15
Without another word he fled, and then I saw a raging centaur gallop up roaring: “Where is he, where is that untamed beast?”
18
2. The gesture described, still current in Italy, is equivalent to “Fuck you!” The gesture is made by closing the hand to form a fist with the thumb inserted between the first and second fingers.
15. The one “who fell” is Capaneus, whom Dante placed among the Blasphemers in the Seventh Circle.
I think that all Maremma does not have as many snakes as he had on his back, right up to where his human form begins.
21
Upon his shoulders, just behind the nape, a dragon with its wings spread wide was crouching and spitting fire at whoever came its way.
24
My master said to me: “That one is Cacus, who more than once in the grotto far beneath Mount Aventine spilled blood to fill a lake.
27
He does not go the same road as his brothers because of the cunning way he committed theft when he stole his neighbor’s famous cattle-herd;
30
and then his evil deeds came to an end beneath the club of Hercules, who struck a hundred blows, and he, perhaps, felt ten. ”
33
While he was speaking Cacus galloped off; at the same time three shades appeared below us; my guide and I would not have seen them there
36
if they had not cried out: “Who are you two?” At this we cut our conversation short to give our full attention to these three.
39
I didn’t know who they were, but then it happened, as often it will happen just by chance, that one of them was forced to name another:
42
“Where did Cianfa go off to?” he asked. And then, to keep my guide from saying anything, I put my finger tight against my lips.
45
19-20. Maremma was a swampy area along the Tuscan coast which was infested with snakes.
25-33. Cacus was a centaur, the son of Vulcan; he was a fire-belching monster who lived in a cave beneath Mount Aventine and pillaged the inhabitants of the area. But when he stole several cattle of Hercules’, the latter went to Cacus’s cave and killed him. His brothers (28) are the centaurs who serve as guardians in the first round of the Seventh Circle.
43. Cianfa was a member of the Florentine Donati family. He makes his appearance in line 50 in the form of a serpent.
Now if, my reader, you should hesitate to believe what I shall say, there’s little wonder, for I, the witness, scarcely can believe it.
48
While I was watching them, all of a sudden a serpent—and it had six feet—shot up and hooked one of these wretches with all six.
51
With the middle feet it hugged the sinner’s stomach and, with the front ones, grabbed him by the arms, and bit him first through one cheek, then the other;
54
the serpent spread its hind feet round both thighs, then stuck its tail between the sinner’s legs, and up against his back the tail slid stiff.
57
No ivy ever grew to any tree so tight entwined, as the way that hideous beast had woven in and out its limbs with his;
60
and then both started melting like hot wax and, fusing, they began to mix their colors (so neither one seemed what he was before),
63
just as a brownish tint, ahead of flame, creeps up a burning page that is not black completely, even though the white is dying.
66
The other two who watched began to shout: “O Agnèl! If you could see how you are changing! You’re not yourself, and you’re not both of you!”
69
The two heads had already fused to one and features from each flowed and blended into one face where two were lost in one another;
72
two arms of each were four blurred strips of flesh; and thighs with legs, then stomach and the chest sprouted limbs that human eyes have never seen.
75
68. Besides the indication that Agnèl is Florentine (except for Vanni Fucci, the thieves in this canto are all Florentines), and possibly is one of the Brunelleschi family, nothing more is known of him.
Each former likeness now was blotted out: both, and neither one it seemed—this picture of deformity. And then it sneaked off slowly.
78
Just as a lizard darting from hedge to hedge, under the stinging lash of the dog-days’ heat, zips across the road, like a flash of lightning,
81
so, rushing toward the two remaining thieves, aiming at their guts, a little serpent, fiery with rage and black as pepper-corn,
84
shot up and sank its teeth in one of them, right where the embryo receives its food, then back it fell and lay stretched out before him.
87
The wounded thief stared speechless at the beast, and standing motionless began to yawn as though he needed sleep, or had a fever.
90
The snake and he were staring at each other; one from his wound, the other from its mouth fumed violently, and smoke with smoke was mingling.
93
Let Lucan from this moment on be silent, who tells of poor Nasidius and Sabellus, and wait to hear what I still have in store;
96
and Ovid, too, with his Cadmus and Arethusa— though he metamorphosed one into a snake, the other to a fountain, I feel no envy,
99
for never did he interchange two beings face to face so that both forms were ready to exchange their substance, each one for the other’s,
102
an interchange of perfect symmetry: the serpent split its tail into a fork, and the wounded sinner drew his feet together;
105
86. The navel is described here.
94-102. In the Pharsalia Lucan tells of the physical transformations undergone by Sabellus and Nasidius, both soldiers in Cato’s army, who, being bitten by snakes, turned respectively into ashes and into a formless mass. Ovid relates how Cadmus took the form of a serpent and how Arethusa became a fountain.
the legs, with both the thighs, closed in to join and in a short time fused, so that the juncture didn’t show signs of ever having been there,
108
the while the cloven tail assumed the features that the other one was losing, and its skin was growing soft, the other’s getting scaly;
111
I saw his arms retreating to the armpits, and the reptile’s two front feet, that had been short, began to stretch the length the man’s had shortened;
114
the beast’s hind feet then twisted round each other and turned into the member man conceals, while from the wretch’s member grew two legs.
