The Inferno (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Dante Alighieri

  4 · (p. 99) son of the She-bear: Pope Nicholas’s family name, degli Orsini, literally means “of the bear cubs.”

  5 (p. 99) “a Pastor without law ... Jason will be be, of whom we read in Maccabees”: Not content with condemning one living pope to Hell, Dante has Nicholas predict the eminent arrival of yet another pontiff, Clement V, born Bertrand de Got in France around 1264 and pope from 1305 to 1314. Clement began the so-called Babylonian Captivity of the Catholic Church, moving the papacy to Avignon, France, in 1309, where it remained for more than seventy years, thanks to the influence of Philip the Fair, king of France, who engineered Clement’s election. Dante compares Clement to Jason, who in the Apocrypha of the Bible, 2 Maccabees 4: 7-27, becomes High Priest of the Jewish Temple by bribing King Antiochus IV of Syria and introduces Greek and pagan elements into Judaism, actions that lead to the uprising of the Jews under the Maccabees.

  6 (p. 99) “I pray thee tell me now how great a treasure ... the place the guilty soul had lost”: According to the Bible, Acts 1: 15-26, after Judas betrays Christ and commits suicide, lots are cast to determine who will replace him as one of the apostles, and the lot falls to Matthias. What is most relevant about this story here, in this section of Hell, is that the office was not sold—no one “asked of Matthias silver or gold.” Meanwhile, Christ did not demand a great treasure when he chose Peter to receive the keys of the church, but asked only his willingness to follow him as the Son of God.

  7 (p. 99) “valiant against Charles”: Dante believes Nicholas III helped to instigate the 1282 uprising against Charles I of Anjou, king of Naples and Sicily, known as the Sicilian Vespers. Actually the Sicilian Vespers was a spontaneous popular uprising that destroyed French power on the island, and Nicholas III had been dead for a couple of years when the revolt occurred.

  8 (p. 100) “When she who sitteth upon many waters ... to her spouse was pleasing”: In the biblical Book of Revelation: 17, Saint John the Evangelist pictures a woman who embodies a vision of Pagan Rome. Dante employs the same image to represent the Roman Church—the seven heads are the seven Holy Sacraments and the ten horns are the Ten Commandments.

  9 (p. 100) “Ah, Constantine!... which the first wealthy Father took from tbee”: Dante believed that the “Donation of Constantine”—a document in which Emperor Constantine (ruled 306—337) supposedly gave temporal power to Pope Sylvester I (314-335)—marked the disastrous beginning of Church corruption. He did not know that the Donation was also a forgery, a fact that was not brought to light until the fifteenth century by Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla.

  10 (p. 100) with both his feet: The feet are those of Nicholas III.

  11 (p. 100) with both his arms he took me up . . . tenderly on the crag: Overcome by pleasure with the fact that Dante the Pilgrim has understood the essence of simony almost without taking any cues from his guide, Virgil lifts him up bodily and carries him back out of the bolgia, holding him against his breast; when Virgia carried the Pilgrim down into the bolgia, he clasped him to his side, or “haunch” (1. 43). Placed on the bridge overlooking the fourth Bolgia, the Pilgrim will now encounter fortune-tellers and diviners.

  CANTO XX

  1 (p. 101) to the twentieth canto ... of the submerged: For the first time, Dante actually assigns a number to a canto, and he calls the entire Inferno the “first song” (canzone in Italian). He does not employ the technical term “canticle” (cantica) that we use today and that he employs in Purgatory XXXIII: 140 to refer to the three separate divisions of his Comedy that conform to the three regions of the afterlife.

  2 (p. 101) at the pace which in this world the Litanies assume: The diviners are walking in the same slow-paced procession that is used when litanies, in which the priest chants an invocation and the congregation responds, are performed.

  3 (p. 101) to look forward bad been taken from them: Dante has found the perfect punishment for those who presumed to tell the future (thus implicitly denying God’s power to control and know the future). Their faces have been twisted so that they cannot stare forward but must always look backward, and their tears run down their backs and through the buttocks (“the hinder parts” of 1. 24).

  4 (pp. 101—102) Truly I wept.... “Who feels compassion at the doom divine?”: Dante the Pilgrim again falls into the trap of feeling compassion for the tortured souls, causing Virgil to rebuke him indignantly and to remind him that true pity cannot be wasted on those who justly deserve punishment. Feeling compassion for the damned reflects an imperfect understanding of God’s plan or may even, as if often suggested by Dante’s critics, mark the Poet’s recognition that he, himself, is guilty of the sins for which he feels compassion.

