CANTO XXIX.

CANTO XXIX.The many folk and wounds of divers kindHad flushed mine eyes and set them on the flow,Till I to weep and linger had a mind;But Virgil said to me: ‘Why gazing so?Why still thy vision fastening on the crewOf dismal shades dismembered there below?Thou didst not[735]thus the other Bolgias view:Think, if to count them be thine enterprise,The valley circles twenty miles and two.[736]Beneath our feet the moon[737]already lies;10The time[738]wears fast away to us decreed;And greater things than these await thine eyes.’I answered swift: ‘Hadst thou but given heedTo why it was my looks were downward bent,To yet more stay thou mightest have agreed.’My Guide meanwhile was moving, and I wentBehind him and continued to reply,Adding: ‘Within the moat on which intentI now was gazing with such eager eyeI trow a spirit weeps, one of my kin,20The crime whose guilt is rated there so high.’Then said the Master: ‘Henceforth hold thou inThy thoughts from wandering to him: new things claimAttention now, so leave him with his sin.Him saw I at thee from the bridge-foot aimA threatening finger, while he made thee known;Geri del Bello[739]heard I named his name.But, at the time, thou wast with him aloneEngrossed who once held Hautefort,[740]nor the placeDidst look at where he was; so passed he on.’30‘O Leader mine! death violent and base,And not avenged as yet,’ I made reply,‘By any of his partners in disgrace,Made him disdainful; therefore went he byAnd spake not with me, if I judge aright;Which does the more my ruth[741]intensify.’So we conversed till from the cliff we mightOf the next valley have had prospect goodDown to the bottom, with but clearer light.[742]When we above the inmost Cloister stood40Of Malebolge, and discerned the crewOf such as there compose the Brotherhood,[743]So many lamentations pierced me through—And barbed with pity all the shafts were sped—My open palms across my ears I drew.From Valdichiana’s[744]every spital bedAll ailments to September from July,With all in Maremma and Sardinia[745]bred,Heaped in one pit a sickness might supplyLike what was here; and from it rose a stink50Like that which comes from limbs that putrefy.Then we descended by the utmost brinkOf the long ridge[746]—leftward once more we fell—Until my vision, quickened now, could sinkDeeper to where Justice infallible,The minister of the Almighty Lord,Chastises forgers doomed on earth[747]to Hell.Ægina[748]could no sadder sight afford,As I believe (when all the people ailedAnd all the air was so with sickness stored,60Down to the very worms creation failedAnd died, whereon the pristine folk once more,As by the poets is for certain held,From seed of ants their family did restore),Than what was offered by that valley blackWith plague-struck spirits heaped upon the floor.Supine some lay, each on the other’s backOr stomach; and some crawled with crouching gaitFor change of place along the doleful track.Speechless we moved with step deliberate,70With eyes and ears on those disease crushed downNor left them power to lift their bodies straight.I saw two sit, shoulder to shoulder thrownAs plate holds plate up to be warmed, from headDown to the feet with scurf and scab o’ergrown.Nor ever saw I curry-comb so pliedBy varlet with his master standing by,Or by one kept unwillingly from bed,As I saw each of these his scratchers plyUpon himself; for nought else now avails80Against the itch which plagues them furiously.The scab[749]they tore and loosened with their nails,As with a knife men use the bream to strip,Or any other fish with larger scales.‘Thou, that thy mail dost with thy fingers rip,’My Guide to one of them began to say,‘And sometimes dost with them as pincers nip,Tell, is there any here from ItalyAmong you all, so may thy nails sufficeFor this their work to all eternity.’[750]90‘Latians are both of us in this disguiseOf wretchedness,’ weeping said one of those;‘But who art thou, demanding on this wise?’My Guide made answer: ‘I am one who goesDown with this living man from steep to steepThat I to him Inferno may disclose.’Then broke their mutual prop; trembling with deepAmazement each turned to me, with the restTo whom his words had echoed in the heap.Me the good Master cordially addressed:100‘Whate’er thou hast a mind to ask them, say.’And since he wished it, thus I made request:‘So may remembrance of you not decayWithin the upper world out of the mindOf men, but flourish still for many a day,As ye shall tell your names and what your kind:Let not your vile, disgusting punishmentTo full confession make you disinclined.’