9 (p. 153) “So vain a people as the Sienese? Not for a certainty the French by far”: Florence and Siena were natural rivals, and inhabitants of each city habitually poked fun at those of the other. Florentines considered both the Sienese and the French to be extremely vain people.
10 (p. 153) “Taking out Stricca ... a skilful ape of nature was”: This speech concerns sinners from Siena who were members of an infamous Spendthrifts Brigade (the “band” of 1. 130) and went through their fortunes giving lavish banquets, eating outrageously exotic foods, and generally misbehaving as the period’s most conspicuous consumers. Dante suggests their behavior is typical of Siena, “a garden where such seed takes root.” Almost nothing is known of Stricca. Niccolò (1. 127) has been identified as one of the Salimbeni family who invented unusual meals based upon cloves. Caccia d‘Asciano (1. 131) is Caccia of Asciano, who squandered away his vineyards and lands, while Abbagliato (1. 32) may be a certain Bartolomeo dei Folcacchieri. (The identities of all these men are uncertain and really matter very little, since what concerns Dante is the sin they exemplify, not their personalities.) Near the end of the speech the speaker identifies himself as Capocchio, a Florentine Dante may have known as a young student and who was burned at the stake for alchemy in Siena in 1293.
CANTO XXX
1 (p. 154) ’Twas at the time ... drowned herself: Dante opens the canto with two complicated similes derived from Ovid’s poetry. The first simile recounts how Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, king of Thebes, bore a son named Bacchus to Jupiter, thus enraging his wife, Juno. Juno took revenge by causing the death of Semele and her sister, Ino. Juno drove Ino’s husband, Athamas, mad, and he killed their son, Learchus (1. 10), driving Ino to drown her other son, Melicertes (“the other burthen” of 1. 12), and herself. See The Metamorphoses, Book IV, for the Ovidian source.
2 (p. 154) Hecuba sad... the anguish had her mind distorted: Dante’s second simile concerns Hecuba, the wife of King Priam of Troy, who was carried back to Greece after the destruction of her home-land. There she witnessed the slaughters of her daughter, Polyxena, on the grave of Achilles (1. 17) and her son, Polydorus, killed by the king of Thrace, Polymnestor, and left unburied on the Thracian beach (1. 18). As a result, Hecuba became insane (11. 20-21) but was still able to kill Polymnestor. See The Metamorphoses, Book XIII, for the Ovidian source.
3 (pp. 154-155) But not of Thebes ... made his belly grate the solid bottom: Dante now declares that the insanity of Athamas and Hecuba was not as bestial as the two shades that arrive like two Furies, running on all fours like a hog freed from its sty (1. 27). One of the two shades attacks Capocchio and drags him away.
4 (p. 155) And the Aretine ... “That mad sprite is Gianni Scbicchi”: The Aretine speaker (1. 31) is Griffolino of Arezzo who appeared earlier in canto XXIX: 109-120. He identifies the raving “mad sprite” as Gianni Schicchi, a member of Cavalcanti family of Florence who died around 1280. Gianni was famous for his talents as a mimic, and Dante now tells the famous story of how he was reputed to have impersonated Buoso di Donati (1. 44) in a deathbed confession. Posing as Buoso—who had already died, without having left his fortune to his son, Simone—Gianni first gave himself some bequests, including a very handsome mare (“the lady of the herd,” 1. 43), then made sure that Simone inherited most of Buoso’s fortune. This story is the source of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi.
5 (p. 155) and raving goes: Gianni, who we soon learn is guilty of the sin of impersonation, is “raving,” the curse of sinners of his type. The punishment of each of the four types of falsifiers resembles a terrible disease. The alchemists seem to have leprosy; the impersonators are rabid; the counterfeiters have dropsy; and the liars have a fever that makes them smell badly. Each of these horrible diseases was very common in Dante’s time and would have conjured up to his readers a very precise image of pain and suffering, as well as of hideousness.
6 (p. 155) the nefarious Myrrha: Griffolino explains that the other shade is Myrrha, the daughter of the king of Cyprus, who disguised herself in order to sleep with her father. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X.
7 (p. 156) “the misery of Master Adam ... my body burned above”: The Counts Guidi of the town of Romena (1. 73), located in the Cas entino region (1. 65; Longfellow uses a double “s” in the spelling) near Florence, ordered Master Adam to strike counterfeit florins, the internationally accepted currency of medieval business that contained a legal standard of 24 carats of gold and bore the image of John the Baptist (1. 74), the patron saint of Florence. The florins Master Adam struck contained only 21 carats of gold mixed with 3 carats of alloy (“three carats of impurity,” 1. 90), enough to cause the zealous Florentine authorities to burn him alive in 1281.
