CANTO XXVI.

CANTO XXVI.Rejoice, O Florence, in thy widening fame!Thy wings thou beatest over land and sea,And even through Inferno spreads thy name.Burghers of thine, five such were found by meAmong the thieves; whence I ashamed[668]grew,Nor shall great glory thence redound to thee.But if ’tis toward the morning[669]dreams are true,Thou shalt experience ere long time be goneThe doom even Prato[670]prays for as thy due.And came it now, it would not come too soon.10Would it were come as come it must with time:’Twill crush me more the older I am grown.Departing thence, my Guide began to climbThe jutting rocks by which we made descentSome while ago,[671]and pulled me after him.And as upon our lonely way we went’Mong splinters[672]of the cliff, the feet in vain,Without the hand to help, had labour spent.I sorrowed, and am sorrow-smit again,Recalling what before mine eyes there lay,20And, more than I am wont, my genius reinFrom running save where virtue leads the way;So that if happy star[673]or holier mightHave gifted me I never mourn it may.At time of year when he who gives earth lightHis face shows to us longest visible,When gnats replace the fly at fall of night,Not by the peasant resting on the hillAre seen more fire-flies in the vale below,Where he perchance doth field and vineyard[674]till,30Than flamelets I beheld resplendent glowThroughout the whole Eighth Bolgia, when at lastI stood whence I the bottom plain could know.And as he whom the bears avenged, when passedFrom the earth Elijah, saw the chariot riseWith horses heavenward reared and mounting fast,And no long time had traced it with his eyesTill but a flash of light it all became,Which like a rack of cloud swept to the skies:Deep in the valley’s gorge, in mode the same,40These flitted; what it held by none was shown,And yet a sinner[675]lurked in every flame.To see them well I from the bridge peered down,And if a jutting crag I had not caughtI must have fallen, though neither thrust nor thrown.My Leader me beholding lost in thought:‘In all the fires are spirits,’ said to me;‘His flame round each is for a garment wrought.’‘O Master!’ I replied, ‘by hearing theeI grow assured, but yet I knew before50That thus indeed it was, and longed to beTold who is in the flame which there doth soar,Cloven, as if ascending from the pyreWhere with Eteocles[676]there burned of yoreHis brother.’ He: ‘Ulysses in that fireAnd Diomedes[677]burn; in punishmentThus held together, as they held in ire.And, wrapped within their flame, they now repentThe ambush of the horse, which oped the doorThrough which the Romans’ noble seed[678]forth went.60For guile Deïdamia[679]makes deploreIn death her lost Achilles, tears they shed,And bear for the Palladium[680]vengeance sore.’‘Master, I pray thee fervently,’ I said,‘If from those flames they still can utter speech—Give ear as if a thousand times I pled!Refuse not here to linger, I beseech,Until the cloven fire shall hither gain:Thou seest how toward it eagerly I reach.’And he: ‘Thy prayers are worthy to obtain70Exceeding praise; thou hast what thou dost seek:But see that thou from speech thy tongue refrain.I know what thou wouldst have; leave me to speak,For they perchance would hear contemptuouslyShouldst thou address them, seeing they were Greek.’[681]Soon as the flame toward us had come so nighThat to my Leader time and place seemed met,I heard him thus adjure it to reply:‘O ye who twain within one fire are set,If what I did your guerdon meriteth,80If much or little ye are in my debtFor the great verse I built while I had breath,By one of you be openly confessedWhere, lost to men, at last he met with death.’Of the ancient flame the more conspicuous crestMurmuring began to waver up and downLike flame that flickers, by the wind distressed.At length by it was measured motion shown,Like tongue that moves in speech; and by the flameWas language uttered thus: ‘When I had gone90From Circe[682]who a long year kept me tameBeside her, ere the near Gaeta hadReceivèd from Æneas that new name;No softness for my son, nor reverence sadFor my old father, nor the love I owedPenelope with which to make her glad,Could quench the ardour that within me glowedA full experience of the world to gain—Of human vice and worth. But I abroadLaunched out upon the high and open main[683]100With but one bark and but the little bandWhich ne’er deserted me.