‘An Aretine,[751]I to the stake was sentBy Albert of Siena,’ one confessed,110‘But came not here through that for which I wentTo death. ’Tis true I told him all in jest,I through the air could float in upward gyre;And he, inquisitive and dull at best,Did full instruction in the art require:I could not make him Dædalus,[752]so thenHis second father sent me to the fire.But to the deepest Bolgia of the ten,For alchemy which in the world I wrought,The unerring Minos doomed me.’ ‘Now were menE’er found,’ I of the Poet asked, ‘so fraught121With vanity as are the Sienese?[753]French vanity to theirs is surely nought.’The other leper hearing me, to theseMy words: ‘Omit the Stricca,’[754]swift did shout,‘Who knew his tastes with temperance to please;And Nicholas,[755]who earliest found outThe lavish custom of the clove-stuffed roastWithin the garden where such seed doth sprout.Nor count the club[756]where Caccia d’ Ascian lost130Vineyards and woods; ’mid whom away did throwHis wit the Abbagliato.[757]But whose ghostIt is, that thou mayst weet, that backs thee soAgainst the Sienese, make sharp thine eyesThat thou my countenance mayst surely know.In me Capocchio’s[758]shade thou’lt recognise,Who forged false coin by means of alchemy:Thou must remember, if I well surmise,How I of nature very ape could be.’FOOTNOTES:[735]Thou didst not, etc.: It is a noteworthy feature in the conduct of the Poem that when Dante has once gained sufficient knowledge of any group in the Inferno he at once detaches his mind from it, and, carrying on as little arrear of pity as he can, gives his thoughts to further progress on the journey. The departure here made from his usual behaviour is presently accounted for. Virgil knows why he lingers, but will not seem to approve of the cause.[736]Twenty miles and two: The Ninth Bolgia has a circumference of twenty-two miles, and as the procession of the shades is slow it would indeed involve a protracted halt to wait till all had passed beneath the bridge. Virgil asks ironically if he wishes to count them all. This precise detail, taken along with one of the same kind in the following Canto (line 86), has suggested the attempt to construct the Inferno to a scale. Dante wisely suffers us to forget, if we will, that—taking the diameter of the earth at 6500 miles, as given by him in theConvito—he travels from the surface of the globe to the centre at the rate of more than two miles a minute, counting downward motion alone. It is only when he has come to the lowest rings that he allows himself to give details of size; and probably the mention of the extent of the Ninth Bolgia, which comes on the reader as a surprise, is thrown out in order to impress on the imagination some sense of the enormous extent of the regions through which the pilgrim has already passed. Henceforth he deals in exact measurement.[737]The moon: It is now some time after noon on the Saturday. The last indication of time was at Canto xxi. 112.[738]The time, etc.: Before nightfall they are to complete their exploration of the Inferno, and they will have spent twenty-four hours in it.[739]Geri del Bello: One of the Alighieri, a full cousin of Dante’s father. He was guilty of encouraging dissension, say the commentators; which is to be clearly inferred from the place assigned him in Inferno: but they do not agree as to how he met his death, nor do they mention the date of it. ‘Not avenged till thirty years after,’ says Landino; but does not say if this was after his death or the time at which Dante writes.[740]Hautefort: Bertrand de Born’s castle in Gascony.[741]My ruth: Enlightened moralist though Dante is, he yet shows himself man of his age enough to be keenly alive to the extremest claims of kindred; and while he condemns thevendettaby the words put into Virgil’s mouth, he confesses to a feeling of meanness not to have practised it on behoof of a distant relative. There is a high art in this introduction of Geri del Bello. Had they conferred together Dante must have seemed either cruel or pusillanimous, reproaching or being reproached. As it is, all the poetry of the situation comes out the stronger that they do not meet face to face: the threatening finger, the questions hastily put to Geri by the astonished shades, and his disappearance under the dark vault when by the law of his punishment the sinner can no longer tarry.[742]With but clearer light: They have crossed the rampart dividing the Ninth Bolgia from the Tenth, of which they would now command a view, were it not so dark.