The Inferno (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Dante Alighieri

  5 (p. 139) “so may thy name hold front there in the world”: The Pilgrim knows that the tortured souls cannot resist the chance to have justification of their lives delivered to the world of the living, but he is also aware that they hate the idea of any notice of their damnation being brought back to earth.

  6 (p. 140) “If I believed ... without the fear of infamy I answer”: The Pilgrim manages to persuade a famous soul, Guido da Montefeltro, to discuss his fate, something Guido only says he does because he does not think his words will ever be reported—Guido mistakenly believes Dante to be a damned soul who can never repeat what he says to the world of the living.

  7 (p. 141) “I was a man of arms, then Cordelier”: Guido was a soldier, but in 1296 he joined the Franciscan order of friars (and therefore wore the cord typical of that order, calling himself a Cordelier, or “cord wearing friar”).

  8 (p. 141) the High Priest: This is a reference to Pope Boniface VIII. In 11. 85-111, Guido blames his fraudulent counseling upon Boniface. Several chronicles of the period collaborate the account Dante provides here, but it is possible that the authors of these chronicles took the story to be true after reading the Comedy.

  9 (p. 141) “the deeds I did were not those of a lion, but a fox”: Guido was frequently referred to during his lifetime as a crafty, astute fox. No doubt Dante knew the metaphor of the lion and the fox from Cicero’s De officiis, Book I, in which the author declares that injustice may be done in two ways, through force (the aspect of the lion) or through deceit (the aspect of the fox), and that while both of these sources of injustice are alien to human nature, that of deceit is more despicable. Niccolò Machiavelli, the great Renaissance Florentine philosopher, picked up Cicero’s metaphor again in his famous description of the ideal prince’s qualities as those of the lion and the fox in The Prince, Book XVIII. Unlike either Cicero or Dante, Machiavelli praises the qualities of force and deceit Cicero and Dante identified with these two animals, since he believed that without such qualities, a ruler could never survive.

  10 (p. 141) “of the modern Pharisees ... in the Sultan’s land”: In 1297 Pope Boniface (compared here to the evil Pharisees who killed Christ) was at odds with the powerful Colonna family, who lived near the Lateran palace in Rome. Rather than attending to the proper business of the papacy and attacking the traditional enemies of the Church (Muslims and Jews, 1. 87), Pope Boniface made war upon Christians who had neither helped the Muslims reconquer Acre (the last Crusader stronghold in the Holy Land, 1. 89), nor engaged in commerce with the infidel, as did the Jews (1. 90).

  11 (p. 141) as Constantine sought out Sylvester ... within Soracte: Guido compares the advice he was asked to give Pope Boniface to the fourteenth-century deal made between Emperor Constantine and Pope Sylvester I. According to legend, after persecuting the Christians, Constantine was struck with leprosy as a punishment. He went to visit the pope, who was in hiding near Rome on Monte Soracte, was converted and cured, and, as a sign of his gratitude, supposedly made the famous “Donation of Constantine.” This document gave the papacy the city of Rome and temporal power in the West (and was proven to be a forgery in the fifteenth century by Lorenzo Valla, who served as papal secretary).

  12 (pp. 141-142) “I thee absolve ... which my predecessor beld not dear”: Boniface promises Guido absolution for his evil counsel, declaring that he has the power to bind and unbind on Earth because of the two keys given symbolically by Christ to the first pope, the Apostle Peter—and which Celestine V gave up, “he held not dear,” when he renounced the papacy in 1294. Guido advises the pope on how to take control of Palestrina, a Colonna stronghold outside of Rome, by fraud. Boniface promised the Colonna complete amnesty if they surrendered the fortress, then, following Guido’s advice, destroyed it completely.

  13 (p. 142) “The promise long with the fulfilment short”: This is an apt description of Boniface’s false promise to the Colonna of Palestrina (see note above).