[684]As far as SpainI saw the sea-shore upon either hand,And as Morocco; saw Sardinia’s isle,And all of which those waters wash the strand.I and my comrades were grown old the whileAnd sluggish, ere we to the narrows cameWhere Hercules of old did landmarks pileFor sign to men they should no further aim;And Seville lay behind me on the right,110As on the left lay Ceuta. Then to themI spake: “O Brothers, who through such a fightOf hundred thousand dangers West have won,In this short watch that ushers in the nightOf all your senses, ere your day be done,Refuse not to obtain experience newOf worlds unpeopled, yonder, past the sun.Consider whence the seed of life ye drew;Ye were not born to live like brutish herd,But righteousness and wisdom to ensue.”120My comrades to such eagerness were stirredBy this short speech the course to enter on,They had no longer brooked restraining word.Turning our poop to where the morning shoneWe of the oars made wings for our mad flight,Still tending left the further we had gone.And of the other pole I saw at nightNow all the stars; and ’neath the watery plainOur own familiar heavens were lost to sight.Five times afresh had kindled, and again130The moon’s face earthward was illumed no more,Since out we sailed upon the mighty main;[685]Then we beheld a lofty mountain[686]soar,Dim in the distance; higher, as I thought,By far than any I had seen before.We joyed; but with despair were soon distraughtWhen burst a whirlwind from the new-found worldAnd the forequarter of the vessel caught.With all the waters thrice it round was swirled;At the fourth time the poop, heaved upward, rose,140The prow, as pleased Another,[687]down was hurled;And then above us did the ocean close.’FOOTNOTES:[668]Whence I ashamed, etc.: There is here a sudden change from irony to earnest. ‘Five members of great Florentine families, eternally engaged among themselves in their shameful metamorphoses—nay, but it is too sad!’[669]Toward the morning, etc.: There was a widespread belief in the greater truthfulness of dreams dreamed as the night wears away. SeePurg.ix. 13. The dream is Dante’s foreboding of what is to happen to Florence. Of its truth he has no doubt, and the only question is how soon will it be answered by the fact. Soon, he says, if it is near to the morning that we dream true dreams—morning being the season of waking reality in which dreams are accomplished.[670]Even Prato: A small neighbouring city, much under the influence of Florence, and somewhat oppressed by it. The commentators reckon up the disasters that afflicted Florence in the first years of the fourteenth century, between the date of Dante’s journey and the time he wrote—fires, falls of bridges, and civil strife. But such misfortunes were too much in keeping with the usual course of Florentine history to move Dante thus deeply in the retrospect; and as he speaks here in his own person the ‘soon’ is more naturally counted from the time at which he writes than from the date assigned by him to his pilgrimage. He is looking forward to the period when his own return in triumph to Florence was to be prepared by grievous national reverses; and, as a patriot, he feels that he cannot be wholly reconciled by his private advantage to the public misfortune. But it was all only a dream.[671]Some while ago: See note,Inf.xxiv. 79.[672]’Mong splinters, etc.: They cross the wall or barrier between the Seventh and Eighth Bolgias. FromInf.xxiv. 63 we have learned that the rib of rock, on the line of which they are now proceeding, with its arches which overhang the various Bolgias, is rougher and worse to follow than that by which they began their passage towards the centre of Malebolge.[673]Happy star: See note,Inf.xv. 55. Dante seems to have been uncertain what credence to give to the claims of astrology. In a passage of thePurgatorio(xvi. 67) he tries to establish that whatever influence the stars may possess over us we can never, except with our own consent, be influenced by them to evil.