[743]The Brotherhood: The word used properly describes the Lay Brothers of a monastery. Philalethes suggests that Dante may regard the devils as the true monks of the monastery of Malebolge. The simile involves no contempt for the monastic life, but is naturally used with reference to those who live secluded and under a fixed rule. He elsewhere speaks of the College of the Hypocrites (Inf.xxiii. 91) and of Paradise as the Cloister where Christ is Abbot (Purg.xxvi.129).[744]Valdichiana: The district lying between Arezzo and Chiusi; in Dante’s time a hotbed of malaria, but now, owing to drainage works promoted by the enlightened Tuscan minister Fossombroni (1823), one of the most fertile and healthy regions of Italy.[745]Sardinia: Had in the middle ages an evil reputation for its fever-stricken air. The Maremma has been already mentioned (Inf.xxv.19). In Dante’s time it was almost unpeopled.[746]The long ridge: One of the ribs of rock which, like the spokes of a wheel, ran from the periphery to the centre of Malebolge, rising into arches as they crossed each successive Bolgia. The utmost brink is the inner bank of the Tenth and last Bolgia. To the edge of this moat they descend, bearing as usual to the left hand.[747]Doomed on earth, etc.: ‘Whom she here registers.’ While they are still on earth their doom is fixed by Divine justice.[748]Ægina: The description is taken from Ovid (Metam.vii.).[749]The scab, etc.: As if by an infernal alchemy the matter of the shadowy bodies of these sinners is changed into one loathsome form or another.[750]To all eternity: This may seem a stroke of sarcasm, but is not. Himself a shade, Virgil cannot, like Dante, promise to refresh the memory of the shades on earth, and can only wish for them some slight alleviation of their suffering.[751]An Aretine: Called Griffolino, and burned at Florence or Siena on a charge of heresy. Albert of Siena is said to have been a relative, some say the natural son, of the Bishop of Siena. A man of the name figures as hero in some of Sacchetti’s novels, always in a ridiculous light. There seems to be no authentic testimony regarding the incident in the text.[752]Dædalus: Who escaped on wings of his invention from the Cretan Labyrinth he had made and lost himself in.[753]The Sienese: The comparison of these to the French would have the more cogency as Siena boasted of having been founded by the Gauls. ‘That vain people,’ says Dante of the Sienese in thePurgatory(xiii. 151). Among their neighbours they still bear the reputation of light-headedness; also, it ought to be added, of great urbanity.[754]The Stricca: The exception in his favour is ironical, as is that of all the others mentioned.[755]Nicholas: ‘The lavish custom of the clove’ which he invented is variously described. I have chosen the version which makes it consist of stuffing pheasants with cloves, then very costly.[756]The club: The commentators tell that the two young Sienese nobles above mentioned were members of a society formed for the purpose of living luxuriously together. Twelve of them contributed a fund of above two hundred thousand gold florins; they built a great palace and furnished it magnificently, and launched out into every other sort of extravagance with such assiduity that in a few months their capital was gone. As that amounted to more than a hundred thousand pounds of our money, equal in those days to a million or two, the story must be held to savour of romance. That Dante refers to a prodigal’s club that actually existed some time before he wrote we cannot doubt. But it seems uncertain, to say the least, whether the sonnets addressed by the Tuscan poet Folgore da Gemignano to a jovial crew in Siena can be taken as having been inspired by the club Dante speaks of. A translation of them is given by Mr. Rossetti in hisCircle of Dante. (See Mr. Symonds’sRenaissance, vol. iv. page 54,note, for doubts as to the date of Folgore.)—Caccia d’ Ascian: Whose short and merry club life cost him his estates near Siena.[757]The Abbagliato: Nothing is known, though a great deal is guessed, about this member of the club. It is enough to know that, having a scant supply of wit, he spent it freely.[758]Capocchio: Some one whom Dante knew. Whether he was a Florentine or a Sienese is not ascertained, but from the strain of his mention of the Sienese we may guess Florentine. He was burned in Siena in 1293.—(Scartazzini.) They had studied together, says theAnonimo. Benvenuto tells of him that one Good Friday, while in a cloister, he painted on his nail with marvellous completeness a picture of the crucifixion. Dante came up, and was lost in wonder, when Capocchio suddenly licked his nail clean—which may be taken for what it is worth.

