10 (p. 81) Who at herona ... not the one who loses: During Dante’s time, the city of Verona held a footrace on the first Sunday of Lent. The first prize was a green cloth, while the runner who finished last was given a rooster that he had to carry around the city. The runners were completely naked, and, in like manner, the fate of the sodomites is to run naked through this region of Hell.
CANTO XVI
1 (p. 82) water falling into the next round: This is the sound of the waterfall plunging over the Great Cliff into the eighth circle, as we shall discover later in the canto.
2 (p. 82) three together: Dante now encounters three shades who are natives of Florence (they recognize Dante by his garb, not his speech, as was the case with Farinata in canto X). Earlier, when speaking with another Florentine, Ciacco, in canto VI, Dante mentions two of the three as men he would like to meet because of their positive qualities. The first man to appear is Guido Guerra c.1220- 1272), a Guelph political leader who was instrumental in leading the Guelphs after their defeat at Montaperti in 1260 to their final victory over the Ghibellines at Benevento (1266). Tegghiaio Aldobrandini of the Adimari family (1. 41) is one of the two men cited earlier in canto VI. Like Guerra, he advised the Guelphs of Florence not to wage war against Siena, ending in the disastrous battle of Montaperti. The other figure, the speaker, is Jacopo Rusticucci (1. 44), another Guelph (dates unknown but mentioned in city records as being active between 1235 and 1266).
3 (p. 83) the grandson of the good Gualdrada: The good Gualdrada was the daughter of Bellincione Berti of Florence and, according to medieval legend, was married to Guido Guerra at the suggestion of Emperor Otto IV. In fact, she married in 1180, before Otto IV became emperor. She was the grandmother of Guido Guerra, mentioned in the preceding note.
4 (p. 83) ”My savage wife... doth harm me“: Jacopo implies that his wife drove him to sodomy.
5 (p. 83) ”Sorrow and not disdain ... I with affection have retraced and heard“: In spite of the fact that the sinners are sodomites, Dante respects their love for their common native city of Florence and honors them. His pity for them, however, is quite different from that uncritical pity that caused him to swoon over Francesca da Rimini in canto V.
6 (p. 83) to the centre: This is the center of the Earth, the lowest part of Hell: Cocytus.
7 (p. 84) Guglielmo Borsier: Guglielmo Borsier (better known as Borsiere) was possibly a purse maker, given his name (borsa means ”purse“ in Italian). Boccaccio mentions him in Day I, Story 8 of the Decameron. As he has died very recently (his arrival is reported in 1. 71 as ”of late“), he has disturbed the other Florentine sodomites with his opinion that the ”good old days“ in Florence, when ”valor and courtesy“ (1. 67) were still valued, are finished. Nowhere better in his verse does Dante the Poet reveal himself to be a conservative social thinker as he does when he has Dante the Pilgrim declare in 1. 73 that ”the new inhabitants and the sudden gains“ (in the original Italian, la gente nuovaeisubiti guadagni) have ruined the old city values. In fact, it is more likely that the opposite is true: The great migration toward Florence of new citizens and the huge profits made by the banking and textile industries that supported the city’s prosperity provided the economic basis of the Florentine Renaissance.
8 (p. 84) the sound of water. The sound of the water falling into the eighth circle that opened the canto is heard again. In 11. 94-101, Dante compares the fall of the water in the Phlegethon to the fall of the Montone River (called in Dante’s day the Acquacheta as far as Forli, then the Montone—the name for the entire river today).
9 (p. 85) a cord... to take the panther with the painted skin: The cord that Dante produces from around his waist has not been mentioned previously, and he claims that he equipped himself with it to capture the panther in canto I (leopard in most other translations—the original Italian is la lonza; see canto I, note 8). It has been claimed, with little evidence, that Dante became a member of the Franciscan order and the cord is part of his habit, but he does not use the specific term for the cord worn by the Franciscans. Perhaps the best we can say here is that Dante needed his Pilgrim to signal Geryon, the monster of fraud that appears in 1. 97 of the next canto, and the cord was as good a signal as any he could devise.
