CANTO XI.

CANTO XI.We at the margin of a lofty steepMade of great shattered stones in circle bent,Arrived where worser torments crowd the deep.So horrible a stench and violentWas upward wafted from the vast abyss,[375]Behind the cover we for shelter wentOf a great tomb where I saw written this:‘Pope Anastasius[376]is within me thrust,Whom the straight way Photinus made to miss.’‘Now on our course a while we linger must,’10The Master said, ‘be but our sense resignedA little to it, and the filthy gustWe shall not heed.’ Then I: ‘Do thou but findSome compensation lest our time should runWasted.’ And he: ‘Behold, ’twas in my mind.Girt by the rocks before us, O my son,Lie three small circles,’[377]he began to tell,‘Graded like those with which thou now hast done,All of them filled with spirits miserable.That sight[378]of them may thee henceforth suffice.20Hear how and wherefore in these groups they dwell.Whate’er in Heaven’s abhorred as wickednessHas injury[379]for its end; in others’ baneBy fraud resulting or in violent wise.Since fraud to man alone[380]doth appertain,God hates it most; and hence the fraudulent band,Set lowest down, endure a fiercer pain.Of the violent is the circle next at handTo us; and since three ways is violence shown,’Tis in three several circuits built and planned.30To God, ourselves, or neighbours may be doneViolence, or on the things by them possessed;As reasoning clear shall unto thee make known.Our neighbour may by violence be distressedWith grievous wounds, or slain; his goods and landsBy havoc, fire, and plunder be oppressed.Hence those who wound and slay with violent hands,Robbers, and spoilers, in the nearest roundAre all tormented in their various bands.Violent against himself may man be found,40And ’gainst his goods; therefore without availThey in the next are in repentance drownedWho on themselves loss of your world entail,Who gamble[381]and their substance madly spend,And who when called to joy lament and wail.And even to God may violence extendBy heart denial and by blasphemy,Scorning what nature doth in bounty lend.Sodom and Cahors[382]hence are doomed to lieWithin the narrowest circlet surely sealed;50And such as God within their hearts defy.Fraud,[383]’gainst whose bite no conscience findeth shield,A man may use with one who in him laysTrust, or with those who no such credence yield.Beneath this latter kind of it decaysThe bond of love which out of nature grew;Hence, in the second circle[384]herd the raceTo feigning given and flattery, who pursueMagic, false coining, theft, and simony,Pimps, barrators, and suchlike residue.60The other form of fraud makes nullityOf natural bonds; and, what is more than those,The special trust whence men on men rely.Hence in the place whereon all things repose,The narrowest circle and the seat of Dis,[385]Each traitor’s gulfed in everlasting woes.’‘Thy explanation, Master, as to thisIs clear,’ I said, ‘and thou hast plainly toldWho are the people stowed in the abyss.But tell why those the muddy marshes hold,70The tempest-driven, those beaten by the rain,And such as, meeting, virulently scold,Are not within the crimson city ta’enFor punishment, if hateful unto God;And, if not hateful, wherefore doomed to pain?’And he to me: ‘Why wander thus abroad,More than is wont, thy wits? or how engrossedIs now thy mind, and on what things bestowed?Hast thou the memory of the passage lostIn which thy Ethics[386]for their subject treat80Of the three moods by Heaven abhorred the most—Malice and bestiality complete;And how, compared with these, incontinenceOffends God less, and lesser blame doth meet?If of this doctrine thou extract the sense,And call to memory