The many folk and wounds of divers kindHad flushed mine eyes and set them on the flow,Till I to weep and linger had a mind;But Virgil said to me: ‘Why gazing so?Why still thy vision fastening on the crewOf dismal shades dismembered there below?Thou didst not[735]thus the other Bolgias view:Think, if to count them be thine enterprise,The valley circles twenty miles and two.[736]Beneath our feet the moon[737]already lies;10The time[738]wears fast away to us decreed;And greater things than these await thine eyes.’I answered swift: ‘Hadst thou but given heedTo why it was my looks were downward bent,To yet more stay thou mightest have agreed.’My Guide meanwhile was moving, and I wentBehind him and continued to reply,Adding: ‘Within the moat on which intentI now was gazing with such eager eyeI trow a spirit weeps, one of my kin,20The crime whose guilt is rated there so high.’Then said the Master: ‘Henceforth hold thou inThy thoughts from wandering to him: new things claimAttention now, so leave him with his sin.Him saw I at thee from the bridge-foot aimA threatening finger, while he made thee known;Geri del Bello[739]heard I named his name.But, at the time, thou wast with him aloneEngrossed who once held Hautefort,[740]nor the placeDidst look at where he was; so passed he on.’30‘O Leader mine! death violent and base,And not avenged as yet,’ I made reply,‘By any of his partners in disgrace,Made him disdainful; therefore went he byAnd spake not with me, if I judge aright;Which does the more my ruth[741]intensify.’So we conversed till from the cliff we mightOf the next valley have had prospect goodDown to the bottom, with but clearer light.[742]When we above the inmost Cloister stood40Of Malebolge, and discerned the crewOf such as there compose the Brotherhood,[743]So many lamentations pierced me through—And barbed with pity all the shafts were sped—My open palms across my ears I drew.From Valdichiana’s[744]every spital bedAll ailments to September from July,With all in Maremma and Sardinia[745]bred,Heaped in one pit a sickness might supplyLike what was here; and from it rose a stink50Like that which comes from limbs that putrefy.Then we descended by the utmost brinkOf the long ridge[746]—leftward once more we fell—Until my vision, quickened now, could sinkDeeper to where Justice infallible,The minister of the Almighty Lord,Chastises forgers doomed on earth[747]to Hell.Ægina[748]could no sadder sight afford,As I believe (when all the people ailedAnd all the air was so with sickness stored,60Down to the very worms creation failedAnd died, whereon the pristine folk once more,As by the poets is for certain held,From seed of ants their family did restore),Than what was offered by that valley blackWith plague-struck spirits heaped upon the floor.Supine some lay, each on the other’s backOr stomach; and some crawled with crouching gaitFor change of place along the doleful track.Speechless we moved with step deliberate,70With eyes and ears on those disease crushed downNor left them power to lift their bodies straight.I saw two sit, shoulder to shoulder thrownAs plate holds plate up to be warmed, from headDown to the feet with scurf and scab o’ergrown.Nor ever saw I curry-comb so pliedBy varlet with his master standing by,Or by one kept unwillingly from bed,As I saw each of these his scratchers plyUpon himself; for nought else now avails80Against the itch which plagues them furiously.The scab[749]they tore and loosened with their nails,As with a knife men use the bream to strip,Or any other fish with larger scales.‘Thou, that thy mail dost with thy fingers rip,’My Guide to one of them began to say,‘And sometimes dost with them as pincers nip,Tell, is there any here from ItalyAmong you all, so may thy nails sufficeFor this their work to all eternity.’[750]90‘Latians are both of us in this disguiseOf wretchedness,’ weeping said one of those;‘But who art thou, demanding on this wise?’My Guide made answer: ‘I am one who goesDown with this living man from steep to steepThat I to him Inferno may disclose.’Then broke their mutual prop; trembling with deepAmazement each turned to me, with the restTo whom his words had echoed in the heap.Me the good Master cordially addressed:100‘Whate’er thou hast a mind to ask them, say.’And since he wished it, thus I made request:‘So may remembrance of you not decayWithin the upper world out of the mindOf men, but flourish still for many a day,As ye shall tell your names and what your kind:Let not your vile, disgusting punishmentTo full confession make you disinclined.’‘An Aretine,[751]I to the stake was sentBy Albert of Siena,’ one confessed,110‘But came not here through that for which I wentTo death. ’Tis true I told him all in jest,I through the air could float in upward gyre;And he, inquisitive and dull at best,Did full instruction in the art require:I could not make him Dædalus,[752]so thenHis second father sent me to the fire.But to the deepest Bolgia of the ten,For alchemy which in the world I wrought,The unerring Minos doomed me.’ ‘Now were menE’er found,’ I of the Poet asked, ‘so fraught121With vanity as are the Sienese?[753]French vanity to theirs is surely nought.’The other leper hearing me, to theseMy words: ‘Omit the Stricca,’[754]swift did shout,‘Who knew his tastes with temperance to please;And Nicholas,[755]who earliest found outThe lavish custom of the clove-stuffed roastWithin the garden where such seed doth sprout.Nor count the club[756]where Caccia d’ Ascian lost130Vineyards and woods; ’mid whom away did throwHis wit the Abbagliato.[757]But whose ghostIt is, that thou mayst weet, that backs thee soAgainst the Sienese, make sharp thine eyesThat thou my countenance mayst surely know.In me Capocchio’s[758]shade thou’lt recognise,Who forged false coin by means of alchemy:Thou must remember, if I well surmise,How I of nature very ape could be.’