—His sorrow here, as elsewhere, is not wholly a feeling of pity for the suffering shades, but is largely mingled with misgivings for himself. The punishment of those to whose sins he feels no inclination he always beholds with equanimity. Here, as he looks down upon the false counsellors and considers what temptations there are to misapply intellectual gifts, he is smitten with dread lest his lot should one day be cast in that dismal valley and he find cause to regret that the talent of genius was ever committed to him. The memory even of what he saw makes him recollect himself and resolve to be wary. Then, as if to justify the claim to superior powers thus clearly implied, there comes a passage which in the original is of uncommon beauty.[674]Field and vineyard: These lines, redolent of the sweet Tuscan midsummer gloaming, give us amid the horrors of Malebolge something like the breath of fresh air the peasant lingers to enjoy. It may be noted that in Italy the village is often found perched above the more fertile land, on a site originally chosen with a view to security from attack. So that here the peasant is at home from his labour.[675]And yet a sinner, etc.: The false counsellors who for selfish ends hid their true minds and misused their intellectual light to lead others astray are for ever hidden each in his own wandering flame.[676]Eteocles: Son of Œdipus and twin brother of Polynices. The brothers slew one another, and were placed on the same funeral pile, the flame of which clove into two as if to image the discord that had existed between them (Theb.xii.).[677]And Diomedes: The two are associated in deeds of blood and guile at the siege of Troy.[678]The Romans’ noble seed: The trick of the wooden horse led to the capture of Troy, and that led Æneas to wander forth on the adventures that ended in the settlement of the Trojans in Italy.[679]Deïdamia: That Achilles might be kept from joining the Greek expedition to Troy he was sent by his mother to the court of Lycomedes, father of Deïdamia. Ulysses lured him away from his hiding-place and from Deïdamia, whom he had made a mother.[680]The Palladium: The Trojan sacred image of Pallas, stolen by Ulysses and Diomed (Æn.ii.). Ulysses is here upon his own ground.[681]They were Greek: Some find here an allusion to Dante’s ignorance of the Greek language and literature. But Virgil addresses them in the Lombard dialect of Italian (Inf.xxvii. 21). He acts as spokesman because those ancient Greeks were all so haughty that to a common modern mortal they would have nothing to say. He, as the author of theÆneid, has a special claim on their good-nature. It is but seldom that the shades are told who Virgil is, and never directly. Here Ulysses may infer it from the mention of the ‘lofty verse.’[682]From Circe: It is Ulysses that speaks.[683]The open main: The Mediterranean as distinguished from the Ægean.[684]Which ne’er deserted me: There seems no reason for supposing, with Philalethes, that Ulysses is here represented as sailing on his last voyage from the island of Circe and not from Ithaca. Ulysses, on the contrary, represents himself as breaking away afresh from all the ties of home. According to Homer, Ulysses had lost all his companions ere he returned to Ithaca; and in theOdysseyTiresias prophesies to him that his last wanderings are to be inland. But any acquaintance that Dante had with Homer can only have been vague and fragmentary. He may have founded his narrative of how Ulysses ended his days upon some floating legend; or, eager to fill up what he took to be a blank in the world of imagination, he may have drawn wholly on his own creative power. In any case it is his Ulysses who, through the version of him given by a living poet, is most familiar to the English reader.[685]The mighty main: The Atlantic Ocean. They bear to the left as they sail, till their course is due south, and crossing the Equator, they find themselves under the strange skies of the southern hemisphere. For months they have seen no land.[686]A lofty mountain: This is the Mountain of Purgatory, according to Dante’s geography antipodal to Jerusalem, and the only land in the southern hemisphere.[687]As pleased Another: Ulysses is proudly resigned to the failure of his enterprise, ‘for he was Greek.’