117
The smoke from each was swirling round the other, exchanging colors, bringing out the hair where there was none, and stripping off the other’s.
120
The one rose up, the other sank, but neither dissolved the bond between their evil stares, fixed eye to eye, exchanging face for face;
123
the standing creature’s face began receding toward the temples; from the excess stuff pulled back, the ears were growing out of flattened cheeks,
126
while from the excess flesh that did not flee the front, a nose was fashioned for the face, and lips puffed out to just the normal size.
129
The prostrate creature strains his face out long and makes his ears withdraw into his head, the way a snail pulls in its horns. The tongue,
132
that once had been one piece and capable of forming words, divides into a fork, while the other’s fork heals up. The smoke subsides.
135
The soul that had been changed into a beast went hissing off along the valley’s floor, the other close behind him, spitting words.
138
Then he turned his new-formed back on him and said to the shade left standing there: “Let Buoso
run the valley on all fours, the way I did. ”
141
Thus I saw the cargo of the seventh hold exchange and interchange; and let the strangeness of it all excuse me, if my pen has failed.
144
And though this spectacle confused my eyes and stunned my mind, the two thieves could not flee so secretly I did not recognize
147
that one was certainly Puccio Sciancato (and he alone, of that company of three that first appeared, did not change to something else),
150
the other, he who made you mourn, Gaville.
CANTO XXVI
FROM THE RIDGE high above the Eighth Bolgia can be perceived a myriad of flames flickering far below, and Virgil explains that within each flame is the suffering soul of a Deceiver. One flame, divided at the top, catches the Pilgrim’s eye and he is told that within it are jointly punished Ulysses and Diomed. Virgil questions the pair for the benefit of the Pilgrim. Ulysses responds with the famous narrative of his last voyage, during which he passed the Pillars of Hercules and sailed the forbidden sea until he saw a mountain shape, from which came suddenly a whirlwind that spun his ship around three times and sank it.
140-141. The identity of Buoso, the newly formed serpent, is uncertain; some commentators think him to be Buoso degli Abati and others, Buoso Donati (see Canto XXX, 44).
148. Puccio Sciancato (the only one of the original three Florentine thieves who does not assume a new shape) was a member of the Galigai family and a supporter of the Ghibellines. He was exiled from Florence in 1268.
151. Francesco Cavalcanti, known as Guercio, was slain by the inhabitants of Gaville, a small town near Florence in Valdarno (Arno Valley). The Cavalcanti family avenged his death by decimating the populace; thus, he was Gaville’s reason to mourn.
Be joyful, Florence, since you are so great that your outstretched wings beat over land and sea, and your name is spread throughout the realm of Hell!
3
I was ashamed to find among the thieves five of your most eminent citizens, a fact which does you very little honor
6
But if early morning dreams have any truth, you will have the fate, in not too long a time, that Prato and the others crave for you.
9
And were this the day, it would not be too soon! Would it had come to pass, since pass it must! The longer the delay, the more my grief.
12
We started climbing up the stairs of boulders that had brought us to the place from where we watched; my guide went first and pulled me up behind him.
15
We went along our solitary way among the rocks, among the ridge’s crags, where the foot could not advance without the hand.
18
I know that I grieved then, and now again I grieve when I remember what I saw, and more than ever I restrain my talent
21
lest it run a course that virtue has not set; for if a lucky star or something better has given me this good, I must not misuse it.
24
As many fireflies (in the season when the one who lights the world hides his face least, in the hour when the flies yield to mosquitoes)
27
7. According to the ancient and medieval popular tradition, the dreams that men have in the early morning hours before daybreak will come true.
as the peasant on the hillside at his ease sees, flickering in the valley down below, where perhaps he gathers grapes or tills the soil—
30
with just so many flames all the eighth bolgia shone brilliantly, as I became aware when at last I stood where the depths were visible.
33
As he who was avenged by bears beheld Elijah’s chariot at its departure, when the rearing horses took to flight toward Heaven,
36
and though he tried to follow with his eyes, he could not see more than the flame alone like a small cloud once it had risen high—
39
so each flame moves itself along the throat of the abyss, none showing what it steals but each one stealing nonetheless a sinner.
42
I was on the bridge, leaning far over—so far that if I had not grabbed some jut of rock I could easily have fallen to the bottom.