  14 (p. 142) “Francis came afterward ... ’Take him not; do me no wrong”‘: According to Dante’s account (obviously invented), Saint Francis comes to claim the soul of Guido, who is a Franciscan monk, but since Guido has never repented of his sin and has trusted in the fraudulent promises of an evil pope, Francis is denied possession of his soul and a black Cherubim carries it to Hell. The Cherubim were the second most important rank of the nine orders of angels; some of them rebelled against God with Lucifer and were placed in Hell with him. In Purgatory V: 104-105, Guido’s son Bonconte experiences a similar struggle between a devil and an angel contesting for his soul, but Bonconte is saved and the devil is thwarted. Such interrelated narrative episodes across Canticles make up one of the most interesting structural devices holding Dante’s poem together.

  15 (p. 142) the fraudulent advice: In canto XI: 52-60, Virgil does not specifically name the sin punished in the eight and ninth Bolge. In fact, after listing hypocrisy, flattery, magic, falsification, theft, simony, pandering, and barratry, Virgil concludes the list with the phrase “and the like filth.” Here, for the first time, the reader learns what that sin punished in the eight Bolgia is and what “like filth” means in part: consigilo frodolente, false or evil counseling.

  16 (p. 142) unto Minos, who entwined eight times his tail: After the black Cherubim wins the contest with Saint Francis, he follows the rules of Hell and delivers Guido to Minos, who performs his normal function by wrapping his tail around the sinner the number of times (eight) that signifies the location of his punishment (the eighth Bolgia).

  17 (p. 142) the moat ... win their burden: The “moat” is the ditch of the ninth Bolgia, where the sowers of discord are punished—where they pay the “fee” and take on the burden of their guilt.

  CANTO XXVIII

  1 (p. 143) Assembled all the people.... the lingering war: Dante opens his description of the ninth Bolgia with a long simile. The Pilgrim declares that the horribly mutilated souls he sees here far outnumber those killed in various military actions that took place in Puglia, called Apuglia in Roman times, a southeastern section of the Italian peninsula. First, he mentions the blood shed by the Trojans when Aeneas invaded Italy. Longfellow translates the original Italian Troiani as “Romans,” and other commentators and scholars have accepted the translation and interpreted the word to refer to the Romans killed in the wars between the Samnites and the Romans in 343—290 B.C. (“blood shed by the Romans”). But “Trojans” may well be the correct translation here. Second, Dante refers to the “lingering war,” which can only refer to the huge number of Romans killed in the Second Punic War against Hannibal in 218-201 B.C.

  2 (p. 143) That of the rings ... as Livy has recorded: In his history of Rome, Livy noted that so many Romans were killed by Hannibal at the disastrous battle of Cannae (216 B.C.) that Hannibal delivered several bushels filled with gold rings cut from Roman fingers to the Carthaginian Senate.

  3 (p. 143) Robert Guiscard: This Norman warrior and duke of Apulia and Calabria fought the Byzantines and the Saracens in southern Italy c.1060—1080. Dante places him in Paradise XVIII: 48, in the Heaven of Mars, for his efforts as a Christian warrior.

  4 (p. 143) At Ceperano ... the old Alardo conquered: In 1266 Manfred, king of Sicily, commanded troops at the pass of Ceperano against the soldiers of Charles of Anjou, but his Apulian troops allowed the French to force the pass without opposition. Shortly thereafter, at the battle of Benevento, Charles defeated Manfred, who was killed during the combat. Two years later, at the battle of Tagliacozzo, Charles employed a ruse suggested to him by Erard de Valéry (“old Aloardo”—Longfellow employs an Italian version of this French soldier’s name) to defeat the remainder of Manfred’s followers in Italy. At Tagliacozzo, Ghibelline forces opposing Charles of Anjou were led by Conradin, grandson of Emperor Frederick II. After the defeat, Conradin was executed, and his death effectively ended Ho henstaufen aspirations to rule over Italy.

  5 (p. 144) “See now how I rend me; how mutilated, see, is Mahomet”: Dante thought of Moha
mmed (c.570—632) not as the founder of a new, Islamic religion, but as a Christian schismatic. His punishment literally embodies the sin of discord by having his body torn apart from chin to buttocks.