8 (p. 156) “Of Guido, or Alessandro ... one is within already”: Of the four Guidi brothers—Guido, Alessandro, and the unnamed Aghi nolfo and Ildebrando—who caused Master Adam to sin, Guido (d. 1292) is the only one who has died before 1300 and is already in Hell. “Branda’s fount” (1. 78) is a spring near Romena.
9 (p. 156) “a hundred years I could advance one inch ... less than half a mile across”: Dante provides precise details about the physical size of the tenth Bolgia, which is 11 miles in the circumference and a full half-mile across (making it difficult to envision a bridge across the space). Master Adam reveals that he is so angry with Guido Guidi that he is willing to inch toward him for revenge, even though he can only advance one inch every hundred years. Since souls in Hell have eternity on their hands, perhaps this journey (calculated by scrupulous Dante scholars to require more than 700,000 years) is a good way to pass infernal time.
10 (p. 157) One the false woman ... the other the false Sinon, Greek of Troy: The woman who accused Joseph is Potiphar’s wife. In the Bible, Genesis 39: 7-23, she falsely accuses Joseph of trying to seduce her, when in reality she has made the sexual advances. Sinon is the Greek who persuaded the Trojans to bring the so-called Trojan Horse inside the city, causing its downfall and destruction. Dante’s source is Virgil, the Aeneid, Book II.
11 (p. 157) And one of them ... thou hadst it not so ready: Sinon exchanges blows with Master Adam (“the dropsical” of 1. 112) and insults Adam by telling him that his arm was not quite so ready to strike out when he was burned alive (because he was bound hand and foot at the time). The insulting give-and-take between the two characters presents a comic scene in Hell that may owe something to the medieval poetic genre called the tenzone, a poetic debate usually filled with invective. Dante himself exchanged such poems with a number of his contemporaries, including Dante da Maiano, Cecco Angiolieri, and Forese Donati.
12 (p. 157) “for one fault I am here, and thou for more than any other demon”: While Sinon committed only one sin at Troy, Master Adam falsified numerous counterfeit florins. Since each coin could be counted as a separate sin (Florentines were deadly serious about the purity of their money), Master Adam could be guilty of thousands of individual transgressions.
13 (p. 157) “I have thirst, and humor stuff me”: The “humor” Adam refers to is not wit but the liquid that dropsy causes the body to retain; ironically, the condition is accompanied by a terrible thirst.
14 (p. 157) the mirror of Narcissus: Adam refers to a pool of water that would reflect Sinon’s image, like the one that reflected that of Narcissus in the Greek myth. In love with his own image reflected in a pond, Narcissus stared at it until he died and was turned into the flower bearing his name. Dante’s source is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book III.
15 (pp. 157—158) When him I heard in anger speak to me.... “A base wish it is to wish to hear it”: Once again, Virgil rebukes the Pilgrim sternly, because he has lost his focus and has been enjoying the comic scene in Hell between Master Adam and Sinon. Virgil reminds the Pilgrim that he should be standing above the scene with the requisite moral indignation of a judge.
CANTO XXXI
1 (p. 159) Thus do I hear that once Achilles’ spear: The Poet compares Virgil’s words to him at the end
of the last canto (first rebuking, then comforting) to the legendary spear of Achilles, formerly the property of his father Peleus, that could heal the wounds it inflicted.
2 (p. 159) the blare of a loud horn... so terribly Orlando sounded not: Dante compares the horn blast to that famous sound in The Song of Roland. In this epic, Roland blows his oliphant (a horn made from elephant tusk) to summon Charlemagne after Ganellon (also often spelled “Ganelon”) betrays the emperor’s rear guard to the Saracens in the pass of Roncesvalles. Dante probably did not know the text we read today as The Song of Roland, but the story was proverbial and a version of it was recounted in a number of French and Italian narratives Dante could have read.
3 (pp. 159-161) many lofty towers I seemed to see ... “not towers, but giants”: Virgil and Dante now approach the ninth and final circle of Hell, having left Malebolge behind. The Pilgrim mistakenly believes he is staring at the towers of a great city. In fact, the towers are the upper halves of giants who are keeping guard around the pit, with their upper bodies rising above the rim. These giants may be compared to the rebel angels who guarded the City of Dis, and both groups of figures—one pagan and classical in origin, the other Judeo-Christian in origin—may be said to represent the evil effects of pride that moved both groups to rebel against their respective gods.