10 (p. 85) Reader, by the notes of this my Comedy to thee I swear; For the first time in the poem, Dante provides us with a title for his work. The word—pronounced in Dante’s day as comedia and not as it is pronounced today in contemporary Italian, commedia—is repeated again in canto XXI: 1-2. The word divina (divine) was added to Dante’s title by the Venetian edition of 1555, printed by Gabriele Giolito and edited under the supervision of Ludovico Dolce. It was never Dante’s intention to use divina as part of the title. For Dante, comedy implied that the work had a happy ending, but he expanded greatly the other conception of comedy popular with his day—that comedy was connected to only a low, humble style. Dante’s comedy is unique precisely because it encompasses all levels of style, not only the low comic style of classical theatrical comedy but also the middle style identified with classical satire and the high, tragic style of serious dramatic works. In this passage, Dante the Poet makes an important address to his reader, swearing by his very poetic work that the sight the reader of his poem is about to share with Dante the Pilgrim—the arrival of Geryon—is a literally true image remembered from a literally real journey to Hell, and not a figure to be construed as a theological or philosophical allegory that is not derived from concrete human experience.
CANTO XVII
1 (p. 86) the monster: Virgil drops Dante’s cord into the abyss, summoning the monster Geryon (identified by name only in 1. 97). In classical mythology, Geryon is a three-headed giant Hercules kills during one of his Twelve Labors. He is mentioned by a number of classical authors (including Virgil, Pliny, and Ovid), and is usually identified with the number three, perhaps to suggest a perversion of the Christian Trinity. Dante’s description of Geryon may also have been influenced by any number of monsters described in the biblical book of Revelation. Dante makes Geryon the personification of fraud, since his face is ”the face of a just man“ (1. 10), but his poisoned tail is compared to a scorpion’s stinger (1. 27).
2 (p. 86) Never in cloth did Tartars make nor Turks, nor were such tissues by Arachne laid: Arachne was a Lydian woman who was so skilled in weaving that she challenged Minerva to a contest; when Minerva lost, she changed Arachne into a spider (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book VI). The Tartars and Turks were regarded in Dante’s day as the best weavers in the world.
3 (p. 86) And as among the guzzling Germans there, the beaver plants himself to wage his war: According to medieval bestiaries, the beaver (an animal more common in Germanic lands than in Italy) fished with its tail—a position similar to the one Geryon assumes. Identifying Germans with drunkenness (”guzzling Germans“) was a common idea that had classical as well as medieval Italian roots.
4 (p. 87) on the right-band side: As in canto IX: 132, Virgil and Dante the Pilgrim move to the right, but their normal motion is to the left. Here they can only move to the right, since the river of blood is on their left, viewed from the spot where they are standing. After Geryon flies them to the other side of the waterfall, they will continue to move to the left.
5 (p. 88) the melancholy folk: These sinners are the usurers, described in canto XI: 105 as having sinned against Art, God’s grandchild, since they make money increase against Nature by charging interest. They crouch, staring at the pouches or purses hanging around their necks, each of which bears the emblem or coat of arms of a different family. In life they have been obsessed with material goods, so, in death, they have lost their individuality. Their position duplicates their position in life, crouched over a desk thinking about money. The yellow purse with the blue lion (11. 59-60) probably refers to the Gianfigliazzi family, Florentine Guelphs; the red purse with the white goose (11. 62-63) represents the Ubriachi, or Obriachi, family, Florentine Ghibellines; and the third purse with the blue sow (11
. 64-65) belongs to the Scrovegni family from Padua.
6 (p. 89) ”Know that a neighbor of mine, Vitaliano ... a Paduan am I with these Florentines“: The only usurer to speak is usually identified as Reginaldo degli Scrovegni, whose son used some of his father’s ill-gotten gains to commission Giotto to paint the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, the work of art that marks the birth of Renaissance painting and the use of realism in the depiction of the human form. Scrovegni reports the name of another sinner being punished with him, Vitaliano, so the Pilgrim will take news of him back to the living. Vitaliano has been identified as another Paduan usurer, Vitaliano del Dente.
7 (p. 89) ”Come the sovereign cavalier“: This is probably Giovanni Buiamonte, of the Becchi family in Florence, who apparently had been knighted by 1298. The Becchi family’s coat of arms contained three black goats on a gold field (in Italian, becchi is the plural form of a word for ”goat“).