FOOTNOTES:[735]Thou didst not, etc.: It is a noteworthy feature in the conduct of the Poem that when Dante has once gained sufficient knowledge of any group in the Inferno he at once detaches his mind from it, and, carrying on as little arrear of pity as he can, gives his thoughts to further progress on the journey. The departure here made from his usual behaviour is presently accounted for. Virgil knows why he lingers, but will not seem to approve of the cause.[736]Twenty miles and two: The Ninth Bolgia has a circumference of twenty-two miles, and as the procession of the shades is slow it would indeed involve a protracted halt to wait till all had passed beneath the bridge. Virgil asks ironically if he wishes to count them all. This precise detail, taken along with one of the same kind in the following Canto (line 86), has suggested the attempt to construct the Inferno to a scale. Dante wisely suffers us to forget, if we will, that—taking the diameter of the earth at 6500 miles, as given by him in theConvito—he travels from the surface of the globe to the centre at the rate of more than two miles a minute, counting downward motion alone. It is only when he has come to the lowest rings that he allows himself to give details of size; and probably the mention of the extent of the Ninth Bolgia, which comes on the reader as a surprise, is thrown out in order to impress on the imagination some sense of the enormous extent of the regions through which the pilgrim has already passed. Henceforth he deals in exact measurement.[737]The moon: It is now some time after noon on the Saturday. The last indication of time was at Canto xxi. 112.[738]The time, etc.: Before nightfall they are to complete their exploration of the Inferno, and they will have spent twenty-four hours in it.[739]Geri del Bello: One of the Alighieri, a full cousin of Dante’s father. He was guilty of encouraging dissension, say the commentators; which is to be clearly inferred from the place assigned him in Inferno: but they do not agree as to how he met his death, nor do they mention the date of it. ‘Not avenged till thirty years after,’ says Landino; but does not say if this was after his death or the time at which Dante writes.[740]Hautefort: Bertrand de Born’s castle in Gascony.[741]My ruth: Enlightened moralist though Dante is, he yet shows himself man of his age enough to be keenly alive to the extremest claims of kindred; and while he condemns thevendettaby the words put into Virgil’s mouth, he confesses to a feeling of meanness not to have practised it on behoof of a distant relative. There is a high art in this introduction of Geri del Bello. Had they conferred together Dante must have seemed either cruel or pusillanimous, reproaching or being reproached. As it is, all the poetry of the situation comes out the stronger that they do not meet face to face: the threatening finger, the questions hastily put to Geri by the astonished shades, and his disappearance under the dark vault when by the law of his punishment the sinner can no longer tarry.[742]With but clearer light: They have crossed the rampart dividing the Ninth Bolgia from the Tenth, of which they would now command a view, were it not so dark.[743]The Brotherhood: The word used properly describes the Lay Brothers of a monastery. Philalethes suggests that Dante may regard the devils as the true monks of the monastery of Malebolge. The simile involves no contempt for the monastic life, but is naturally used with reference to those who live secluded and under a fixed rule. He elsewhere speaks of the College of the Hypocrites (Inf.xxiii. 91) and of Paradise as the Cloister where Christ is Abbot (Purg.xxvi.129).[744]Valdichiana: The district lying between Arezzo and Chiusi; in Dante’s time a hotbed of malaria, but now, owing to drainage works promoted by the enlightened Tuscan minister Fossombroni (1823), one of the most fertile and healthy regions of Italy.