Rejoice, O Florence, in thy widening fame!Thy wings thou beatest over land and sea,And even through Inferno spreads thy name.Burghers of thine, five such were found by meAmong the thieves; whence I ashamed[668]grew,Nor shall great glory thence redound to thee.But if ’tis toward the morning[669]dreams are true,Thou shalt experience ere long time be goneThe doom even Prato[670]prays for as thy due.And came it now, it would not come too soon.10Would it were come as come it must with time:’Twill crush me more the older I am grown.Departing thence, my Guide began to climbThe jutting rocks by which we made descentSome while ago,[671]and pulled me after him.And as upon our lonely way we went’Mong splinters[672]of the cliff, the feet in vain,Without the hand to help, had labour spent.I sorrowed, and am sorrow-smit again,Recalling what before mine eyes there lay,20And, more than I am wont, my genius reinFrom running save where virtue leads the way;So that if happy star[673]or holier mightHave gifted me I never mourn it may.At time of year when he who gives earth lightHis face shows to us longest visible,When gnats replace the fly at fall of night,Not by the peasant resting on the hillAre seen more fire-flies in the vale below,Where he perchance doth field and vineyard[674]till,30Than flamelets I beheld resplendent glowThroughout the whole Eighth Bolgia, when at lastI stood whence I the bottom plain could know.And as he whom the bears avenged, when passedFrom the earth Elijah, saw the chariot riseWith horses heavenward reared and mounting fast,And no long time had traced it with his eyesTill but a flash of light it all became,Which like a rack of cloud swept to the skies:Deep in the valley’s gorge, in mode the same,40These flitted; what it held by none was shown,And yet a sinner[675]lurked in every flame.To see them well I from the bridge peered down,And if a jutting crag I had not caughtI must have fallen, though neither thrust nor thrown.My Leader me beholding lost in thought:‘In all the fires are spirits,’ said to me;‘His flame round each is for a garment wrought.’‘O Master!’ I replied, ‘by hearing theeI grow assured, but yet I knew before50That thus indeed it was, and longed to beTold who is in the flame which there doth soar,Cloven, as if ascending from the pyreWhere with Eteocles[676]there burned of yoreHis brother.’ He: ‘Ulysses in that fireAnd Diomedes[677]burn; in punishmentThus held together, as they held in ire.And, wrapped within their flame, they now repentThe ambush of the horse, which oped the doorThrough which the Romans’ noble seed[678]forth went.60For guile Deïdamia[679]makes deploreIn death her lost Achilles, tears they shed,And bear for the Palladium[680]vengeance sore.’‘Master, I pray thee fervently,’ I said,‘If from those flames they still can utter speech—Give ear as if a thousand times I pled!Refuse not here to linger, I beseech,Until the cloven fire shall hither gain:Thou seest how toward it eagerly I reach.’And he: ‘Thy prayers are worthy to obtain70Exceeding praise; thou hast what thou dost seek:But see that thou from speech thy tongue refrain.I know what thou wouldst have; leave me to speak,For they perchance would hear contemptuouslyShouldst thou address them, seeing they were Greek.’[681]Soon as the flame toward us had come so nighThat to my Leader time and place seemed met,I heard him thus adjure it to reply:‘O ye who twain within one fire are set,If what I did your guerdon meriteth,80If much or little ye are in my debtFor the great verse I built while I had breath,By one of you be openly confessedWhere, lost to men, at last he met with death.’Of the ancient flame the more conspicuous crestMurmuring began to waver up and downLike flame that flickers, by the wind distressed.At length by it was measured motion shown,Like tongue that moves in speech; and by the flameWas language uttered thus: ‘When I had gone90From Circe[682]who a long year kept me tameBeside her, ere the near Gaeta hadReceivèd from Æneas that new name;No softness for my son, nor reverence sadFor my old father, nor the love I owedPenelope with which to make her glad,Could quench the ardour that within me glowedA full experience of the world to gain—Of human vice and worth. But I abroadLaunched out upon the high and open main[683]100With but one bark and but the little bandWhich ne’er deserted me.[684]As far as SpainI saw the sea-shore upon either hand,And as Morocco; saw Sardinia’s isle,And all of which those waters wash the strand.I and my comrades were grown old the whileAnd sluggish, ere we to the narrows cameWhere Hercules of old did landmarks pileFor sign to men they should no further aim;And Seville lay behind me on the right,110As on the left lay Ceuta. Then to themI spake: “O Brothers, who through such a fightOf hundred thousand dangers West have won,In this short watch that ushers in the nightOf all your senses, ere your day be done,Refuse not to obtain experience newOf worlds unpeopled, yonder, past the sun.Consider whence the seed of life ye drew;Ye were not born to live like brutish herd,But righteousness and wisdom to ensue.”120My comrades to such eagerness were stirredBy this short speech the course to enter on,They had no longer brooked restraining word.Turning our poop to where the morning shoneWe of the oars made wings for our mad flight,Still tending left the further we had gone.And of the other pole I saw at nightNow all the stars; and ’neath the watery plainOur own familiar heavens were lost to sight.Five times afresh had kindled, and again130The moon’s face earthward was illumed no more,Since out we sailed upon the mighty main;[685]Then we beheld a lofty mountain[686]soar,Dim in the distance; higher, as I thought,By far than any I had seen before.We joyed; but with despair were soon distraughtWhen burst a whirlwind from the new-found worldAnd the forequarter of the vessel caught.With all the waters thrice it round was swirled;At the fourth time the poop, heaved upward, rose,140The prow, as pleased Another,[687]down was hurled;And then above us did the ocean close.’

