The Divine Comedy

  When you declared, ‘A new birth has been given.

  Justice returns, and the first age of man.

  And a new progeny descends from Heaven’—

  you were as one who leads through a dark track

  holding the light behind—useless to you,

  precious to those who followed at your back.

  Through you I flowered to song and to belief.

  That you may know all, let me stretch my hand

  to paint in full what I have sketched in brief.

  The world, by then, was swollen with the birth

  of True Belief sown by those messengers

  the Everlasting Kingdom had sent forth.

  Those words of yours I quoted, so agreed

  with the new preachers’, that I took to going

  to where they gathered to expound the Creed.

  In time, they grew so holy in my eyes

  that in the persecutions of Domitian

  the tears burst from me when I heard their cries.

  And long as I remained upon the vexed

  shores of that life, I helped them, and they taught me,

  by their strict ways, to scorn all other sects.

  Before my poem sang how the Greeks drew near

  the Theban rivers, I had been baptized,

  but kept my faith a secret, out of fear,

  pretending to be pagan as before;

  for which lukewarmness I was made to circle

  the Ledge of Sloth four hundred years and more.

  Now may you please to tell me—you who rent

  the veil that hid me from this good I praise—

  while we have time to spare in the ascent,

  where is our ancient Terence now? and where

  Caecilius, Varro, Plautus?—are they damned?

  and if they are, what torments must they bear?”

  —“All these are there with Persius and the rest,

  myself among them, who surround that Greek

  who outsucked all men at the Muses’ breast.

  All walk the first ledge of the dark of Hell;

  and we speak often of the glorious mountain

  on which the Nine who suckled us still dwell.

  Euripides is with us, Antiphon,

  Athenian Agathon, Simonides,

  and many more who wore the laurel crown.

  And there, of your own people, one may see

  Ismene, mournful as she was before,

  Deiphyle, Argia, Antigone,

  Hypsipyle, who led to Langia’s water,

  Thetis, Deidamia with her sisters,

  and there, too, one may see Tiresias’ daughter.”

  We stepped from the walled stairs to level ground,

  and both the Poets now had fallen still,

  attentive once again to look around.

  Of the day’s handmaids, four had fallen back,

  and now the fifth stood at the chariot’s pole,

  pointing the bright tip on its upward track,

  when Virgil said: “I think we ought to go

  with our right shoulders to the outer edge,

  circling the slope as we have done below.”

  So custom served to guide us, and we went

  as Virgil said, with all the more assurance

  since Statius’ silence gave us his consent.

  They walked ahead and I came on behind

  treasuring their talk, which was of poetry,

  and every word of which enriched my mind.

  But soon, in mid-road, there appeared a tree

  laden with fragrant and delicious fruit,

  and at that sight the talk stopped instantly.

  As fir trees taper up from limb to limb,

  so this tree tapered down; so shaped, I think,

  that it should be impossible to climb.

  From that side where the cliff closed-off our way

  a clear cascade fell from the towering rock

  and broke upon the upper leaves as spray.

  The poets drew nearer, reverent and mute,

  and from the center of the towering tree

  a voice cried: “You shall not eat of the fruit!”

  Then said: “Mary thought more of what was due

  the joy and honor of the wedding feast

  than of her mouth, which still speaks prayers for you.

  Of old, the mothers of Rome’s noble blood

  found joy in water. And great wisdom came

  to holy Daniel in despising food.

  Bright as pure gold was mankind’s state at first:

  then, hunger seasoned acorns with delight,

  and every rill ran sweet to honest thirst.

  No wine nor meat were in the wilderness.

  Honey and locusts—that and nothing more

  nourished the Baptist in his holiness;

  and to that fact is his great glory due,

  as the Gospel clearly testifies to you.”

  NOTES

  1-6. We had, by now . . . : The Poets, now three, are climbing the stairway to the Sixth Cornice, having passed the Angel posted at the entrance to the Ascent. Since this Angel must represent the virtue opposite both Avarice and Prodigality, he may best be called the Angel of Moderation.

  The Angel has lightened Dante’s soul by striking away one more P, and has speeded the Poets on their way by reciting a Beatitude, but with an interesting variation. The whole Beatitude would be Beati qui esuriunt et sitiunt justitiam—“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” But the Angel left out esuriunt (“they hunger”) and said only “Blessed are they who thirst after righteousness.” The “who hunger” will be spoken by the next Angel; appropriately, for the Gluttons. Dante was forced into some such device if he was to make six Beatitudes do for seven Cornices. Certainly, the aptness of his invention under such pressures is the mark of his structural genius.

  11. that love ignites another: Cf. Inferno, V, 100: “Love, which permits no loved one not to love. . . .”

  13. Juvenal: Decius Junius Juvenal, satiric poet born about A.D. 47, died about A.D. 130. His long life almost entirely overlapped that of Statius. Since both lived in Rome, and both were poets (Juvenal mentions Statius in his Seventh Satire), he would be a natural choice as the bearer of tidings of Statius.