8 (p. 89) ”by stairways such as these“: Virgil notes that from this point on, they will travel in Hell assisted by other ”stairways“—these are infernal monsters, like Geryon. Later in the poem Antaeus (canto XXXI) and Lucifer himself (canto XXXIV) will assist the Pilgrim and his guide in moving over gaps in the geography of Hell that they cannot walk across.
9 (p. 89) So near the ague of quartan: Quartan fever is a chill (ague) that is associated with malaria and has a four-day cycle.
10 (p. 89) ”the descent be little“: Dante and Virgil mount on Geryon’s back and fly down in slow, gradual circles. Geryon must be careful not to drop the Pilgrim, who is a ”novel“ burden (1. 99) because he has actual weight, unlike Virgil and the shades of Hell.
11 (p. 90) Phaeton ... the wretched Icarus: Dante the Pilgrim compares the fear he experiences while riding on the back of Geryon to classical precursors who were unsuccessful in their flights. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book II, Phaeton persuades his father, Apollo, to allow him to drive the chariot of the sun, but he loses control and Zeus kills him to prevent the Earth from catching fire. In Book VIII of the Metamorphoses, Daedalus fashions wings for his son, Icarus, and fastens them with wax, which melts when the boy flies too close to the sun, causing him to fall into the Aegean Sea.
12 (p. 90) The turning and descending, by great horrors: This is the first moment that the Pilgrim sees that Geryon is descending in a spiral like a falcon.
13 (p. 90) As falcon who has long been on the wing ... sped away as arrow from the string: Geryon’s flight resembles that of a falcon, because hunting birds of prey are trained not to land until they have taken their prey or are called down by the falconer, who uses a lure to signal the recall. Geryon’s uncooperative attitude is underlined by the simile, for he lands before he is called and apparently in a place of his own choosing. Nevertheless, he has been forced to obey Virgil and fulfill his role. His slow descent is contrasted to the manner in which he speeds off like an arrow shot from a bow.
CANTO XVIII
1 (p. 91) Malebolge: By putting two words together—malo, meaning ”evil,“ and bolge, plural of bolgia, meaning ”ditch“ or ”pouch“—Dante invents an original name for the eighth circle. This circle contains ten concentric, sloping ditches, inside of which are punished ten different kinds of simple fraud. Dante and Virgil walk above the bolge along dikes and observe the sinners below them.
2 (pp. 91—92) Even as the Romaris... towards the Mountain: When Pope Boniface VIII declared 1300 a Jubilee Year in the Eternal City, crowd control was handled by sending all those heading toward St. Peter’s basilica to one side of the street that passed by the Castel Sant‘Angelo, while those returning from St. Peter’s headed toward Monte Giordano, a low hill across the River Tiber from the Castel Sant’Angelo. The sinners below Dante and Virgil walk on either side of the dike below them, each group going in a different direction as the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims did in Rome during the Jubilee. Three groups of sinners are punished together in the first Bolgia: panderers, along with seducers and flatterers.
3 (p. 93) Venedico Caccianimico... to grant the wishes of the Marquis: Venedico Caccianimico, a Guelph nobleman of Bologna, was active in the last half of the thirteenth century and, according to popular belief, sold his sister, Ghisola, to Marquis Opizzo d‘Este of Ferrara to win his favor. Venedico actually died in 1303, although Dante believed he died before 1300, the date of his fictional journey.
4 (P. 93) ”Not the sole Bolognese ... to say sipa“: Sipa is Bolognese dialect for si, or ”yes.“ The city of Bologna is located between the Savena and the Reno Rivers, and Venedico is saying that there are more procurers and pimps from Bologna in Hell than there are Bolognese alive and living still in their native city. Even today, Bologna has a reputation among Italians for sexual prowess (particularly fellatio).
5 (p. 93) ”there are no women bere for coin“: For the term that Longfellow translates as ”coin,“ Dante uses the word conio, which means fraudulent deception and also refers to the steel die used to stamp coins. Thus Venedico is being told by a demon that there are no women in Hell whom he can exploit for fraudulent purposes as well as for money.
6 (p. 94) From those eternal circles we departed ..... Because together with us they have gone”: The “eternal circles” may well refer not only to the ditches of Malebolge but also to the Florentine practice of whipping a condemned man along the path to his execution. Dante now leaves behind one group of sinners engaged in eternal circling (the panderers) and encounters another circling group (the seducers). He and Virgil have not yet been able to see the faces of this group, since the sinners are hurrying ahead of the two poets with their backs turned to them (“Because together with us they have gone”).