FOOTNOTES:[668]Whence I ashamed, etc.: There is here a sudden change from irony to earnest. ‘Five members of great Florentine families, eternally engaged among themselves in their shameful metamorphoses—nay, but it is too sad!’[669]Toward the morning, etc.: There was a widespread belief in the greater truthfulness of dreams dreamed as the night wears away. SeePurg.ix. 13. The dream is Dante’s foreboding of what is to happen to Florence. Of its truth he has no doubt, and the only question is how soon will it be answered by the fact. Soon, he says, if it is near to the morning that we dream true dreams—morning being the season of waking reality in which dreams are accomplished.[670]Even Prato: A small neighbouring city, much under the influence of Florence, and somewhat oppressed by it. The commentators reckon up the disasters that afflicted Florence in the first years of the fourteenth century, between the date of Dante’s journey and the time he wrote—fires, falls of bridges, and civil strife. But such misfortunes were too much in keeping with the usual course of Florentine history to move Dante thus deeply in the retrospect; and as he speaks here in his own person the ‘soon’ is more naturally counted from the time at which he writes than from the date assigned by him to his pilgrimage. He is looking forward to the period when his own return in triumph to Florence was to be prepared by grievous national reverses; and, as a patriot, he feels that he cannot be wholly reconciled by his private advantage to the public misfortune. But it was all only a dream.[671]Some while ago: See note,Inf.xxiv. 79.[672]’Mong splinters, etc.: They cross the wall or barrier between the Seventh and Eighth Bolgias. FromInf.xxiv. 63 we have learned that the rib of rock, on the line of which they are now proceeding, with its arches which overhang the various Bolgias, is rougher and worse to follow than that by which they began their passage towards the centre of Malebolge.[673]Happy star: See note,Inf.xv. 55. Dante seems to have been uncertain what credence to give to the claims of astrology. In a passage of thePurgatorio(xvi. 67) he tries to establish that whatever influence the stars may possess over us we can never, except with our own consent, be influenced by them to evil.—His sorrow here, as elsewhere, is not wholly a feeling of pity for the suffering shades, but is largely mingled with misgivings for himself. The punishment of those to whose sins he feels no inclination he always beholds with equanimity. Here, as he looks down upon the false counsellors and considers what temptations there are to misapply intellectual gifts, he is smitten with dread lest his lot should one day be cast in that dismal valley and he find cause to regret that the talent of genius was ever committed to him. The memory even of what he saw makes him recollect himself and resolve to be wary. Then, as if to justify the claim to superior powers thus clearly implied, there comes a passage which in the original is of uncommon beauty.[674]Field and vineyard: These lines, redolent of the sweet Tuscan midsummer gloaming, give us amid the horrors of Malebolge something like the breath of fresh air the peasant lingers to enjoy. It may be noted that in Italy the village is often found perched above the more fertile land, on a site originally chosen with a view to security from attack. So that here the peasant is at home from his labour.