4 (p. 161) Montereggione ... with one half of their bodies turreted: Montereggione, a fortified town a few miles northwest of Siena, was constructed between 1213 and 1260. In Dante’s time the town was enclosed by a high wall with fourteen towers (the walls and some of the towers still stand today). The upper torsos of the giants surrounding the pit of Hell resemble these towers distributed along the wall of the fortress.
5 (p. 161) The horrible giants, whom Jove menaces: As Dante noted in canto XIV: 51-62, Jove (another name for the god Jupiter) struck the giants down with lightning bolts when they rebelled against Heaven, and he still menaces them with thunder bolts now that they are condemned to guard the worst sinners in Hell.
6 (p. 161) Certainly Nature... can the people make against it: In this passage Dante remarks that Nature did well to discontinue producing a race of giants such as the Titans, for if they had allied themselves with Mars (1. 51), the god of War, they could have destroyed the world. While Nature produces such strange animals as elephants and whales (1. 52), they lack the power of intellect that, combined with physical strength, could make them dangerous to human beings.
7 (p. 161) the pine-cone of Saint Peter’s: There is a bronze pinecone in the garden of the Vatican Palace that originally stood near the Campus Martius in ancient Rome. Dante most likely saw the pine cone, which is some 4 yards in height, when he was a member of a papal delegation.
8 (p. 161) so that the margin, which an apron was down from the middle: The “margin” (bank) cuts the anatomy of the Titans off from the Pilgrim’s view and acts as a kind of apron. In the original, Dante uses a word that literally means “fig leaf”—perizoma—bringing to mind the fig leaves that Adam and Eve donned after their sin made them aware of their nakedness in the Garden of Eden.
9 (p. 161) Three Frieslanders: In Dante’s time, the inhabitants of Friesland were considered to be extremely tall. Dante is saying that the giant is so tall that three Frieslanders would not reach from his waist to his hair.
10 (p. 161) down from the place where man his mantle buckles: From the neck to the waist.
11 (p. 162) “Raphel mai amech izabi almi”: Gibberish issues forth from the giant’s mouth. There seems to be no possibility of understanding what Dante has this creature say, since the words are meant to be incomprehensible because of the giant’s association with the Tower of Babel; in the Bible, Genesis 11: 1-9, the Lord confounds the language of the builders of the Tower to punish their pride.
12 (p. 162) “this one is Nimrod... every language as his to others, which to none is known”: Nimrod is described in the Bible, Genesis 10: 9, as a hunter, not a giant. Medieval tradition, however, identified Nimrod with the builders of the infamous Tower of Babel, hence the gibberish he speaks. Even though Virgil declares that Nimrod cannot understand him, and he and the Pilgrim can not understand Nimrod, he converses with him anyway!
13 (p. 162) It wound itself as far as the fifth gyre: The chains imprisoning this second giant are wrapped around his upper torso (the only part of his body that is visible) five times.
14 (p. 162) Ephialtes: The son of Neptune and Iphimedia, Ephialtes, with his brother Otus, tried to make war on the gods and was killed by Apollo.
15 (p. 162) measureless Briareus: The son of Uranus and Gaea or Earth, this Titan also rebelled against the Olympian gods. Virgil’s Aeneid, Book X, describes him with a hundred arms and fifty heads, the source of Dante’s “measureless Briareus.”
16 (p. 162) Antæus: The son of Neptune and Gaea or Earth, Antaeus did not rebel against the gods and is not chained like the other Titans in Hell. He was invincible in combat so long as he remained in contact with the ground, and when Hercules discovered this, he managed to hold him off the ground and kill him. Dante’s source is Lucan’s Pharsalia, Book IV.
17 (p. 163) full five ells: This medieval measurement differed in length from country to country, but was generally the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. In England an ell was 45 inches, while in Flanders it was 27 inches.
18 (p. 163) “who in the valley fortunate ... for thy prey”: Virgil must flatter Antaeus into helping the two voyagers reach their next destination in their journey—Cocytus, the final pit at the very bottom of Hell. So he notes that Antaeus killed a large number of lions in the same spot where Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal at the North African battle of Zama in 202 B.C.
19 (p. 163) Cocytus: This is the frozen lake in the ninth circle of Hell, which the Pilgrim and Virgil will explore in the final cantos of the Inferno.