  6 (p. 144) “Ali ... cleft in the face from forelock unto chin”: Mohammed’s adopted son and son-in-law, husband of his daughter Fatima, assumed the caliphate in 656 until his death by assassination in 661. Arguments over Ali’s succession caused the followers of Islam to split into two factions—Sunni and Shiite—that remain disunited today. While Mohammed is split from the chin down, Ali is split from the chin up.

  7 (p. 144) “Sowers of scandal and of schism”: Here Dante describes the sinners being punished in the ninth Bolgia as sowers of discord. “Scandal” was understood in Dante’s theology as any doctrine that causes others to stumble and lose their path to truth. Schism is distinguished from heresy, in that schism cuts off a person from the unity of the Church, while heresy opposes faith itself. In the ninth Bolgia, Dante meets schismatic groups associated with both religion and politics.

  8 (p. 144) ’“say to Fra Dolcino”: The leader of a religious sect known as the Apostolic Brothers preached a return to apostolic simplicity, as well as the sharing of property and women. Declared heretical by Pope Clement V in 1305, the sect was eradicated by a crusade at Novara, in nothern Italy. Dolcino and his mistress, Margaret of Trent, were burned at the stake in 1307.

  9 · (pp. 144-145) “If soon he wish not here to follow me... the victory to the Novarese”: Souls in Hell, it must be remembered, have knowledge of events that occur some time ahead of the present. So when Mohammed learns from Virgil that Dante the Pilgrim is a living being who will return to the world, he seeks to send a message to Fra Dolcino (see note above) concerning his death, which will actually occur after the fictional date of the poem (1300). Mohammed warns Dolcino to stock plenty of provisions so he will not be forced to surrender for lack of them, as he actually would do during his last stand at Novara.

  10 (p. 145) Pier da Medicina ... nor Argolic people: Medicina is a small town between Vercelli and Marcabò, near Bologna. Little is known of Pier, but Dante must have known him. Early commentators considered him to be an instigator of political strife. Pier now provides another of the prophecies that various sinners along the Pilgrim’s path through Hell have revealed—the prediction of a double murder near Fano. The victims are Guido del Cassero and Angiolello di Carignano, leading figures in Fano, a small town on the Adriatic south of Rimini. The tyrant of Rimini, Malatestino Malatesta (already mentioned in canto XXVII: 46) invites them to meet him at the town of Cattolica, another small town on the same coastal area, where he greets their ship and has them drowned. This treacherous assassination will take place some time after 1312, more than a decade after the fictional date of the poem (1300). Pier claims that Malatestino’s murder of the two men is unmatched by any crime in the entire Mediterranean, even those atrocities committed by pirates or by the inhabitants of Greece (the “Argolic people”).

  11 (p. 145) “who sees only with one eye ... and holds the land”: Malatestino had only one eye; the land he “holds” is Rimini.

  12 (p. 145) “to Focara’s wind they will not stand in need of vow or prayer”: Pier’s prophecy concludes that the two assassinated men from Fano will not need any protection from the Focara’s wind, a famous gale that destroyed many ships off that particular coast.

  13 (pp. 145-147) “this person of the bitter vision” ... Curio: Dante asks Pier the identity of the soul who he described earlier (11. 86-87) as one who would have preferred not to have had the bitter sight of the land around Rimini. Pier identifies the soul as Gaius Scribonius Curio, a Roman tribune who reportedly advised Caesar to cross the Rubicon River. This body of water formed the boundary line that the republican government forbad Roman armies and their commanders to cross. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he went on to overthrow the Roman Republic and begin a period of civil war leading to the formation of the Roman Empire. Curio reportedly told Caesar that when forewarned, to delay is fatal (11. 98-99). The Rubicon is associated with the city of Rimini because it empties into the Adriatic near there. Curio has apparently lost the use of his tongue by the sword of the devil who administers punishment in this region, so Pier is forced to pry open his mouth to show the Pilgrim.