what people areAbove, outside, in endless penitence,Why from these guilty they are sundered farThou shalt discern, and why on them alightThe strokes of justice in less angry war.’90‘O Sun that clearest every troubled sight,So charmed am I by thy resolving speech,Doubt yields me joy no less than knowing right.Therefore, I pray, a little backward reach,’I asked, ‘to where thou say’st that usurySins ’gainst God’s bounty; and this mystery teach.’He said: ‘Who gives ear to PhilosophyIs taught by her, nor in one place alone,What nature in her course is governed by,Even Mind Divine, and art which thence hath grown;100And if thy Physics[387]thou wilt search within,Thou’lt find ere many leaves are open thrown,This art by yours, far as your art can win,Is followed close—the teacher by the taught;As grandchild then to God your art is kin.And from these two—do thou recall to thoughtHow Genesis[388]begins—should come suppliesOf food for man, and other wealth be sought.And, since another plan the usurer plies,Nature and nature’s child have his disdain;[389]110Because on other ground his hope relies.But come,[390]for to advance I now am fain:The Fishes[391]over the horizon lineQuiver; o’er Caurus now stands all the Wain;And further yonder does the cliff decline.’FOOTNOTES:[375]Vast abyss: They are now at the inner side of the Sixth Circle, and upon the verge of the rocky steep which slopes down from it into the Seventh. All the lower Hell lies beneath them, and it is from that rather than from the next circle in particular that the stench arises, symbolical of the foulness of the sins which are punished there. The noisome smells which make part of the horror of Inferno are after this sometimes mentioned, but never dwelt upon (Inf.xviii. 106, and xxix. 50).[376]Pope Anastasius: The second of the name, elected Pope in 496. Photinus, bishop of Sirenium, was infected with the Sabellian heresy, but he was deposed more than a century before the time of Anastasius. Dante follows some obscure legend in charging Anastasius with heresy. The important point is that the one heretic, in the sense usually attached to the term, named as being in the city of unbelief, is a Pope.[377]Three small circles: The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth; small in circumference compared with those above. The pilgrims are now deep in the hollow cone.[378]That sight, etc.: After hearing the following explanation Dante no longer asks to what classes the sinners met with belong, but only as to the guilt of individual shades.[379]Injury: They have left above them the circles of those whose sin consists in the exaggeration or misdirection of a wholesome natural instinct. Below them lie the circles filled with such as have been guilty of malicious wickedness. This manifests itself in two ways: by violence or by fraud. After first mentioning in a general way that the fraudulent are set lowest in Inferno, Virgil proceeds to define violence, and to tell how the violent occupy the circle immediately beneath them—the Seventh. For division of the maliciously wicked into two classes Dante is supposed to be indebted to Cicero: ‘Injury may be wrought by force or by fraud.... Both are unnatural for man, but fraud is the more hateful.’—De Officiis, i. 13. It is remarkable that Virgil says nothing of those in the Sixth Circle in this account of the classes of sinners.[380]To man alone, etc.: Fraud involves the corrupt use of the powers that distinguish us from the brutes.