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Then to the left he turned. Leaving the walls, he headed toward the center by a path that strikes into a vale, whose stench arose,
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disgusting us as high up as we were.
CANTO XI
CONTINUING THEIR WAY within the Sixth Circle, where the heretics are punished, the poets are assailed by a stench rising from the abyss ahead of them which is so strong that they must stop in order to accustom themselves to the odor. They pause beside a tomb whose inscription declares that within is Pope Anastasius. When the Pilgrim expresses his desire to pass the time of waiting profitably, Virgil proceeds to instruct him about the plan of punishments in Hell. Then, seeing that dawn is only two hours away, he urges the Pilgrim on.
We reached the curving brink of a steep bank constructed of enormous broken rocks; below us was a crueler den of pain.
3
And the disgusting overflow of stench the deep abyss was vomiting forced us back from the edge. Crouched underneath the lid
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of some great tomb, I saw it was inscribed: “Within lies Anastasius, the pope Photinus lured away from the straight path. ”
9
131. The “one” is Beatrice.
8-9. Anastasius II, pope from 496 to 498, was popularly believed for many centuries to be a heretic because, supposedly, he allowed Photinus, a deacon of Thessalonica who followed the heresy of Acacius, to take communion.
“Our descent will have to be delayed somewhat so that our sense of smell may grow accustomed to these vile fumes; then we will not mind them, ”
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my master said. And I: “You will have to find some way to keep our time from being wasted. ” “That is precisely what I had in mind, ”
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he said, and then began the lesson: “My son, within these boulders’ bounds are three more circles, concentrically arranged like those above,
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all tightly packed with souls; and so that, later, the sight of them alone will be enough, I’ll tell you how and why they are imprisoned.
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All malice has injustice as its end, an end achieved by violence or by fraud; while both are sins that earn the hate of Heaven,
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since fraud belongs exclusively to man, God hates it more and, therefore, far below, the fraudulent are placed and suffer most.
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In the first of the circles below are all the violent; since violence can be used against three persons, into three concentric rounds it is divided:
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violence can be done to God, to self, or to one’s neighbor—to him or to his goods, as my reasoned explanation will make clear.
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By violent means a man can kill his neighbor or wound him grievously; his goods may suffer violence by arson, theft, and devastation;
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so, homicides and those who strike with malice, those who destroy and plunder, are all punished in the first round, but all in different groups.
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Man can raise violent hands against himself and his own goods; so in the second round, paying the debt that never can be paid,
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are suicides, self-robbers of your world, or those who gamble all their wealth away and weep up there when they should have rejoiced.
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One can use violence against the deity by heartfelt disbelief and cursing Him, or by despising Nature and God’s bounty;
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therefore, the smallest round stamps with its seal both Sodom and Cahors and all those souls who hate God in their hearts and curse His name.
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Fraud, that gnaws the conscience of its servants, can be used on one who puts his trust in you or else on one who has no trust invested.
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This latter sort seems only to destroy the bond of love that Nature gives to man; so in the second circle there are nests
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of hypocrites, flatterers, dabblers in sorcery, falsifiers, thieves, and simonists, panders, seducers, grafters, and like filth.
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The former kind of fraud both disregards the love Nature enjoys and that extra bond between men which creates a special trust;
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thus, it is in the smallest of the circles, at the earth’s center, around the throne of Dis, that traitors suffer their eternal pain. ”
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And I, “Master, your reasoning runs smooth, and your explanation certainly makes clear the nature of this pit and of its inmates,
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50. Sodom was the biblical city (Genesis 18-19) destroyed by God for its vicious sexual offenses. Cahors was a city in the south of France that was widely known in the Middle Ages as a thriving seat of usury. Dante uses the city names to indicate the sodomites and usurers who are punished in the smallest round of Circle Seven.
65. Here the name Dis refers to Lucifer.
but what about those in the slimy swamp, those driven by the wind, those beat by rain, and those who come to blows with harsh refrains?
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Why are they, too, not punished here inside the city of flame, if they have earned God’s wrath? If they have not, why are they suffering?”
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And he to me, “Why do you let your thoughts stray from the path they are accustomed to? Or have I missed the point you have in mind?
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Have you forgotten how your Ethics reads, those terms it explicates in such detail: the three conditions that the heavens hate,
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incontinence, malice, and bestiality? Do you not remember how incontinence offends God least, and merits the least blame?
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If you will reconsider well this doctrine and then recall to mind who those souls were suffering pain above, outside the walls,
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you will clearly see why they are separated from these malicious ones, and why God’s vengeance beats down upon their souls less heavily. ”
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“O sun that shines to clear a misty vision, such joy is mine when you resolve my doubts that doubting pleases me no less than knowing!
