Now let Lucan be still with his history
of poor Sabellus and Nassidius,
and wait to hear what next appeared to me.
Of Cadmus and Arethusa be Ovid silent. I have no need to envy him those verses where he makes one a fountain, and one a serpent:
for he never transformed two beings face to face
in such a way that both their natures yielded
their elements each to each, as in this case.
Responding sympathetically to each other,
the reptile cleft his tail into a fork,
and the wounded sinner drew his feet together.
The sinner’s legs and thighs began to join:
they grew together so, that soon no trace
of juncture could be seen from toe to loin.
Point by point the reptile’s cloven tail
grew to the form of what the sinner lost;
one skin began to soften, one to scale.
The armpits swallowed the arms, and the short shank
of the reptile’s forefeet simultaneously
lengthened by as much as the man’s arms shrank.
Its hind feet twisted round themselves and grew
the member man conceals; meanwhile the wretch
from his one member generated two.
The smoke swelled up about them all the while:
it tanned one skin and bleached the other; it stripped
the hair from the man and grew it on the reptile.
While one fell to his belly, the other rose
without once shifting the locked evil eyes
below which they changed snouts as they changed pose.
The face of the standing one drew up and in
toward the temples, and from the excess matter
that gathered there, ears grew from the smooth skin;
while of the matter left below the eyes
the excess became a nose, at the same time
forming the lips to an appropriate size.
Here the face of the prostrate felon slips,
sharpens into a snout, and withdraws its ears
as a snail pulls in its horns. Between its lips
the tongue, once formed for speech, thrusts out a fork;
the forked tongue of the other heals and draws
into his mouth. The smoke has done its work.
The soul that had become a beast went flitting
and hissing over the stones, and after it
the other walked along talking and spitting.
Then turning his new shoulders, said to the one
that still remained: “It is Buoso’s turn to go
crawling along this road as I have done.”
Thus did the ballast of the seventh hold
shift and reshift; and may the strangeness of it
excuse my pen if the tale is strangely told.
And though all this confused me, they did not flee
so cunningly but what I was aware
that it was Puccio Sciancato alone of the three
that first appeared, who kept his old form still.
The other was he for whom you weep, Gaville.
NOTES
THE FIVE NOBLE THIEVES OF FLORENCE
Dante’s concise treatment and the various transformations which the thieves undergo may lead to some confusion. It is worth noting that none of these thieves is important as an individual, and, in fact, that very little is known of the lives of these sinners beyond the sufficient fact that they were thieves.
The first three appear in line 35 and hail the Poets rather insolently. They are Agnello Brunelleschi (Ah-NYELL-oh Broo-nell-AY-skee), Buoso (BWOE-soe) degli Abati, and Puccio Sciancato. They have been walking along with Cianfa de’ Donati (TCHAHN-fa day Don-AH-tee), but they suddenly miss him and ask about him with some concern. The careful reader will sense that a sudden disappearance is cause for very special concern in this bolgia, and sure enough, Cianfa suddenly reappears in the form of a six-legged lizard. His body has been taken from him and he is driven by a consuming desire to be rid of his reptilian form as fast as possible. He immediately fixes himself upon Agnello and merges his lizard body with Agnello’s human form. (A possible symbolic interpretation is that Cianfa is dividing the pains of Hell with a fellow thief, as on earth he might have divided the loot.)
Immediately after Cianfa and Agnello go off together, a tiny reptile bites Buoso degli Abati and exchanges forms with him. The reptile is Francesco dei Cavalcanti. (Here the symbolism is obvious: the thieves must steal from one another the very shapes in which they appear.)
Thus only Puccio Sciancato (POO-tchoe Shahn-KAH-toe) is left unchanged for the time being.
2. figs: An obscene gesture made by closing the hand into a fist with the thumb protruding between the first and second fingers. The fig is an ancient symbol for the vulva, and the protruding thumb is an obvious phallic symbol. The gesture is still current in Italy and has lost none of its obscene significance since Dante’s time.
25. Cacus: The son of Vulcan. He lived in a cave at the foot of Mount Aventine, from which he raided the herds of the cattle of Hercules, which pastured on the Roman plain. Hercules clubbed him to death for his thievery, beating him in rage long after he was dead. Cacus is condemned to the lower pit for his greater crime, instead of guarding Phlegethon with his brother centaurs. Virgil, however, did not describe him as a Centaur (v. Aeneid, VIII, 193-267). Dante’s interpretation of him is probably based on the fact that Virgil referred to him as “half-human.”