[745]Sardinia: Had in the middle ages an evil reputation for its fever-stricken air. The Maremma has been already mentioned (Inf.xxv.19). In Dante’s time it was almost unpeopled.[746]The long ridge: One of the ribs of rock which, like the spokes of a wheel, ran from the periphery to the centre of Malebolge, rising into arches as they crossed each successive Bolgia. The utmost brink is the inner bank of the Tenth and last Bolgia. To the edge of this moat they descend, bearing as usual to the left hand.[747]Doomed on earth, etc.: ‘Whom she here registers.’ While they are still on earth their doom is fixed by Divine justice.[748]Ægina: The description is taken from Ovid (Metam.vii.).[749]The scab, etc.: As if by an infernal alchemy the matter of the shadowy bodies of these sinners is changed into one loathsome form or another.[750]To all eternity: This may seem a stroke of sarcasm, but is not. Himself a shade, Virgil cannot, like Dante, promise to refresh the memory of the shades on earth, and can only wish for them some slight alleviation of their suffering.[751]An Aretine: Called Griffolino, and burned at Florence or Siena on a charge of heresy. Albert of Siena is said to have been a relative, some say the natural son, of the Bishop of Siena. A man of the name figures as hero in some of Sacchetti’s novels, always in a ridiculous light. There seems to be no authentic testimony regarding the incident in the text.[752]Dædalus: Who escaped on wings of his invention from the Cretan Labyrinth he had made and lost himself in.[753]The Sienese: The comparison of these to the French would have the more cogency as Siena boasted of having been founded by the Gauls. ‘That vain people,’ says Dante of the Sienese in thePurgatory(xiii. 151). Among their neighbours they still bear the reputation of light-headedness; also, it ought to be added, of great urbanity.[754]The Stricca: The exception in his favour is ironical, as is that of all the others mentioned.[755]Nicholas: ‘The lavish custom of the clove’ which he invented is variously described. I have chosen the version which makes it consist of stuffing pheasants with cloves, then very costly.[756]The club: The commentators tell that the two young Sienese nobles above mentioned were members of a society formed for the purpose of living luxuriously together. Twelve of them contributed a fund of above two hundred thousand gold florins; they built a great palace and furnished it magnificently, and launched out into every other sort of extravagance with such assiduity that in a few months their capital was gone. As that amounted to more than a hundred thousand pounds of our money, equal in those days to a million or two, the story must be held to savour of romance. That Dante refers to a prodigal’s club that actually existed some time before he wrote we cannot doubt. But it seems uncertain, to say the least, whether the sonnets addressed by the Tuscan poet Folgore da Gemignano to a jovial crew in Siena can be taken as having been inspired by the club Dante speaks of. A translation of them is given by Mr. Rossetti in hisCircle of Dante. (See Mr. Symonds’sRenaissance, vol. iv. page 54,note, for doubts as to the date of Folgore.)—Caccia d’ Ascian: Whose short and merry club life cost him his estates near Siena.[757]The Abbagliato: Nothing is known, though a great deal is guessed, about this member of the club. It is enough to know that, having a scant supply of wit, he spent it freely.[758]Capocchio: Some one whom Dante knew. Whether he was a Florentine or a Sienese is not ascertained, but from the strain of his mention of the Sienese we may guess Florentine. He was burned in Siena in 1293.—(Scartazzini.) They had studied together, says theAnonimo. Benvenuto tells of him that one Good Friday, while in a cloister, he painted on his nail with marvellous completeness a picture of the crucifixion. Dante came up, and was lost in wonder, when Capocchio suddenly licked his nail clean—which may be taken for what it is worth.