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70-75. The sinners are those guilty of Incontinence. Virgil’s answer (76-90) is that the Incontinent suffer a lighter punishment because their sins, being without malice, are less offensive to God. 79-84. Virgil says “your Ethics” in referring to Aristotle’s Ethica Nicomanchea because he realizes how thoroughly the Pilgrim studied this work.
While the distinction here offered between Incontinence and Malice is based on Aristotle, it should be clear that the overall classification of sins in the Inferno is not. Dante’s is a twofold system, the main divisions of which may be illustrated as follows:
Go back a little bit once more, ” I said “to where you say that usury offends God’s goodness, and untie that knot for me. ”
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“Philosophy, ” he said, “and more than once, points out to one who reads with understanding how Nature takes her course from the Divine
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Intellect, from its artistic workmanship; and if you have your Physics well in mind you will find, not many pages from the start,
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how your art too, as best it can, imitates Nature, the way an apprentice does his master; so your art may be said to be God’s grandchild.
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From Art and Nature man was meant to take his daily bread to live—if you recall the book of Genesis near the beginning;
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but the usurer, adopting other means, scorns Nature in herself and in her pupil, Art—he invests his hope in something else.
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Now follow me, we should be getting on; the Fish are shimmering over the horizon, the Wain is now exactly over Caurus,
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and the passage down the bank is farther on. ”
101-105. Aristotle’s Physics (II, ii) concerns the doctrine that Art imitates Nature. Art, or human indu
stry, is the child of Nature in the sense that it is the use to which man puts nature, and thus is the grandchild of God. Usurers, who are in the third round of Circle Seven, by doing violence to human industry are, in effect, doing violence to God.
113-115. Each sign of the Zodiac covers about two hours; thus it must be nearly two hours before sunrise. Caurus is the Northwest Wind.
CANTO XII
THEY DESCEND the steep slope into the Seventh Circle by means of a great landslide, which was caused when Christ descended into Hell. At the edge of the abyss is the Minotaur, who presides over the circle of the Violent and whose own bestial rage sends him into such a paroxysm of violence that the two travelers are able to run past him without his interference. At the base of the precipice, they see a river of boiling blood, which contains those who have inflicted violence upon others. But before they can reach the river they are intercepted by three fierce Centaurs, whose task it is to keep those who are in the river at their proper depth by shooting arrows at them if they attempt to rise. Virgil explains to one of the centaurs (Chiron) that this journey of the Pilgrim and himself is ordained by God; and he requests him to assign someone to guide the two of them to the ford in the river and carry the Pilgrim across it to the other bank. Chiron gives the task to Nessus, one of the centaurs, who, as he leads them to the river’s ford, points out many of the sinners there in the boiling blood.
Not only was that place, where we had come to descend, craggy, but there was something there that made the scene appalling to the eye.
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Like the ruins this side of Trent left by the landslide (an earthquake or erosion must have caused it) that hit the Adige on its left bank,
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when, from the mountain’s top where the slide began to the plain below, the shattered rocks slipped down, shaping a path for a difficult descent—
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so was the slope of our ravine’s formation. And at the edge, along the shattered chasm, there lay stretched out the infamy of Crete:
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4-10. The steep, shattered terrain was caused by the earthquake that shook Hell just before Christ descended there.
the son conceived in the pretended cow. When he saw us he bit into his flesh, gone crazy with the fever of his rage.
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My wise guide cried to him: “Perhaps you think you see the Duke of Athens come again, who came once in the world to bring your death?
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Begone, you beast, for this one is not led down here by means of clues your sister gave him; he comes here only to observe your torments. ”
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The way a bull breaks loose the very moment he knows he has been dealt the mortal blow, and cannot run but jumps and twists and turns,
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just so I saw the Minotaur perform, and my guide, alert, cried out: “Run to the pass! While he still writhes with rage, get started down. ”
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And so we made our way down through the ruins of rocks, which often I felt shift and tilt beneath my feet from weight they were not used to.
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I was deep in thought when he began: “Are you, perhaps, thinking about these ruins protected by the furious beast I quenched in its own rage?
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Now let me tell you that the other time I came down to the lower part of Hell, this rock had not then fallen into ruins;
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but certainly, if I remember well, it was just before the coming of that One who took from Hell’s first circle the great spoil,
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that this abyss of stench, from top to bottom began to shake, so I thought the universe felt love—whereby, some have maintained, the world
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38. The “One” was Christ, who, in the Harrowing of Hell, removed to Heaven the souls of the Elect.
41-43. According to Empedoclean doctrine, Hate, by destroying pristine harmony (i. e., original chaos), occasions the creation of all things, and Love, by reunifying these disparate elements, reestablishes concord in the universe.
has more than once renewed itself in chaos. That was the moment when this ancient rock was split this way—here, and in other places.