  14 (p. 147) “remember Mosca also ... an ill seed for the Tuscan people”: This is Mosca dei Lamberti, a Ghibelline from Florence. He advised the murder of Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti, who was engaged to a girl from the Amidei family but married one of the Donati family instead. This murder, carried out in 1215, was reportedly the origin of the bitter internecine strife in Florence between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, since the Amidei family (the assassins) were Ghibellines while the Donati were Guelphs. By his advice—“A thing done has an end” (1. 107)—Mosca means that since anything less than murder would provoke the same violent reaction, it is better to kill than to undertake a milder form of vendetta. The story, including Mosca’s advice, is reported in Giovanni Villani’s fourteenth-century history of Florence. The reader should remember that the Pilgrim asked Ciacco about Mosca and other Florentines earlier, in canto VI: 80.

  15 (p. 147-148) “Bertram de Born ... Achitophel not more with Absalom”: One of the most famous of all Provençal poets, Bertran de Born (whom Dante calls “Bertram”) lived in the second half of the twelfth century. While Dante praises his poetry in other works, here he places Bertran in Hell for supporting the rebellion of Prince Henry (“the Young King,” 1. 135) against his father, Henry II of England. Bertran’s advice to Prince Henry is compared to that given by Achitophel the Gilonite, who instigated Absalom’s rebellion against King David, his father, in the Bible, 2 Samuel 15-17.

  16 (p. 148) the counterpoise: Dante finally names the principle of punishment in Hell, divine retribution that is exemplified in Bertran de Born’s frightening punishment: His head is severed from his body, because in life he divided father and son. Longfellow is one of the few translators of Dante to have rendered Dante’s term for this principle of punishment, contrapasso, into a precise English term: A counterpoise is any force or influence that balances or equally counteracts another force or influence. Therefore, in almost all cases in Hell, the punishment the sinners receive fits their crimes. The punishment is counterpoised to the sin in some fashion, often an extremely ingenious one. The principle of “counterpoise” owes something to the lex talionis of the Old Testament (see Exodus 23: 23-27: the proverbial “eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”) and to the medieval Latin translation of a term in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book V—contrapassum—that means “retaliation.” Thomas Aquinas discusses this term at some length in his Summa Theologica.

  CANTO XXIX

  1 (p. 149) two-and-twenty miles the valley winds: This is the first precise measurement we are offered of an area in Hell, the circumference of the next Bolgia, the ninth. In canto XXX: 86, Dante tells us that the tenth Bolgia is exactly half this size, or II miles in circumference. If it has not already been obvious to the reader up to this point, it is now clear that Hell is a huge inverted cone, becoming narrower and narrower as the two poets travel down toward its center.

  2 (p. 149) underneath our feet: If the moon is underneath, then the sun is directly overhead, and it is therefore midday in Jerusalem on Holy Saturday.

  3 (p. 149) Geri del Bello: This character was a first cousin to Dante’s father and was murdered by a member of the Sacchetti family around the time of the poem’s fictional action. His death was avenged by a member of the Alighieri family only around 1310—therefore long after the time Dante meets Geri in Hell.

  4 (p. 150) him who formerly held Altaforte: Dante was so engaged in his conversation with Bertran de Born (the lord of Altaforte, as Dante refers to him) that he failed to notice Geri earlier.

  5 (p. 150) the last cloister of Malebolge: Cantos XXIX and XXX are devoted to falsifications: Dante discusses alchemists, who falsify metals and other materials, in canto XXIX, and evil impersonat
ors, counterfeiters, and false witnesses in canto XXX.

  6 (p. 150) From the hospitals of Valdichiana ... and Sardinia: The Valdichiana and the Maremma are two districts in Tuscany that were once known for summertime cases of malaria, as was the island of Sardinia.

  7 (p. 150) a sadder sight to see was in Ægina ... the seed of ants restored again: Dante compares the sufferings in this bolgia to those recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VII. Ovid describes how Juno sent a plague to the island of Aegina, killing everyone there except Aeacus. Aeacus asked Jupiter to repopulate the island, and the god did so by turning ants into human beings.

  8 (p. 153) “I of Arezzo was ... Albert of Siena had me burned”: Since the earliest commentaries on Dante, this figure has been identified as an alchemist named Griffolino from the town of Arezzo, who pretended to teach Albero da Siena how to fly like Icarus. When this fraud was uncovered, Albero exacted his revenge by having the bishop (whose son he may have been) condemn Griffolino to be burned at the stake as a magician.