  5 (p. 102) “Opened the earth before the Thebans’ eyes ... Amphiaraus”: This legendary king was one of the Seven Against Thebes, seven kings who attacked Thebes in classical antiquity (another king, Capaneus, appears in canto XIV). In the Thebaid, Books VII—VIII, Statius recounts how Amphiaraus tries to hide to avoid going off to war, since he foresees that he will die. Indeed, he is swallowed up in an earthquake at Thebes and is transformed into an oracle.

  6 (p. 102) Tiresias: In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book III, this Theban soothsayer changes into a woman when he finds a staff with two coupled serpents; seven years later, he (now a she) finds the same staff, and she becomes a he again. Jupiter and Juno argue about who derives the most pleasure from sex, the man or the woman, and ask Tiresias to decide. He agrees with Jupiter that women have the most pleasure. Angry with his response (and for revealing women’s secret), Juno blinds Tiresias, but Jupiter gives him the gift of prophecy to compensate for his lost sight.

  7 (p. 102) “Aruns ... among the marbles white a cavern had”: In Lucan’s Pharsalia, Book I, this Etruscan soothsayer Aruns foretells the triumph of Caesar in the Roman civil wars. Luni is an ancient Etruscan city near Carrara, where the Carrarese quarry the famous marble that Michelangelo used in his greatest stone sculptures.

  8 (p. 102) Manto: This is a Theban prophetess and the daughter of Tiresias who abandoned Thebes, which had been enslaved by the tyrant Creon, and went to Italy. Virgil’s claim that Manto founded Mantua directly contradicts the explanation he offers for the origins of his native city in the Aeneid, Book X. Moreover, in Purgatory XXII: 113, the poet Statius points out that the daughter of Tiresias (Manto) resides in Limbo. Virgil’s explanation here for the origins of his birthplace of Mantua represents another example of the classical poet’s fallibility, since Dante the Poet has Virgil silently correct the remarks he made in the Aeneid. Like Virgil, Dante the Poet is not fallible: He seems to have forgotten that he placed Manto in Hell when later in Purgatory he has Statius say that Manto is in Limbo!

  9 · (p. 103) “Benaco ... might give his blessing”: Lake Benaco is now called Lake Garda, which is near Mantua. The three dioceses of Trent, Brescia, and Verona converge in an island in the lake (“midway a place,” 1. 67), and Dante notes that here the three bishops of those dioceses (Dante calls them pastors) could bestow their blessings in the same spot. He locates the island between the city of Garda, the Val Camonica (a valley west of Garda), and the town of Pennino.

  10 (p. 103) “Peschiera, fortress fair and strong, to front the Brescians and the Bergamasks”: The town of Peschiera del Garda is on the southeastern shore of Lake Garda. In Dante’s time, the Scaliger family, rulers of Verona, controlled the town’s fortress, designed to protect the area from attacks by Brescia and Bergamo.

  11 (p. 103) “No more Benaco ... it falls in Po”: The waters of the river that becomes the Mincio flow southward toward Mantua, then, reaching a town called Govérnolo (which Dante calls “Governo”), join the Po and flow toward the Adriatic Sea.

  12 (p. 103) the virgin pitiless: This is a reference to the Theban prophetess Manto (canto XX, note 8), described as pitiless or cruel because she has no interest in men.

  13 (p. 103) “From Pinamonte had received deceit”: Pinamonte de’ Buonaccorsi, a Ghibelline who ruled Mantua between 1272 and 1291, expell
ed Count Alberto da Casalodi, a Guelph leader, from the city is a deceitful fashion. He persuaded Alberto to banish most of the nobility (his supporters), then turned around and drove the weakened Alberto out of the city and ruled it himself.