[381]Who gamble, etc.: A different sin from the lavish spending punished in the Fourth Circle (Inf.vii.). The distinction is that between thriftlessness and the prodigality which, stripping a man of the means of living, disgusts him with life, as described in the following line. It is from among prodigals that the ranks of suicides are greatly filled, and here they are appropriately placed together. It may seem strange that in his classification of guilt Dante should rank violence to one’s self as a more heinous sin than that committed against one’s neighbour. He may have in view the fact that none harm their neighbours so much as they who are oblivious of their own true interest.[382]Sodom and Cahors: Sins against nature are reckoned sins against God, as explained lower down in this Canto. Cahors in Languedoc had in the Middle Ages the reputation of being a nest of usurers. These in old English Chronicles are termed Caorsins. With the sins of Sodom and Cahors are ranked the denial of God and blasphemy against Him—deeper sins than the erroneous conceptions of the Divine nature and government punished in the Sixth Circle. The three concentric rings composing the Seventh Circle are all on the same level, as we shall find.[383]Fraud, etc.: Fraud is of such a nature that conscience never fails to give due warning against the sin. This is an aggravation of the guilt of it.[384]The second circle: The second now beneath them; that is, the Eighth.[385]Seat of Dis: The Ninth and last Circle.[386]Thy Ethics: The Ethics of Aristotle, in which it is said: ‘With regard to manners, these three things are to be eschewed: incontinence, vice, and bestiality.’ Aristotle holds incontinence to consist in the immoderate indulgence of propensities which under right guidance are adapted to promote lawful pleasure. It is, generally speaking, the sin of which those about whom Dante has inquired were guilty.—It has been ingeniously sought by Philalethes (Gött. Com.) to show that Virgil’s disquisition is founded on this threefold classification of Aristotle’s—violence being taken to be the same as bestiality, and malice as vice. But the reference to Aristotle is made with the limited purpose of justifying the lenient treatment of incontinence; in the same way as a few lines further on Genesis is referred to in support of the harsh treatment of usury.[387]Physics: The Physics of Aristotle, in which it is said: ‘Art imitates nature.’ Art includes handicrafts.[388]Genesis: ‘And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden to dress it and to keep it.’ ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’[389]His disdain: The usurer seeks to get wealth independently of honest labour or reliance on the processes of nature. This far-fetched argument against usury closes one of the most arid passages of theComedy. The shortness of the Canto almost suggests that Dante had himself got weary of it.[390]But come, etc.: They have been all this time resting behind the lid of the tomb.[391]The Fishes, etc.: The sun being now in Aries the stars of Pisces begin to rise about a couple of hours before sunrise. The Great Bear lies above Caurus, the quarter of theN.N.W.wind. It seems impossible to harmonise the astronomical indications scattered throughout theComedy, there being traces of Dante’s having sometimes used details belonging rather to the day on which Good Friday fell in 1300, the 8th of April, than to the (supposed) true anniversary of the crucifixion. That this, the 25th of March, is the day he intended to conform to appears fromInf.xxi. 112.—The time is now near dawn on the Saturday morning. It is almost needless to say that Virgil speaks of the stars as he knows they are placed, but without seeing them. By what light they see in Inferno is nowhere explained. We have been told that it was dark as night (Inf.iv. 10, v. 28).