[675]And yet a sinner, etc.: The false counsellors who for selfish ends hid their true minds and misused their intellectual light to lead others astray are for ever hidden each in his own wandering flame.[676]Eteocles: Son of Œdipus and twin brother of Polynices. The brothers slew one another, and were placed on the same funeral pile, the flame of which clove into two as if to image the discord that had existed between them (Theb.xii.).[677]And Diomedes: The two are associated in deeds of blood and guile at the siege of Troy.[678]The Romans’ noble seed: The trick of the wooden horse led to the capture of Troy, and that led Æneas to wander forth on the adventures that ended in the settlement of the Trojans in Italy.[679]Deïdamia: That Achilles might be kept from joining the Greek expedition to Troy he was sent by his mother to the court of Lycomedes, father of Deïdamia. Ulysses lured him away from his hiding-place and from Deïdamia, whom he had made a mother.[680]The Palladium: The Trojan sacred image of Pallas, stolen by Ulysses and Diomed (Æn.ii.). Ulysses is here upon his own ground.[681]They were Greek: Some find here an allusion to Dante’s ignorance of the Greek language and literature. But Virgil addresses them in the Lombard dialect of Italian (Inf.xxvii. 21). He acts as spokesman because those ancient Greeks were all so haughty that to a common modern mortal they would have nothing to say. He, as the author of theÆneid, has a special claim on their good-nature. It is but seldom that the shades are told who Virgil is, and never directly. Here Ulysses may infer it from the mention of the ‘lofty verse.’[682]From Circe: It is Ulysses that speaks.[683]The open main: The Mediterranean as distinguished from the Ægean.[684]Which ne’er deserted me: There seems no reason for supposing, with Philalethes, that Ulysses is here represented as sailing on his last voyage from the island of Circe and not from Ithaca. Ulysses, on the contrary, represents himself as breaking away afresh from all the ties of home. According to Homer, Ulysses had lost all his companions ere he returned to Ithaca; and in theOdysseyTiresias prophesies to him that his last wanderings are to be inland. But any acquaintance that Dante had with Homer can only have been vague and fragmentary. He may have founded his narrative of how Ulysses ended his days upon some floating legend; or, eager to fill up what he took to be a blank in the world of imagination, he may have drawn wholly on his own creative power. In any case it is his Ulysses who, through the version of him given by a living poet, is most familiar to the English reader.[685]The mighty main: The Atlantic Ocean. They bear to the left as they sail, till their course is due south, and crossing the Equator, they find themselves under the strange skies of the southern hemisphere. For months they have seen no land.[686]A lofty mountain: This is the Mountain of Purgatory, according to Dante’s geography antipodal to Jerusalem, and the only land in the southern hemisphere.[687]As pleased Another: Ulysses is proudly resigned to the failure of his enterprise, ‘for he was Greek.’