  14 (p. 104) “may the verity defraud”: Virgil has just delivered his longest speech in the Inferno: He has been talking about Manto and Mantua to Dante since 1. 27. What is remarkable about his explanation is that it directly contradicts what Virgil himself wrote in the Aeneid, Book X, where the Roman poet makes it very clear that Mantua was founded by Ocnus, the son of Manto. Nevertheless, the Pilgrim asserts that his guide’s discourses are so true, and he believes them so firmly, that any other explanation would be useless—like the spent, or burnt, coals of 1. 103. Of course, Virgil has just negated his own explanation in the Aeneid, and so Dante the Poet is enjoying teasing his acknowledged poetic master, perhaps implying that without the light of Christian revelation, even the greatest of the classical poets may sometimes make a mistake. But there is also a more serious motive. During the Middle Ages, Virgil acquired the reputation of a magician and a necromancer. People would find a random passage in the Aeneid, just as they often did in the Bible, and assign to it some divinatory or predictive power over the future. Therefore, Dante’s readers might well think that Virgil was a necromancer and deserving of punishment here in this section of Hell rather than living a much quieter and less stressful life in Limbo. Dante, therefore, makes Virgil explain that Mantua was founded after Manto’s death by people who had left Thebes (men who were “scattered round,” 1. 88) but who returned to found the city “without other omen” (1. 93; the Italian original reads senz’altra sorte )—meaning without the powers of divination associated with Thebes. In short, Dante wants to remove any possible link between his beloved Virgil and the sin expiated in this region of Hell.

  15 (p. 104) “Was, at the time when Greece was void of males ... Eryphylus his name was”: At a time when so many men were away at the Trojan War that there were virtually no males left in Greece, Eryphylus was sent to the oracle of Apollo to obtain a prophecy about how the Greeks should leave Troy after the war was won. Calchas, the augur, interpreted the message that Eryphylus delivered: Since the war began with the sacrifice of Iphigenia, there must be another sacrifice before the Greeks could return. Aulis is the port from which the Greek ships set sail, or severed their cables.

  16 (p. 104) “My lofty Tragedy”: Here Virgil refers to his Aeneid, which Dante would have understood to be a work of the high, lofty style ending in unhappiness. The death of the noble Turnus at the hands of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who thereafter sets the stage for the foundation of Rome, is certainly a tragic conclusion.

  17 (p. 104) Michael Scott: This Scottish scholar and necromancer (C.1175—C.1235) translated a number of important astronomical works from Arabic into Latin, including the commentaries of Averroës, the twelfth-century Arab scholar also known as Ibn Rushd, on Aristotle. He probably served as the astrologer for Emperor Frederick II of Sicily.

  18 (p. 104) “Behold Guido Bonatti, behold Asdente”: Bonatti, a famous astrologer and soothsayer from Forlì, was a roofer, covering houses with tiles by trade, but he apparently served Guido da Montefeltro (who appears in canto XXVII). Asdente (whose name means “Toothless” in Italian) was even humbler, a shoemaker from Parma who lived during the second half of the thirteenth century and was reputed to have powers to tell the future; Dante (11. 119—120) remarks that he should have stuck to his original shoemaking trade. Note that the cultural level of the diviners is becoming increasingly lower and lower. Finally, we come to anonymous witches who mix magic potions and make images of those upon whom they wish to cast spells.

  19 (p. 104) “But come now ... within the forest deep”: This puzzling passage presents several difficulties, not the least of which is how Virgil manages to tell time by gazing at the heavens, which are not visible from Hell. Medieval tradition held that Cain had been banished to the moon for his killing of Abel: The reference to “Cain and the thorns” is the equivalent of our own Man in the Moon. The moon is setting in the ocean west of Seville over a point that divides the hemisphere of the land from that of the water, and scholars have calculated that the time is therefore 6:00 A.M. on Holy Saturday, 1300. What Dante means when he writes that the moon assisted the Pilgrim “within the forest deep”—this would have been in canto I, when he was lost and confused in the dark forest—is simply unclear.

  20 (p. 104) we walked the while: It is interesting that Dante employs a word for “meanwhile” or “the while” (introcque, in Italian, from the Latin inter hoc) that he specifically criticized in his De vulgari eloquentia and banished from the illustrious vernacular language, considering it too typical of the Florentine vulgar tongue. But since his conception of “comedy” includes the permissible use of the low style, it is perhaps not surprising that he employs such language here. Alternatively, after maneuvering his literary character Virgil into correcting something that the historical Virgil wrote in the Aeneid (see canto XX, note 8), perhaps Dante the Poet is doing the same thing to himself, reversing in his own poem the advice he gave in an earlier work.

  CANTO XXI

  1 (p. 105) of which my Comedy cares not to sing: This is the second reference to the title of Dante’s poem (the first was in canto XVI, 1. 128). It is not clear which subjects Dante could have discussed at this point that he decides not to include in his poem.