  17. for any unseen person: For any person one has not met.

  18. such as will make the climb ahead seem short: Since it will be passed in such happy company.

  27 ff. STATIUS’ REPLY. Statius smiles briefly at Virgil’s error in forgetting that Avarice and Prodigality are twin sins, both of which absorb the soul into an immoderate concern for material matters. (Cf. Wordsworth, “Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.”) Statius then explains that he was not a miser but a waster, and that his sin was riotous expense.

  He then pays tribute to Virgil, explaining that it was a passage from the Aeneid (as he quotes in lines 40-41) that led him to correct his ways, else he would at that moment be in Hell rolling the enormous weights that the Hoarders and Wasters send crashing against one another there. There is no historic evidence either that Statius was a wasteful spender or that he turned Christian. On the contrary, Juvenal’s Seventh Satire mentions Statius as being so poor that he would have starved without a patron.

  Dante’s reasons for both these inventions will have to be inferred from the text itself. Obviously, in making Statius’ sin wasteful spending, Dante makes an opportunity to discuss Wasting along with Hoarding as related extremes of Avarice. Even more obviously, Statius could not be in Purgatory at all unless Dante established him as a Christian.

  40-41. To what do you not drive . . . : These lines are from the Aeneid (III, 56-57)—quid non mortalia pectora cogis Auri sacra fames (“to what do you not drive mortal appetites, O sacred [god-like] hunger for gold?”). In the Italian, Dante seems to have rendered these lines: “Why do you not control mortal appetites, O sacred hunger for gold?” rendering Virgil’s quid as “why” instead of
as “to what” and thereby not only praising gold-hunger, but making it responsible for the control of avarice. The hunger could, of course, be called “sacred” in that it is God-given, whereby only its excesses would be evil.

  No lines in the Divine Comedy have called forth more critical argument. Did Dante make a ludicrous mistake? Was he so familiar with the text that he rendered it carelessly in a sleepy moment? Has the text been corrupted? Was he indulging in a sermonizer’s license to twist the text to some obscure purpose? Was he using “sacred” in a special reverse way meaning “cursed,” a usage still current in some parts of Italy? All these are puzzles for scholars. Dante is probably reading into Virgil an idea of Aristotelian moderation.

  42. the grim jousts: Of the Hoarders and Wasters in the Fourth Circle of Hell (Inferno, VII).

  46. rise bald to Judgment Day: Cf. Inferno, VII, 56-57, where Dante says of the Hoarders and Wasters: one crew will stand tight-fisted, the other stripped of its very hair at the bar of Judgment Day.

  49-51. when the opposite of a sin . . . is as blameworthy: On this Cornice, as noted, Hoarding and Wasting are the two opposite faces of Avarice and are equally blameworthy. The opposites of Pride, Envy, and Anger, on the other hand, are the virtues of Humility, Caritas, and Meekness. The force of “when” is exactly in the fact that not every opposite is blameworthy.

  55-57. the twin afflictions of Jocasta: Eteocles and Polynices, the twin sons of Oedipus by his own mother, Jocasta. When they succeeded to the throne of Thebes they agreed to rule in alternating years, the nonruling brother to pass the year in exile. Eteocles occupied the throne the first year and then refused to surrender it when Polynices came to claim it. Thereupon there broke out the war of the Seven against Thebes which Statius celebrated in his Thebaid. the singer of the sweet Bucolics: Virgil. So identified in preparation for the reference to Eclogue IV in line 67. This is the first time Virgil has been cited as the author of any work but the Aeneid.

  58. when Clio tuned your strain: I.e., in the Thebaid, which Statius began with an invocation to Clio, the Muse of History. Virgil is saying that there is no sign in Statius’ work to indicate that he had turned Catholic (as, in fact, he almost certainly had not).

  59-60. the faith without the grace of which good works are vain: Virgil is citing the doctrine that there can be no salvation except through the Catholic Church. The doctrine has only very recently been modified and was the object of some controversy in the United States in the late 1940’s.

  61. what Sun: Divine Illumination. or beacon: Power of Reason. (Probable interpretations only.)

  63. the Fisherman: St. Peter.

  64. You were the lamp: Allegorically, Statius was guided by Human Reason.

  67. A new birth . . . : These are the words of the Sybil in Virgil’s Eclogue IV, 5-7, from his Bucolics. Virgil, as a courtier, was celebrating the birth of a son to the well-placed Asinius Pollio. Medieval readers were quick to interpret the lines as a prophecy of the birth of Christ, thus giving rise to the legend of Virgil as a powerful soothsayer and magician.

  77. those messengers: The Apostles.