82. that part: The navel. 91 ff. let Lucan be still, etc.: In Pharsalia (IX, 761 ff.) Lucan relates how Sabellus and Nassidius, two soldiers of the army Cato led across the Libyan desert, were bitten by monsters. Sabellus melted into a puddle and Nassidius swelled until he popped his coat of mail. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid wrote how Cadmus was changed into a serpent (IV, 562-603) and how Arethusa was changed into a fountain (V, 572-661).
Dante cites these cases, obviously, that he may boast of how much better he is going to handle the whole matter of transformation. The master knows his own mastery and sees no real point in being modest about it.
146. he for whom you weep, Gaville: Francesco dei Cavalcanti. He was killed by the people of Gaville (a village in the Valley of the Arno). His kinsmen rallied immediately to avenge his death, and many of the townsmen of Gaville were killed in the resulting feud.
Canto XXVI
CIRCLE EIGHT: BOLGIA EIGHT
The Evil Counselors
Dante turns from the Thieves toward the Evil Counselors of the next Bolgia, and between the two he addresses a passionate lament to Florence prophesying the griefs that will befall her from these two sins. At the purported time of the Vision, it will be recalled, Dante was a Chief Magistrate of Florence and was forced into exile by men he had reason to consider both thieves and evil counselors. He seems prompted, in fact, to say much more on this score, but he restrains himself when he comes in sight of the sinners of the next Bolgia, for they are a moral symbolism, all men of gift who abused their genius, perverting it to wiles and stratagems. Seeing them in Hell he knows his must be another road: his way shall not be by deception.
So the Poets move on and Dante observes the EIGHTH BOLGIA in detail. Here the EVIL COUNSELORS move about endlessly, hidden from view inside great flames. Their sin was to abuse the gifts of the Almighty, to steal his virtues for low purposes. And as they stole from God in their lives and worked by hidden ways, so are they stolen from sight and hidden in the great flames which are their own guilty consciences. And as, in most instances at least, they sinned by glibness of tongue, so are the flames made into a fiery travesty of tongues.
Among the others, the Poets see a great doubleheaded flame, and discover that ULYSSES and DIOMEDE are punished together within it. Virgil addresses the flame, and through its wavering tongue Ulysses narrates an unforgettable tale of his last voyage and death.
Joy to you, Florence, that your banners swell,
beating their pr
oud wings over land and sea,
and that your name expands through all of Hell!
Among the thieves I found five who had been
your citizens, to my shame; nor yet shall you
mount to great honor peopling such a den!
But if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning,
you soon shall feel what Prato and the others
wish for you. And were that day of mourning
already come it would not be too soon.
So may it come, since it must! for it will weigh
more heavily on me as I pass my noon.
We left that place. My Guide climbed stone by stone
the natural stair by which we had descended
and drew me after him. So we passed on,
and going our lonely way through that dead land
among the crags and crevices of the cliff,
the foot could make no way without the hand.
I mourned among those rocks, and I mourn again
when memory returns to what I saw:
and more than usually I curb the strain
of my genius, lest it stray from Virtue’s course;
so if some star, or a better thing, grant me merit,
may I not find the gift cause for remorse.
As many fireflies as the peasant sees
when he rests on a hill and looks into the valley
(where he tills or gathers grapes or prunes his trees)
in that sweet season when the face of him
who lights the world rides north, and at the hour
when the fly yields to the gnat and the air grows dim—
such myriads of flames I saw shine through
the gloom of the eighth abyss when I arrived
at the rim from which its bed comes into view.
As he the bears avenged so fearfully
beheld Elijah’s chariot depart—
the horses rise toward heaven—but could not see
more than the flame, a cloudlet in the sky,
once it had risen—so within the fosse
only those flames, forever passing by
were visible, ahead, to right, to left;
for though each steals a sinner’s soul from view
not one among them leaves a trace of the theft.
I stood on the bridge, and leaned out from the edge;
so far, that but for a jut of rock I held to
I should have been sent hurtling from the ledge
without being pushed. And seeing me so intent,
my Guide said: “There are souls within those flames;
each sinner swathes himself in his own torment.”
“Master,” I said, “your words make me more sure,
but I had seen already that it was so
and meant to ask what spirit must endure
the pains of that great flame which splits away
in two great horns, as if it rose from the pyre
where Eteocles and Polynices lay?”