  2 (p. 105) another fissure of Malebolge: This is the fifth Bolgia, where barrators (those who sell offices to make money) are punished in boiling pitch and guarded by demons who tear them into pieces with claws and hooks if the souls venture above the surface. These are important sins to Dante, since a false accusation of barratry was employed to exile him from his native Florence. Note that barratry is the lay equivalent of selling church offices, the simony punished in the third Bolgia.

  3 (p. 105) the Arsenal of the Venetians: Perhaps the most highly developed industrial complex in medieval and Renaissance Europe, the Arsenal (founded in 1104 and expanded over the years) could eventually produce a complete warship in a single day, applying advanced industrial techniques to the process of shipbuilding that approximated the modern assembly line. The description of the sticky pitch used in the Venetian Arsenal provides the perfect symbol and punishment for the barrators, who sell public offices behind the scenes hidden from human sight, just as the sinners are out of our sight under the boiling pitch. Their sticky fingers remind us of how money once stuck to their evil hands.

  4 (p. 106) “O Malebranche”: The devil addresses his colleagues by a name that may be translated into English as “Evil Claws.”

  5 (p. 106) “Behold one of the elders of Saint Zita”: The patron saint of Lucca, a Tuscan city, died in the last part of the thirteenth century and was canonized in the seventeenth century. Dante would have known her to be not an official saint but merely a woman who was reputed to be very holy. One of her elders would be an alderman of the city; scholars have tried to identify this Luccan barrator as Martino Bottario, who died in 1300.

  6 (p. 106) except Bonturo: Bonturo Dati (d. 1325), a politician active during the beginning of the fourteenth century, was reputedly the most corrupt man in all of Lucca. Dante’s contemporaries would have taken the devil’s remark that everyone in Lucca except Bonturo is corrupt to be humorously ironic.

  7 (p. 107) “Here the Santo Volto has no place! Here swims one otherwise than in the Serchio”: The Serchio River is near Lucca. The mention of the Santo Volto (literally “Sacred Face”), a dark-wood crucifix venerated since the early Middle Ages in the cathedral of Lucca, implies that the sinner is floating in a cruciform position with the face up. Since he is covered with pitch, he may be said to resemble the dark wood crucifix.

  8 (p. 107) “Let Malacoda go”: This devil, whose name means “Evil Tail,” seems to be the leader of the Malebranche in Malebolge.

  9 (p. 108) Then was his arrogance so humbled in him ... all the devils forward thru
st themselves: Malacoda has won Virgil’s confidence by dropping his grapple hook (“grapnel” of 1. 86) and told him that his fellow devils will not advance. This proves not to be the case, and Virgil’s self-assurance that he can handle the devils is proven to be mistaken. Virgil’s all-too-human fallibility once again underscores why he cannot be considered to be an allegorical symbol for human reason.

  10 (p. 108) beheld I once afraid the soldiers ... seeing themselves among so many foes: An army composed of men from Florence and Lucca attacked the fortress of Caprona near Pisa in August of 1289, only a brief time after the victory Dante’s Guelph faction won at Campaldino in June 1289. Dante was apparently present at both battles. At Caprona, the Pisans were given safe conduct through the besieging army’s lines, but Dante asks us to imagine what their fear must have been like while they marched between their enemies on either side of them with their arms drawn.

  11 (p. 108) Scarmiglione: This is the first of the twelve devils who now make an appearance.

  12 (p. 108) “Near is another crag that yields a path”: Malacoda is lying about this bridge, or “crag,” being intact, since all bridges but the one Virgil and the Pilgrim have already crossed are down, destroyed by the great earthquake that shook Hell after the death of Christ. Other such ruins caused by the same earthquake are to be found in cantos V and IX, but Dante does not discover this information until Virgil is so informed by Fra Catalano in canto XXIII: 133-138.

  13 (pp. 108-109) “Yesterday, five hours later than this hour... that here the way was broken”: It is therefore 7:00 A.M. on the morning of Holy Saturday.

  14 (p. 109) “some of mine... and mad Rubicante”: Malacoda calls ten of the Malebranche devils, some of whose names seem to underline bestial qualities. Barbariccia may be translated roughly as “Curley Beard,” Graffiacane may be rendered literally as “Scratch Dog,” and Draghignazzo may mean “Evil Dragon.” But other names seem only to be intended to sound amusing when pronounced. Needless to say, Malacoda’s statement that the devils “will not be vicious” is another lie.