20 (p. 163) Tityus nor Typhoeus: Both of these Titans offended Jupiter. The god buried Typhoeus under Mount Aetna (the volcano’s eruptions were supposedly caused by his attempts to free himself) and ordered Tityus to be bound and stretched out on a plain in Hell while a vulture devoured his liver.
21 (p. 163) “the Carisenda ... so that opposite it hangs”: The Garisenda tower in Bologna (Dante refers to the tower as the “Carisenda”) was built at the beginning of the twefth century. It is one of two remaining towers in that city that are leaning (most of the rest of these medieval towers were destroyed in the nineteenth century). The Garisenda is the shorter of the two towers (163 feet high, as opposed to the 320 feet of the Asinelli tower), though it was higher when Dante wrote the Inferno (it was shortened in the fourteenth century) and it leans the most. Dante notes that if a cloud passes the leaning side of the tower, the structure appears to be falling.
22 (p. 164) watching to see him stoop ... he put us down: Like Geryon of canto XVII, who sets the two poets down on the bottom of the eighth circle, Antaeus stoops down and places the Pilgrim and Virgil on the very bottom of Hell. Here the abyss “swallows up” Judas Iscariot and Lucifer, a concept that will mean more to us when Dante provides details about the punishment of these two figures in the next canto.
CANTO XXXII
1 (p. 165) a tongue that cries Mamma and Babbo: Dante describes the rock-bottom pit of Hell, as the “bottom of all the universe,” since, following the Ptolemaic system, Earth is in the center of the universe and Hell is in the center of Earth. He then introduces the theme of modesty, as practiced by all good classical and medieval poets, and protests that he lacks verses harsh enough to capture the scene he is about to describe—especially if he must do so in the vernacular, a tongue that “cries” Mommy and Daddy (Babbo is a Tuscan word for “Daddy”). But, of course, like the classical poets before Dante who employed such a topos, his modesty is false, and Dante the Poet is more than prepared to provide such an unusual description for his readers.
2 (p. 165) those Ladies: The ladies are the Muses, who helped Jupiter’s son Amphion build defenses in Thebes by playing a lyre to co
mpel the stones to form themselves into a wall. Dante’s first invocation of the Muses is in canto II: 7.
3 (p. 165) beneath the giant’s feet, but lower far, and I was scanning still the lofty wall: Many commentators have discussed the exact position of the two poets at this point in the narrative. It seems that they are looking up at the high wall, implying that Antaenus set them down on the icy floor of Cocytus but is not standing on it himself.
4 (p. 165) I heard it said to me: It is unclear who the Pilgrim is hearing.
5 (pp. 165-166) if Tambernich had fallen upon it, or Pietrapana: While it is unclear which mountain Dante meant by the Tambernich, the Pietrapana is usually identified as a peak in Tuscany known as Pania della Croce.
6 (p. 166) where shame appears: This is the face, the only part of the sinner’s body that emerges from the ice. We are now in Caïna, named after Cain, the first human murderer, who in the Bible, Genesis 4: 8, kills his brother, Abel. Caïna is the first of four parts of Cocytus and contains those who were treacherous to their kin. In canto V: 107, Francesca da Rimini has mentioned this part of Hell as the place where her murderous husband will be punished.
7 (p. 166) setting their teeth unto the note of storks: Storks clack their bills (at least according to literary tradition and medieval bestiaries), and they make the kind of brittle sound that fits into an ice-dominated universe.
8 (p. 166) If thou desire to know ... Sassol Mascheroni: The as yet unnamed speaker identifies two souls who are locked together as Alessandro and Napoleone, sons of Count Alberto of Mangona, who owned part of the Bisenzio valley in Tuscany. They killed each other in the 1280s over a dispute about their inheritance. The speaker goes on to inform the Pilgrim about others in Caïna. Mordred (11. 61- 62) was King Arthur’s evil nephew, who both killed Arthur and was killed by him—Arthur pierced him with a lance that let a ray of light through to pierce his shadow as well (1. 61); Dante found this story in the Old French Morte d‘Arthur or perhaps in the French romance Lancelot du Lac, the book Francesca da Rimini blames for placing her in Hell (Inferno V). Focaccia (1. 63) was the nickname of Vanni de’ Cancellieri from Pistoia, who at the end of the thirteenth century murdered his cousin. Sassol Mascheroni (1. 65) was a Florentine of the Toschi family who murdered a nephew.
The Inferno (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 28