45
And my guide, who saw me so absorbed, explained: “There are souls concealed within these moving fires, each one swathed in his burning punishment. ”
48
“O master, ” I replied, “from what you say I know now I was right; I had guessed already it might be so, and I was about to ask you:
51
Who’s in that flame with its tip split in two, like that one which once sprang up from the pyre where Eteocles was placed beside his brother?”
54
34-39. The prophet Elisha saw Elijah transported to Heaven in a fiery chariot. When Elisha on another occasion cursed, in the name of the lord, a group of children who were mocking him, two bears came out of the forest and devoured them. (4 Kings, 2:9-12, 23-24).
52-54. Dante compares this flame with that which rose from the funeral pyre of Eteocles and Polynices, twin sons of Oedipus and Jocasta, who, contesting the throne of Thebes, caused a major conflict known as the Seven against Thebes (see Canto XIV, 68-69). The two brothers met in single combat and slew each other. They were placed together on the pyre, but because of their mutual hatred, the flame split.
He said: “Within, Ulysses and Diomed are suffering in anger with each other, just vengeance makes them march together now.
57
And they lament inside one flame the ambush of the horse become the gateway that allowed the Romans’ noble seed to issue forth.
60
Therein they mourn the trick that caused the grief of Deïdamia, who still weeps for Achilles; and there they pay for the Palladium. ”
63
“If it is possible for them to speak from within those flames, ” I said, “master, I pray and repray you—let my prayer be like a thousand—
66
that you do not forbid me to remain until the two-horned flame comes close to us; you see how I bend toward it with desire!”
69
“Your prayer indeed is worthy of highest praise, ” he said to me, “and therefore I shall grant it; but see to it your tongue refrains from speaking.
72
55-57. Ulysses, the son of Laertes, was a central figure in the Trojan War. Although his deeds are recounted by Homer, Dictys of Crete, and many others, the story of his last voyage presented here by Dante (90-142) has no literary or historical precedent. His story, being an invention of Dante’s, is unique in the Divine Comedy.
Diomed, the son of Tydeus and Deipyle, ruled Argos. He was a major Greek figure in the Trojan War, and was frequently associated with Ulysses in his exploits.
58-60. The Trojans mistakenly believed the mammoth wooden horse, left outside the city’s walls, to be a sign of Greek capitulation. They brought it through the gates of the city amid great rejoicing. Later that evening the Greek soldiers hidden in the horse emerged and sacked the city. The Fall of Troy occasioned the journey of Aeneas and his followers (“noble seed”) to establish a new nation on the shores of Italy, which would become the heart of the Roman Empire.
61-62. Thetis brought her son Achilles, disguised as a girl, to the court of King Lycomedes on the island of Scyros, so that he would not have to fight in the Trojan War. There Achilles seduced the king’s daughter Deïdamia, who bore him a child and whom he later abandoned, encouraged by Ulysses (who in company with Diomed had come in search of him) to join the war.
63. The sacred Palladium, a statue of the goddess Pallas Athena, guaranteed the integrity of Troy as long as it remained in the citadel. Ulysses and Diomed stole it and carried it off to Argos, thereby securing victory for the Greeks over the Trojans.
Leave it to me to speak, for I know well what you would ask; perhaps, since they were Greeks, they might not pay attention to your words. ”
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So when the flame had reached us, and my guide decided that the time and place were right, he addressed them and I listened to him speaking:
78
“O you who are two souls within one fire, if I have deserved from you when I was living, if I have deserved from you much praise or little,
81
when in the world I wrote my lofty verses, do not move on; let one of you tell where he lost himself through his own fault, and died. ”
84
The greater of the ancient flame’s two horns began to sway and quiver, murmuring just like a flame that strains against the wind;
87
then, while its tip was moving back and forth, as if it were the tongue itself that spoke, the flame took on a voice and said: “When I
90
set sail from Circe, who, more than a year, had kept me occupied close to Gaëta (before Aeneas called it by that name),
93
not sweetness of a son, not reverence for an aging father, not the debt of love I owed Penelope to make her happy,
96
could quench deep in myself the burning wish to know the world and have experience of all man’s vices, of all human worth.
99
So I set out on the deep and open sea with just one ship and with that group of men, not many, who had not deserted me.
102
90-92. Along the coast of southern Italy above Naples there is a promontory then called Gaëta, and now on it there is a city by the same name. Aeneas named it to honor his nurse who had died there.
I saw as far as Spain, far as Morocco, both shores; I had left behind Sardinia, and the other islands which that sea encloses.
105
I and my mates were old and tired men. Then finally we reached the narrow neck where Hercules put up his signal-pillars
108
to warn men not to go beyond that point. On my right I saw Seville, and passed beyond; on my left, Ceüta had already sunk behind me.
111
’Brothers, ’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand perils have made your way to reach the West, during this so brief vigil of our senses
114
that is still reserved for us, do not deny yourself experience of what there is beyond, behind the sun, in the world they call unpeopled.