He answered me: “Forever round this path
Ulysses and Diomede move in such dress,
united in pain as once they were in wrath;
there they lament the ambush of the Horse
which was the door through which the noble seed
of the Romans issued from its holy source;
there they mourn that for Achilles slain
sweet Deidamia weeps even in death;
there they recall the Palladium in their pain.”
“Master,” I cried, “I pray you and repray
till my prayer becomes a thousand—if these souls
can still speak from the fire, oh let me stay
until the flame draws near! Do not deny me:
You see how fervently I long for it!”
And he to me: “Since what you ask is worthy,
it shall be. But be still and let me speak;
for I know your mind already, and they perhaps
might scorn your manner of speaking, since they were Greek.”
And when the flame had come where time and place
seemed fitting to my Guide, I heard him say
these words to it: “O you two souls who pace
together in one flame!—if my days above
won favor in your eyes, if I have earned
however much or little of your love
in writing my High Verses, do not pass by,
but let one of you be pleased to tell where he,
having disappeared from the known world, went to die.”
As if it fought the wind, the greater prong
of the ancient flame began to quiver and hum;
then moving its tip as if it were the tongue
that spoke, gave out a voice above the roar.
“When I left Circe,” it said, “who more than a year
detained me near Gaëta long before
Aeneas came and gave the place that name,
not fondness for my son, nor reverence
for my aged father, nor Penelope’s claim
to the joys of love, could drive out of my mind
the lust to experience the far-flung world
and the failings and felicities of mankind.
I put out on the high and open sea
with a single ship and only those few souls
who stayed true when the rest deserted me.
As far as Morocco and as far as Spain
I saw both shores; and I saw Sardinia
and the other islands of the open main.
I and my men were stiff and slow with age
when we sailed at last into the narrow pass
where, warning all men back from further voyage,
Hercules’ Pillars rose upon our sight.
Already I had left Ceuta on the left;
Seville now sank behind me on the right.
‘Shipmates,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand
perils have reached the West, do not deny
to the brief remaining watch our senses stand
experience of the world beyond the sun.
Greeks! You were not born to live like brutes,
but to press on toward manhood and recognition!’
With this brief exhortation I made my crew
so eager for the voyage I could hardly
have held them back from it when I was through;
and turning our stern toward morning, our bow toward night,
we bore southwest out of the world of man;
we made wings of our oars for our fool’s flight.
That night we raised the other pole ahead
with all its stars, and ours had so declined
it did not rise out of its ocean bed.
Five times since we had dipped our bending oars
beyond the world, the light beneath the moon
had waxed and waned, when dead upon our course
we sighted, dark in space, a peak so tall
I doubted any man had seen the like.
Our cheers were hardly sounded, when a squall
broke hard upon our bow from the new land:
three times it sucked the ship and the sea about
as it pleased Another to order and command.
At the fourth, the poop rose and the bow went down
till the sea closed over us and the light was gone.”
NOTES
7. if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning: A semi-proverbial expression. It was a common belief that those dreams that occur just before waking foretell the future. “Morning” here would equal both “the rude awakening” and the potential “dawn of a new day.”
8. Prato: Not the neighboring town (which was on good terms with Florence) but Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, papal legate from Benedict XI to Florence. In 1304 he tried to reconcile the warring factions, but found that neither side would accept mediation. Since none would be blessed, he cursed all impartially and laid the city under an interdict (i.e., forbade the o
ffering of the sacraments). Shortly after this rejection by the Church, a bridge collapsed in Florence, and later a great fire broke out. Both disasters cost many lives, and both were promptly attributed to the Papal curse.
34. he the bears avenged: Elisha saw Elijah translated to Heaven in a fiery chariot. Later he was mocked by some children, who called out tauntingly that he should “Go up” as Elijah had. Elisha cursed the children in the name of the Lord, and bears came suddenly upon the children and devoured them. (II Kings, ii, 11-24.)
53-54. the pyre where Eteocles and Polynices lay: Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Oedipus, succeeded jointly to the throne of Thebes, and came to an agreement whereby each one would rule separately for a year at a time. Eteocles ruled the first year and when he refused to surrender the throne at the appointed time, Polynices led the Seven against Thebes in a bloody war. In single combat the two brothers killed one another. Statius (Thebaid, XII, 429 ff.) wrote that their mutual hatred was so great that when they were placed on the same funeral pyre the very flame of their burning drew apart in two great raging horns.