7 (p. 94) That Jason is ... had all the rest deceived: Jason, the leader of the Argonauts, carried off the Golden Fleece (the Ram of the Colchians). He seduced and betrayed Medea, daughter of the King of Colchis, in order to capture the Fleece, and he also seduced Hypsipyle, daughter of the King of the island of Lemnos. Hypsipyle and other women on Lemnos were cursed by a terrible smell when they stopped worshiping Aphrodite, making them unattractive to their husbands or lovers. The women responded by murdering all their males. Hypsipyle “all the rest deceived” because she lied about killing her father, King Thoas.
8 (pp. 94-95) In the next Bolgia, snorting with their muzzles ... clerk or layman: Flatterers in both Italian and in English are often called “ass kissers,” and the source of the delicately translated ordure (1. 116) is, in the original Italian, literally “shit,” derived naturally from the area of the body where flatterers generally congregate. Everything about the second Bolgia, the part of Hell where the flatterers are punished, is disgusting: There is the foul smell, caked-on crust from human excrement has formed along the embankments (the “margins” of 1. 106), and the sinners immersed in excrement snort with their muzzles in animal-like fashion (1. 104). All of this constitutes one of the most graphic images of punishment in the entire Inferno.
9 (p. 95) Alessio Interminei of Lucca: According to documents, Alessio Interminei, or Interminelli, of Lucca, a member of a White Guelph family, was still alive in 1295 but probably died shortly thereafter. Dante refers to his head as a zucca, a “pumpkin” (1. 124)—a word often employed by Florentines to indicate a slow-witted person.
10 (p. 95) Thais the harlot: In act 3, scene 1, of the play Eunuchus, by the Roman playwright Terence, Thais is associated with flattery: Her lover first sends her a slave, then later sends a servant to ask her if he deserved her thanks. According to the servant, she makes an immoderately flattering reply. Dante most likely knew of this example not from Terence, whom he probably did not read, but from a source he certainly did know—Cicero, who in his De amicitia, XXVI, cites Thais as an example of immoderate flattery.
CANTO XIX
1 (p. 96) Simon Magus: The third Bolgia of the eighth circle punishes the simonists, those who sold ecclesiastical offices or favors (simony). The term derives from Simon Magus, who in the Bible, Acts 8: 9-24, tries to purchase the power of the Holy S
pirit from the Apostles John and Peter.
2 (p. 96) The livid stone with perforations filled ... the soles were both on fire: In this passage Dante describes a physical structure resembling a baptismal font with round holes out of which the feet of the simonists protrude, burning with an oily fire (1. 28). This is an ironic reference to the sacrament of Extreme Unction as well as to the Pentecost—when, in the Bible, Acts 2: 1-4, after the Ascension of Christ the apostles were invested with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues, always represented in the religious art of Dante’s day as tongues of fire. Dante claims here that he once broke the baptismal font in the church of San Giovanni in Florence (his “beautiful Saint John” of I. 17) in order to save a child who was drowning in the water; unlike those who sold church offices, Dante commits what might seem to some to be a sacrilegious act out of kindness.
3 - (p. 98) “Dost thou stand there already, Boniface?”: We learn later in the canto (11. 69-72) that the figure to whose feet Dante is speaking is Giovanni Gaetano degli Orsini, elevated to the papacy in 1277 as Pope Nicholas III. He was infamous for his simony and the promotion of his relatives to church offices, even though he only ruled as supreme pontiff for a few years, until 1280. Since the damned know the distant future, Nicholas knows that Pope Boniface VIII will take his place in Hell too, but when he hears the Pilgrim’s voice, he mistakes him for Boniface and wonders if he miscalculated, since the date is 1300, not 1303, when he knows Boniface will die. Not one to be impressed by powerful prelates, Dante the Poet has thus consigned a living pope to the punishments of Hell while he is still alive (at least still alive in the fictional time of 1300, during which the Poet’s action takes place). Boniface VIII, born Benedetto Caetani C.1235, was elected to succeed Pope Celestine V in 1294 and died in 1303. Dante loathed him and believed the often-told story of how Boniface persuaded Celestine to give up the papacy, making what Dante calls in canto III: 59 the “great refusal” (see canto III, note 9).
The Inferno (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 23