ovid, Lucan, and, of course, by Virgil in his Aeneid, Book VI, will be seen elsewhere—atop the mountain of Purgatory in the Earthly Paradise. Since the Phlegethon has not actually been named until this point in the poem, the Pilgrim and perhaps the Poet’s contemporary readers do not realize that the river of blood and Phlegethon are the same, but Virgil says that the Pilgrim should have realized this by the fact that the river of blood was boiling, as it is described in his own poem (Aeneid, Book VI).
14 (p. 76) the margins. The Pilgrim and his guide walk on paths that run alongside the stream to protect themselves from the hellish environment in this section of the Inferno.
CANTO XV
1 (p. 77) Even as the Flemings, ‘twixt Cadsand and Bruges... or ever Chiarentana feels the heat: In a double simile, Dante compares the paths alongside the stream of Phlegethon to the dikes the Flemish built to hold back the sea between Wissant (Cadsand) and Bruges, as well as to those the Paduans built to hold back the Brenta River when it floods during the spring snow melt in the Chiarentana area north of the city.
2 (p. 77) Gazed at us... at the needle’s eye: In another double simile, Dante compares the gaze of the people he encounters in this region of Hell to the intense gaze of people looking at each other under a new moon (and therefore in the dark of a medieval city) and to the gaze of a tailor looking through the eye of a needle to thread it.
3 (p. 77) stretched forth his arm to me: The reader should remember that Dante the Pilgrim is walking above the sodomites on the path alongside the stream, so the soul being punished there must reach upward to touch his garment.
4 (P. 78) Ser Brunetto: This is Brunetto Latini (1220-1294), a Guelph notary (thus the honorific title ”Ser,“ from ”Messer“) and Florentine writer. His Tesoretto (Little Treasure), written in the 1260s, was a long narrative poem that influenced Dante. Because of this impact upon Dante’s work, the Pilgrim bows in homage to Latini (11. 29 and 44) and also uses a respectful form of address, ”voi“ rather than ”tu“; this distinction has been lost in contemporary English but is used by Longfellow, who employs ”thou“ or ”thy“ frequently in his translation.
5 (p. 79) from Fesole descended; Brunetto provides a prophecy about Dante’s future that is related to the town of Fiesole (which Dante spells as ”Fesole“), on a hillside overlooking Florence. He claims both political factions, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, will hunger to destroy Dante (1. 71), since trees bearing bitter fruit (the ”crabbed sorbs“ of 1. 65) will not permit the sweet fig tree to bear good fruit. The reference to Fiesole explains part of Dante’s problem, since during a power struggle in Rome, Catiline fled the capital and went to Fiesole, where Caesar destroyed Catiline’s forces but allowed the Fiesolan survivors to intermingle with the Roman inhabitants of Florence. Dante thus implies that he, descended from the original Florentine Romans, will be constantly harassed in the city by those who are related to the less noble Fiesolans descended from Catiline.
6 (p. 80) ”You taught me how a man becomes eternal“: What Brunetto Latini taught Dante was that literary fame grants a certain kind of immortality, or earthly fame, but certainly not the kind of immortality that one earns
in the afterlife.
7 (p. 80) ”To be glossed... by a Lady“: From what is said in canto X: 130-132, we know that Dante believes that Beatrice will reveal his future and will ”gloss,“ or explain, the prophecies of Ciacco (canto VI: 64-75) and Farinata (canto X: 79-81). In fact, it will be Dante’s great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, who performs this function, in Paradise cantos XV-XVIII.
8 (pp. 80-81) ”All of them were clerks ... where be has left his sin-excited nerves“: Brunetto Latini lists three sodomites punished with him, all of whom are men of letters (”clerks“). Priscian was a famous sixth-century Latin grammarian. Francis of Accorso, or Francesco d’Accursio (1225-1293), was a well-known Florentine jurist who taught law at Bologna and Oxford. The third man, not identified precisely by name, may be Andrea de’ Mozzi, Bishop of Florence from 1287 to 1295. He was, in fact, transferred by Pope Boniface VIII—”the Servant of the Servants“ (servus servorum was a medieval expression for the pope) from Florence (”from Arno“) to Bacchiglione (Vicenza, on the River Bacchiglione) because of his sexual transgressions. There he died and thus abandoned his ”sin-excited nerves“ (his erections). Some scholars deny that Dante punishes homosexuality in this and the next canto, arguing that Dante is really attacking other, even more subtle vices. Dante is not a politically correct contemporary poet. For him, homosexuality is simply a sin, and as much as he liked and admired Latini in life, Dante the Poet places his friend where he believes he belongs, no matter how much sympathy Dante the Pilgrim may feel for his lost friend.
9 (p. 81) ”my Tesoro“: While some commentators on Dante believe this is a reference to Latini’s encyclopedic treatise written in French (Li Livres dou trisor), others (more correctly) claim that it must refer instead to the long narrative poem Latini wrote in Italian, the Tesoretto (but referred to within the poem several times as the Tesoro). Since the Tesoretto was the longest narrative poem written in the vernacular that Dante could have read before he wrote his Comedy, the second interpretation is most likely.
The Inferno (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 22