We at the margin of a lofty steepMade of great shattered stones in circle bent,Arrived where worser torments crowd the deep.So horrible a stench and violentWas upward wafted from the vast abyss,[375]Behind the cover we for shelter wentOf a great tomb where I saw written this:‘Pope Anastasius[376]is within me thrust,Whom the straight way Photinus made to miss.’‘Now on our course a while we linger must,’10The Master said, ‘be but our sense resignedA little to it, and the filthy gustWe shall not heed.’ Then I: ‘Do thou but findSome compensation lest our time should runWasted.’ And he: ‘Behold, ’twas in my mind.Girt by the rocks before us, O my son,Lie three small circles,’[377]he began to tell,‘Graded like those with which thou now hast done,All of them filled with spirits miserable.That sight[378]of them may thee henceforth suffice.20Hear how and wherefore in these groups they dwell.Whate’er in Heaven’s abhorred as wickednessHas injury[379]for its end; in others’ baneBy fraud resulting or in violent wise.Since fraud to man alone[380]doth appertain,God hates it most; and hence the fraudulent band,Set lowest down, endure a fiercer pain.Of the violent is the circle next at handTo us; and since three ways is violence shown,’Tis in three several circuits built and planned.30To God, ourselves, or neighbours may be doneViolence, or on the things by them possessed;As reasoning clear shall unto thee make known.Our neighbour may by violence be distressedWith grievous wounds, or slain; his goods and landsBy havoc, fire, and plunder be oppressed.Hence those who wound and slay with violent hands,Robbers, and spoilers, in the nearest roundAre all tormented in their various bands.Violent against himself may man be found,40And ’gainst his goods; therefore without availThey in the next are in repentance drownedWho on themselves loss of your world entail,Who gamble[381]and their substance madly spend,And who when called to joy lament and wail.And even to God may violence extendBy heart denial and by blasphemy,Scorning what nature doth in bounty lend.Sodom and Cahors[382]hence are doomed to lieWithin the narrowest circlet surely sealed;50And such as God within their hearts defy.Fraud,[383]’gainst whose bite no conscience findeth shield,A man may use with one who in him laysTrust, or with those who no such credence yield.Beneath this latter kind of it decaysThe bond of love which out of nature grew;Hence, in the second circle[384]herd the raceTo feigning given and flattery, who pursueMagic, false coining, theft, and simony,Pimps, barrators, and suchlike residue.60The other form of fraud makes nullityOf natural bonds; and, what is more than those,The special trust whence men on men rely.Hence in the place whereon all things repose,The narrowest circle and the seat of Dis,[385]Each traitor’s gulfed in everlasting woes.’‘Thy explanation, Master, as to thisIs clear,’ I said, ‘and thou hast plainly toldWho are the people stowed in the abyss.But tell why those the muddy marshes hold,70The tempest-driven, those beaten by the rain,And such as, meeting, virulently scold,Are not within the crimson city ta’enFor punishment, if hateful unto God;And, if not hateful, wherefore doomed to pain?’And he to me: ‘Why wander thus abroad,More than is wont, thy wits? or how engrossedIs now thy mind, and on what things bestowed?Hast thou the memory of the passage lostIn which thy Ethics[386]for their subject treat80Of the three moods by Heaven abhorred the most—Malice and bestiality complete;And how, compared with these, incontinenceOffends God less, and lesser blame doth meet?If of this doctrine thou extract the sense,And call to memory what people areAbove, outside, in endless penitence,Why from these guilty they are sundered farThou shalt discern, and why on them alightThe strokes of justice in less angry war.’90‘O Sun that clearest every troubled sight,So charmed am I by thy resolving speech,Doubt yields me joy no less than knowing right.Therefore, I pray, a little backward reach,’I asked, ‘to where thou say’st that usurySins ’gainst God’s bounty; and this mystery teach.’He said: ‘Who gives ear to PhilosophyIs taught by her, nor in one place alone,What nature in her course is governed by,Even Mind Divine, and art which thence hath grown;100And if thy Physics[387]thou wilt search within,Thou’lt find ere many leaves are open thrown,This art by yours, far as your art can win,Is followed close—the teacher by the taught;As grandchild then to God your art is kin.And from these two—do thou recall to thoughtHow Genesis[388]begins—should come suppliesOf food for man, and other wealth be sought.And, since another plan the usurer plies,Nature and nature’s child have his disdain;[389]110Because on other ground his hope relies.But come,[390]for to advance I now am fain:The Fishes[391]over the horizon lineQuiver; o’er Caurus now stands all the Wain;And further yonder does the cliff decline.’