[735]Thou didst not, etc.: It is a noteworthy feature in the conduct of the Poem that when Dante has once gained sufficient knowledge of any group in the Inferno he at once detaches his mind from it, and, carrying on as little arrear of pity as he can, gives his thoughts to further progress on the journey. The departure here made from his usual behaviour is presently accounted for. Virgil knows why he lingers, but will not seem to approve of the cause.

[736]Twenty miles and two: The Ninth Bolgia has a circumference of twenty-two miles, and as the procession of the shades is slow it would indeed involve a protracted halt to wait till all had passed beneath the bridge. Virgil asks ironically if he wishes to count them all. This precise detail, taken along with one of the same kind in the following Canto (line 86), has suggested the attempt to construct the Inferno to a scale. Dante wisely suffers us to forget, if we will, that—taking the diameter of the earth at 6500 miles, as given by him in theConvito—he travels from the surface of the globe to the centre at the rate of more than two miles a minute, counting downward motion alone. It is only when he has come to the lowest rings that he allows himself to give details of size; and probably the mention of the extent of the Ninth Bolgia, which comes on the reader as a surprise, is thrown out in order to impress on the imagination some sense of the enormous extent of the regions through which the pilgrim has already passed. Henceforth he deals in exact measurement.

[737]The moon: It is now some time after noon on the Saturday. The last indication of time was at Canto xxi. 112.

[738]The time, etc.: Before nightfall they are to complete their exploration of the Inferno, and they will have spent twenty-four hours in it.

[739]Geri del Bello: One of the Alighieri, a full cousin of Dante’s father. He was guilty of encouraging dissension, say the commentators; which is to be clearly inferred from the place assigned him in Inferno: but they do not agree as to how he met his death, nor do they mention the date of it. ‘Not avenged till thirty years after,’ says Landino; but does not say if this was after his death or the time at which Dante writes.

[740]Hautefort: Bertrand de Born’s castle in Gascony.

[741]My ruth: Enlightened moralist though Dante is, he yet shows himself man of his age enough to be keenly alive to the extremest claims of kindred; and while he condemns thevendettaby the words put into Virgil’s mouth, he confesses to a feeling of meanness not to have practised it on behoof of a distant relative. There is a high art in this introduction of Geri del Bello. Had they conferred together Dante must have seemed either cruel or pusillanimous, reproaching or being reproached. As it is, all the poetry of the situation comes out the stronger that they do not meet face to face: the threatening finger, the questions hastily put to Geri by the astonished shades, and his disappearance under the dark vault when by the law of his punishment the sinner can no longer tarry.

[742]With but clearer light: They have crossed the rampart dividing the Ninth Bolgia from the Tenth, of which they would now command a view, were it not so dark.

[743]The Brotherhood: The word used properly describes the Lay Brothers of a monastery. Philalethes suggests that Dante may regard the devils as the true monks of the monastery of Malebolge. The simile involves no contempt for the monastic life, but is naturally used with reference to those who live secluded and under a fixed rule. He elsewhere speaks of the College of the Hypocrites (Inf.xxiii. 91) and of Paradise as the Cloister where Christ is Abbot (Purg.xxvi.129).