  88-90. drew near the Theban rivers: The ninth book of the Thebaid relates the arrival of the Greeks under Adrastus to the Theban rivers, the Ismenus and the Asopus. The Thebaid consists of twelve books in all. Thus Statius would have had to write something more than three books (plus his work on the Achilleid) without letting slip any slightest indication that he was a Christian. Such a lack is sufficiently explained historically by the fact that there is no slightest evidence that Statius was converted. Within Dante’s legend, however, that lack is further evidence of the Sloth of Statius, for which he spent more than four hundred years on the Fourth Cornice.

  Statius must also have spent a considerable time in Ante-Purgatory or at the Mouth of the Tiber, or both, for he had been dead for 1,204 years by 1300. If “over four hundred years” plus “over five hundred years” is taken to equal as much as “about a thousand” there are still two centuries unaccounted for. Statius died at fifty-four. If he had been made to wait in Ante-Purgatory for as long as his entire life, there would still remain a century and a half unaccounted for. Some of that time may have been spent in doing minor penances on the other ledges, but he probably spent most of it at the Mouth of the Tiber waiting for the Angel Ferryman’s approval.

  95. this good I praise: The True Faith.

  97-99. Terence . . . Caecilius, Varro, Plautus: All those here mentioned were Latin poets of the third and second centuries B.C. Since all of them died before Christ, none could have won to salvation.

  100. Persius: Latin poet, A.D. 34-62.

  101. that Greek: Homer.

  104. the glorious mountain: Parnassus.

  105. the Nine: The Muses. Here, as in line 102, they are conceived as the mothers at whose breasts poets sucked the milk of inspiration. Homer, who outsucked all others, is, therefore, the foremost poet.

  106-108. Euripides . . . Antiphon . . . Agathon, Simonides: All those here mentioned were Greek poets of the Golden Age.

  109 ff. of your own people: Virgil means “of the people you wrote about in the Thebaid .” All those listed may be taken as characters of the poem, only two of whom here require further explanation: Ismene, mournful as she was: Daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, sister of Antigone and of Eteocles and Polynices. She had good reason to mourn, having witnessed the death of all her family and of her betrothed, and having been sentenced to death by Creon. who led to Langia’s water: When the Seven Heroes who fought against Thebes were dying of thirst on their march through Boetia, Hypsipyle showed them the way to a spring called Langia. For the rest of her story see XXVI, 94-96, note.

  118-120. THE TIME. In Canto XII Dante has established the fact that he means the hours when he speaks of the “handmaids of the day.” Here he presents them as directing the chariot of the sun in turn, each handing over her position at the chariot’s pole to her successor. Four have already fallen back. It is, therefore, at least four hours since dawn (which was at 6:00 A.M.). The fifth hour is now pointing the bright tip of the chariot’s pole (bright because it is approaching noon) toward the zenith. It is, therefore, between 10:00 and 11:00 A.M.

  133 ff. THE TREE. The description of this tree has led to many strange speculations. A number of the early commentators thought of it as growing upside down and it is so illustrated in some old manuscripts. I take Dante’s central idea to be of an unclimbable tree with a great spreading top.

  140 ff. THE WHIP OF GLUTTONY. It is prefaced (line 141) by a voice that cries from amid the luscious fruits, denying them to the sinners. Note how much the phrasing suggests God’s first command prohibiting the Fruit of Knowledge.

  The voice then cites great examples of abstinence and moderation. It cites first (lines 142-144) the example of Mary at the marriage feast at Cana in Galilee (cf. XIII, 28-30) and how she thought only of the good of others, not of her own appetite.

  The voice then cites (lines 145-146) the matrons of ancient Rome. It was the custom during the Republic for noble matrons not to drink wine. Thus they “found joy in water.”

  The third example (lines 146-147) is based on Daniel, i, 8 and 17. Daniel determined not to defile himself with the king’s wine and meat . . . “and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.”

  The fourth example (lines 148-150) cites mankind’s earliest and most natural state, when men lived in accord with nature and had not developed the cookery that leads men to gluttonous feasting, nor the wine (distilled spirits were not developed till the eighteenth century) that leads to drunkenness. Then, according to the voice, acorns and water were enough to delight men.

  The final example (lines 151-155) cites John the Baptist, who ate only honey and locusts in the desert (Matthew, iii, 4) and won thereby to the glory the Gospel attests (Matthew, xi, 11, and Luke, vii, 28).

  Canto XXIII

  THE SIXTH CORNICE

  The Gluttons

  Dante stares up into the tree to see
who has spoken but he is called away by Virgil who leads on, talking to Statius, while Dante walks behind, drinking in their conversation. Suddenly, from behind him, Dante hears a psalm, and turning, he sees a band of GLUTTONS overtaking them, souls so emaciated that one can read in their sunken eyes and in the lines of the cheeks and nose the word “OMO.”

  After some difficulty Dante recognizes one of the hideously wasted souls as his old friend FORESE who had died only five years before, but who had been advanced into Purgatory and directly to this Cornice by the prayers of his widow, Nella.