FOOTNOTES:[375]Vast abyss: They are now at the inner side of the Sixth Circle, and upon the verge of the rocky steep which slopes down from it into the Seventh. All the lower Hell lies beneath them, and it is from that rather than from the next circle in particular that the stench arises, symbolical of the foulness of the sins which are punished there. The noisome smells which make part of the horror of Inferno are after this sometimes mentioned, but never dwelt upon (Inf.xviii. 106, and xxix. 50).[376]Pope Anastasius: The second of the name, elected Pope in 496. Photinus, bishop of Sirenium, was infected with the Sabellian heresy, but he was deposed more than a century before the time of Anastasius. Dante follows some obscure legend in charging Anastasius with heresy. The important point is that the one heretic, in the sense usually attached to the term, named as being in the city of unbelief, is a Pope.[377]Three small circles: The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth; small in circumference compared with those above. The pilgrims are now deep in the hollow cone.[378]That sight, etc.: After hearing the following explanation Dante no longer asks to what classes the sinners met with belong, but only as to the guilt of individual shades.[379]Injury: They have left above them the circles of those whose sin consists in the exaggeration or misdirection of a wholesome natural instinct. Below them lie the circles filled with such as have been guilty of malicious wickedness. This manifests itself in two ways: by violence or by fraud. After first mentioning in a general way that the fraudulent are set lowest in Inferno, Virgil proceeds to define violence, and to tell how the violent occupy the circle immediately beneath them—the Seventh. For division of the maliciously wicked into two classes Dante is supposed to be indebted to Cicero: ‘Injury may be wrought by force or by fraud.... Both are unnatural for man, but fraud is the more hateful.’—De Officiis, i. 13. It is remarkable that Virgil says nothing of those in the Sixth Circle in this account of the classes of sinners.[380]To man alone, etc.: Fraud involves the corrupt use of the powers that distinguish us from the brutes.[381]Who gamble, etc.: A different sin from the lavish spending punished in the Fourth Circle (Inf.vii.). The distinction is that between thriftlessness and the prodigality which, stripping a man of the means of living, disgusts him with life, as described in the following line. It is from among prodigals that the ranks of suicides are greatly filled, and here they are appropriately placed together. It may seem strange that in his classification of guilt Dante should rank violence to one’s self as a more heinous sin than that committed against one’s neighbour. He may have in view the fact that none harm their neighbours so much as they who are oblivious of their own true interest.[382]Sodom and Cahors: Sins against nature are reckoned sins against God, as explained lower down in this Canto. Cahors in Languedoc had in the Middle Ages the reputation of being a nest of usurers. These in old English Chronicles are termed Caorsins. With the sins of Sodom and Cahors are ranked the denial of God and blasphemy against Him—deeper sins than the erroneous conceptions of the Divine nature and government punished in the Sixth Circle. The three concentric rings composing the Seventh Circle are all on the same level, as we shall find.[383]Fraud, etc.: Fraud is of such a nature that conscience never fails to give due warning against the sin. This is an aggravation of the guilt of it.[384]The second circle: The second now beneath them; that is, the Eighth.[385]Seat of Dis: The Ninth and last Circle.[386]Thy Ethics: The Ethics of Aristotle, in which it is said: ‘With regard to manners, these three things are to be eschewed: incontinence, vice, and bestiality.’ Aristotle holds incontinence to consist in the immoderate indulgence of propensities which under right guidance are adapted to promote lawful pleasure. It is, generally speaking, the sin of which those about whom Dante has inquired were guilty.—It has been ingeniously sought by Philalethes (Gött. Com.) to show that Virgil’s disquisition is founded on this threefold classification of Aristotle’s—violence being taken to be the same as bestiality, and malice as vice. But the reference to Aristotle is made with the limited purpose of justifying the lenient treatment of incontinence; in the same way as a few lines further on Genesis is referred to in support of the harsh treatment of usury.[387]Physics: The Physics of Aristotle, in which it is said: ‘Art imitates nature.’ Art includes handicrafts.[388]Genesis: ‘And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden to dress it and to keep it.’ ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’[389]His disdain: The usurer seeks to get wealth independently of honest labour or reliance on the processes of nature. This far-fetched argument against usury closes one of the most arid passages of theComedy. The shortness of the Canto almost suggests that Dante had himself got weary of it.[390]But come, etc.: They have been all this time resting behind the lid of the tomb.[391]The Fishes, etc.: The sun being now in Aries the stars of Pisces begin to rise about a couple of hours before sunrise. The Great Bear lies above Caurus, the quarter of theN.N.W.wind. It seems impossible to harmonise the astronomical indications scattered throughout theComedy, there being traces of Dante’s having sometimes used details belonging rather to the day on which Good Friday fell in 1300, the 8th of April, than to the (supposed) true anniversary of the crucifixion. That this, the 25th of March, is the day he intended to conform to appears fromInf.xxi. 112.—The time is now near dawn on the Saturday morning. It is almost needless to say that Virgil speaks of the stars as he knows they are placed, but without seeing them. By what light they see in Inferno is nowhere explained. We have been told that it was dark as night (Inf.iv. 10, v. 28).