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But now look down the valley. Coming closer you will see the river of blood that boils the souls of those who through their violence injured others. ”
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(Oh, blind cupidity and insane wrath, spurring us on through our short life on earth to steep us then forever in such misery!)
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I saw a river—wide, curved like a bow— that stretched embracing all the flatland there, just as my guide had told me to expect.
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Between the river and the steep came centaurs, galloping in single file, equipped with arrows, off hunting as they used to in the world;
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then, seeing us descend, they all stopped short and three of them departed from the ranks with bows and arrows ready from their quivers.
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One of them cried from his distant post: “You there, on your way down here, what torture are you seeking? Speak where you stand, if not, I draw my bow. ”
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And then my master shouted back: “Our answer we will give to Chiron when we’re at his side; as for you, I see you are as rash as ever!”
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47-48. The river is Phlegethon, the Virgilian river of fire, here one of boiling blood, in which are punished those shades who committed violence against their fellow men.
56. Like the Minotaur, the centaurs who guard the murderers and tyrants are men-beasts (half-horse, half-man) and thus appropriate to the sins of violence or bestiality.
65. Chiron, represented by the ancient poets as chief of the centaurs, was particularly noted for his wisdom. In mythology he was the son of Saturn (who temporarily changed himself into a horse to avoid the notice and anger of his wife) and Philyra.
He nudged me, saying: “That one there is Nessus, who died from loving lovely Dejanira, and made of himself, of his blood, his own revenge.
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The middle one, who contemplates his chest, is great Chiron, who reared and taught Achilles; the last is Pholus, known for his drunken wrath.
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They gallop by the thousands round the ditch, shooting at any daring soul emerging above the bloody level of his guilt. ”
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When we came closer to those agile beasts, Chiron drew an arrow, and with its notch he parted his beard to both sides of his jaws,
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and when he had uncovered his great mouth he spoke to his companions: “Have you noticed, how the one behind moves everything he touches?
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This is not what a dead man’s feet would do!” And my good guide, now standing by the torso at the point the beast’s two natures joined, replied:
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“He is indeed alive, and so alone that I must show him through this dismal valley; he travels by necessity, not pleasure.
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A spirit came, from singing Alleluia, to give me this extraordinary mission; he is no rogue nor I a criminal spirit.
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67-69. Nessus is the centaur who is the first to speak to the two travelers. He is later appointed by Chiron (lines 98-99) to accompany them; he does so, pointing out various sinners along the way. Virgil refers to Dejanira, Hercules’ wife, whom Nessus desired. In attempting to rape her, Nessus was shot by Hercules, but as he died he gave Dejanira a robe soaked in his blood, which he said would preserve Hercules’ love. Dejanira took it to her husband, whose death it caused, whereupon the distraught woman hanged herself.
72. During the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia, when the drunken centaurs tried to rape the Lapithaen women, Pholus attempted to rape the bride herself.
88. The spirit is Beatrice.
Now, in the name of that power by which I move my steps along so difficult a road, give us one of your troop to be our guide:
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&n
bsp; to lead us to the ford and, once we are there, to carry this one over on his back, for he is not a spirit who can fly. ”
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Chiron looked over his right breast and said to Nessus, “You go, guide them as they ask, and if another troop protests, disperse them!”
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So with this trusted escort we moved on along the boiling crimson river’s bank, where piercing shrieks rose from the boiling souls.
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There I saw people sunken to their eyelids, and the huge centaur explained, “These are the tyrants who dealt in bloodshed and plundered wealth.
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Their tears are paying for their heartless crimes: here stand Alexander and fierce Dionysius, who weighed down Sicily with years of pain;
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and there, that forehead smeared with coal-black hair, is Azzolino; the other one, the blond, Opizzo d’Esti, who, and this is true,
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was killed by his own stepson in your world. ” With that I looked to Virgil, but he said “Let him instruct you now, don’t look to me. ”
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107-108. Dante could possibly have meant Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.), who is constantly referred to as a cruel and violent man by Orosius, Dante’s chief source of ancient history. But many modern scholars believe this figure to be Alexander, tyrant of Pherae (368-359 B.C.), whose extreme cruelty is recorded by Cicero and Valerius Maximus. Both of these authors link Alexander of Pherae with the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, mentioned here.
110. Azzolino was Ezzelino III da Romano (1194-1259), a Ghibelline chief and tyrant of the March of Treviso. He was notoriously cruel and committed such inhuman atrocities that he was called a “son of Satan. ”
111-114. Obizzo d’Esti, a cruel tyrant, was marquis of Ferrara and the March of Ancona (1264-1293).
A little farther on, the centaur stopped above some people peering from the blood that came up to their throats. He pointed out
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a shade off to one side, alone, and said: “There stands the one who, in God’s keep, murdered the heart still dripping blood above the Thames. ”