[744]Valdichiana: The district lying between Arezzo and Chiusi; in Dante’s time a hotbed of malaria, but now, owing to drainage works promoted by the enlightened Tuscan minister Fossombroni (1823), one of the most fertile and healthy regions of Italy.

[745]Sardinia: Had in the middle ages an evil reputation for its fever-stricken air. The Maremma has been already mentioned (Inf.xxv.19). In Dante’s time it was almost unpeopled.

[746]The long ridge: One of the ribs of rock which, like the spokes of a wheel, ran from the periphery to the centre of Malebolge, rising into arches as they crossed each successive Bolgia. The utmost brink is the inner bank of the Tenth and last Bolgia. To the edge of this moat they descend, bearing as usual to the left hand.

[747]Doomed on earth, etc.: ‘Whom she here registers.’ While they are still on earth their doom is fixed by Divine justice.

[748]Ægina: The description is taken from Ovid (Metam.vii.).

[749]The scab, etc.: As if by an infernal alchemy the matter of the shadowy bodies of these sinners is changed into one loathsome form or another.

[750]To all eternity: This may seem a stroke of sarcasm, but is not. Himself a shade, Virgil cannot, like Dante, promise to refresh the memory of the shades on earth, and can only wish for them some slight alleviation of their suffering.

[751]An Aretine: Called Griffolino, and burned at Florence or Siena on a charge of heresy. Albert of Siena is said to have been a relative, some say the natural son, of the Bishop of Siena. A man of the name figures as hero in some of Sacchetti’s novels, always in a ridiculous light. There seems to be no authentic testimony regarding the incident in the text.

[752]Dædalus: Who escaped on wings of his invention from the Cretan Labyrinth he had made and lost himself in.

[753]The Sienese: The comparison of these to the French would have the more cogency as Siena boasted of having been founded by the Gauls. ‘That vain people,’ says Dante of the Sienese in thePurgatory(xiii. 151). Among their neighbours they still bear the reputation of light-headedness; also, it ought to be added, of great urbanity.

[754]The Stricca: The exception in his favour is ironical, as is that of all the others mentioned.

[755]Nicholas: ‘The lavish custom of the clove’ which he invented is variously described. I have chosen the version which makes it consist of stuffing pheasants with cloves, then very costly.

[756]The club: The commentators tell that the two young Sienese nobles above mentioned were members of a society formed for the purpose of living luxuriously together. Twelve of them contributed a fund of above two hundred thousand gold florins; they built a great palace and furnished it magnificently, and launched out into every other sort of extravagance with such assiduity that in a few months their capital was gone. As that amounted to more than a hundred thousand pounds of our money, equal in those days to a million or two, the story must be held to savour of romance. That Dante refers to a prodigal’s club that actually existed some time before he wrote we cannot doubt. But it seems uncertain, to say the least, whether the sonnets addressed by the Tuscan poet Folgore da Gemignano to a jovial crew in Siena can be taken as having been inspired by the club Dante speaks of. A translation of them is given by Mr. Rossetti in hisCircle of Dante. (See Mr. Symonds’sRenaissance, vol. iv. page 54,note, for doubts as to the date of Folgore.)—Caccia d’ Ascian: Whose short and merry club life cost him his estates near Siena.

[757]The Abbagliato: Nothing is known, though a great deal is guessed, about this member of the club. It is enough to know that, having a scant supply of wit, he spent it freely.

[758]Capocchio: Some one whom Dante knew. Whether he was a Florentine or a Sienese is not ascertained, but from the strain of his mention of the Sienese we may guess Florentine. He was burned in Siena in 1293.—(Scartazzini.) They had studied together, says theAnonimo. Benvenuto tells of him that one Good Friday, while in a cloister, he painted on his nail with marvellous completeness a picture of the crucifixion. Dante came up, and was lost in wonder, when Capocchio suddenly licked his nail clean—which may be taken for what it is worth.

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