[375]Vast abyss: They are now at the inner side of the Sixth Circle, and upon the verge of the rocky steep which slopes down from it into the Seventh. All the lower Hell lies beneath them, and it is from that rather than from the next circle in particular that the stench arises, symbolical of the foulness of the sins which are punished there. The noisome smells which make part of the horror of Inferno are after this sometimes mentioned, but never dwelt upon (Inf.xviii. 106, and xxix. 50).

[376]Pope Anastasius: The second of the name, elected Pope in 496. Photinus, bishop of Sirenium, was infected with the Sabellian heresy, but he was deposed more than a century before the time of Anastasius. Dante follows some obscure legend in charging Anastasius with heresy. The important point is that the one heretic, in the sense usually attached to the term, named as being in the city of unbelief, is a Pope.

[377]Three small circles: The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth; small in circumference compared with those above. The pilgrims are now deep in the hollow cone.

[378]That sight, etc.: After hearing the following explanation Dante no longer asks to what classes the sinners met with belong, but only as to the guilt of individual shades.

[379]Injury: They have left above them the circles of those whose sin consists in the exaggeration or misdirection of a wholesome natural instinct. Below them lie the circles filled with such as have been guilty of malicious wickedness. This manifests itself in two ways: by violence or by fraud. After first mentioning in a general way that the fraudulent are set lowest in Inferno, Virgil proceeds to define violence, and to tell how the violent occupy the circle immediately beneath them—the Seventh. For division of the maliciously wicked into two classes Dante is supposed to be indebted to Cicero: ‘Injury may be wrought by force or by fraud.... Both are unnatural for man, but fraud is the more hateful.’—De Officiis, i. 13. It is remarkable that Virgil says nothing of those in the Sixth Circle in this account of the classes of sinners.

[380]To man alone, etc.: Fraud involves the corrupt use of the powers that distinguish us from the brutes.

[381]Who gamble, etc.: A different sin from the lavish spending punished in the Fourth Circle (Inf.vii.). The distinction is that between thriftlessness and the prodigality which, stripping a man of the means of living, disgusts him with life, as described in the following line. It is from among prodigals that the ranks of suicides are greatly filled, and here they are appropriately placed together. It may seem strange that in his classification of guilt Dante should rank violence to one’s self as a more heinous sin than that committed against one’s neighbour. He may have in view the fact that none harm their neighbours so much as they who are oblivious of their own true interest.

[382]Sodom and Cahors: Sins against nature are reckoned sins against God, as explained lower down in this Canto. Cahors in Languedoc had in the Middle Ages the reputation of being a nest of usurers. These in old English Chronicles are termed Caorsins. With the sins of Sodom and Cahors are ranked the denial of God and blasphemy against Him—deeper sins than the erroneous conceptions of the Divine nature and government punished in the Sixth Circle. The three concentric rings composing the Seventh Circle are all on the same level, as we shall find.

[383]Fraud, etc.: Fraud is of such a nature that conscience never fails to give due warning against the sin. This is an aggravation of the guilt of it.

[384]The second circle: The second now beneath them; that is, the Eighth.

[385]Seat of Dis: The Ninth and last Circle.

[386]Thy Ethics: The Ethics of Aristotle, in which it is said: ‘With regard to manners, these three things are to be eschewed: incontinence, vice, and bestiality.’ Aristotle holds incontinence to consist in the immoderate indulgence of propensities which under right guidance are adapted to promote lawful pleasure. It is, generally speaking, the sin of which those about whom Dante has inquired were guilty.—It has been ingeniously sought by Philalethes (Gött. Com.) to show that Virgil’s disquisition is founded on this threefold classification of Aristotle’s—violence being taken to be the same as bestiality, and malice as vice. But the reference to Aristotle is made with the limited purpose of justifying the lenient treatment of incontinence; in the same way as a few lines further on Genesis is referred to in support of the harsh treatment of usury.

[387]Physics: The Physics of Aristotle, in which it is said: ‘Art imitates nature.’ Art includes handicrafts.

[388]Genesis: ‘And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden to dress it and to keep it.’ ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’

[389]His disdain: The usurer seeks to get wealth independently of honest labour or reliance on the processes of nature. This far-fetched argument against usury closes one of the most arid passages of theComedy. The shortness of the Canto almost suggests that Dante had himself got weary of it.

[390]But come, etc.: They have been all this time resting behind the lid of the tomb.

[391]The Fishes, etc.: The sun being now in Aries the stars of Pisces begin to rise about a couple of hours before sunrise. The Great Bear lies above Caurus, the quarter of theN.N.W.wind. It seems impossible to harmonise the astronomical indications scattered throughout theComedy, there being traces of Dante’s having sometimes used details belonging rather to the day on which Good Friday fell in 1300, the 8th of April, than to the (supposed) true anniversary of the crucifixion. That this, the 25th of March, is the day he intended to conform to appears fromInf.xxi. 112.—The time is now near dawn on the Saturday morning. It is almost needless to say that Virgil speaks of the stars as he knows they are placed, but without seeing them. By what light they see in Inferno is nowhere explained. We have been told that it was dark as night (Inf.iv. 10, v. 28).

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