[668]Whence I ashamed, etc.: There is here a sudden change from irony to earnest. ‘Five members of great Florentine families, eternally engaged among themselves in their shameful metamorphoses—nay, but it is too sad!’

[669]Toward the morning, etc.: There was a widespread belief in the greater truthfulness of dreams dreamed as the night wears away. SeePurg.ix. 13. The dream is Dante’s foreboding of what is to happen to Florence. Of its truth he has no doubt, and the only question is how soon will it be answered by the fact. Soon, he says, if it is near to the morning that we dream true dreams—morning being the season of waking reality in which dreams are accomplished.

[670]Even Prato: A small neighbouring city, much under the influence of Florence, and somewhat oppressed by it. The commentators reckon up the disasters that afflicted Florence in the first years of the fourteenth century, between the date of Dante’s journey and the time he wrote—fires, falls of bridges, and civil strife. But such misfortunes were too much in keeping with the usual course of Florentine history to move Dante thus deeply in the retrospect; and as he speaks here in his own person the ‘soon’ is more naturally counted from the time at which he writes than from the date assigned by him to his pilgrimage. He is looking forward to the period when his own return in triumph to Florence was to be prepared by grievous national reverses; and, as a patriot, he feels that he cannot be wholly reconciled by his private advantage to the public misfortune. But it was all only a dream.

[671]Some while ago: See note,Inf.xxiv. 79.

[672]’Mong splinters, etc.: They cross the wall or barrier between the Seventh and Eighth Bolgias. FromInf.xxiv. 63 we have learned that the rib of rock, on the line of which they are now proceeding, with its arches which overhang the various Bolgias, is rougher and worse to follow than that by which they began their passage towards the centre of Malebolge.

[673]Happy star: See note,Inf.xv. 55. Dante seems to have been uncertain what credence to give to the claims of astrology. In a passage of thePurgatorio(xvi. 67) he tries to establish that whatever influence the stars may possess over us we can never, except with our own consent, be influenced by them to evil.—His sorrow here, as elsewhere, is not wholly a feeling of pity for the suffering shades, but is largely mingled with misgivings for himself. The punishment of those to whose sins he feels no inclination he always beholds with equanimity. Here, as he looks down upon the false counsellors and considers what temptations there are to misapply intellectual gifts, he is smitten with dread lest his lot should one day be cast in that dismal valley and he find cause to regret that the talent of genius was ever committed to him. The memory even of what he saw makes him recollect himself and resolve to be wary. Then, as if to justify the claim to superior powers thus clearly implied, there comes a passage which in the original is of uncommon beauty.

[674]Field and vineyard: These lines, redolent of the sweet Tuscan midsummer gloaming, give us amid the horrors of Malebolge something like the breath of fresh air the peasant lingers to enjoy. It may be noted that in Italy the village is often found perched above the more fertile land, on a site originally chosen with a view to security from attack. So that here the peasant is at home from his labour.

[675]And yet a sinner, etc.: The false counsellors who for selfish ends hid their true minds and misused their intellectual light to lead others astray are for ever hidden each in his own wandering flame.

[676]Eteocles: Son of Œdipus and twin brother of Polynices. The brothers slew one another, and were placed on the same funeral pile, the flame of which clove into two as if to image the discord that had existed between them (Theb.xii.).

[677]And Diomedes: The two are associated in deeds of blood and guile at the siege of Troy.

[678]The Romans’ noble seed: The trick of the wooden horse led to the capture of Troy, and that led Æneas to wander forth on the adventures that ended in the settlement of the Trojans in Italy.

[679]Deïdamia: That Achilles might be kept from joining the Greek expedition to Troy he was sent by his mother to the court of Lycomedes, father of Deïdamia. Ulysses lured him away from his hiding-place and from Deïdamia, whom he had made a mother.

[680]The Palladium: The Trojan sacred image of Pallas, stolen by Ulysses and Diomed (Æn.ii.). Ulysses is here upon his own ground.

[681]They were Greek: Some find here an allusion to Dante’s ignorance of the Greek language and literature. But Virgil addresses them in the Lombard dialect of Italian (Inf.xxvii. 21). He acts as spokesman because those ancient Greeks were all so haughty that to a common modern mortal they would have nothing to say. He, as the author of theÆneid, has a special claim on their good-nature. It is but seldom that the shades are told who Virgil is, and never directly. Here Ulysses may infer it from the mention of the ‘lofty verse.’

[682]From Circe: It is Ulysses that speaks.

[683]The open main: The Mediterranean as distinguished from the Ægean.

[684]Which ne’er deserted me: There seems no reason for supposing, with Philalethes, that Ulysses is here represented as sailing on his last voyage from the island of Circe and not from Ithaca. Ulysses, on the contrary, represents himself as breaking away afresh from all the ties of home. According to Homer, Ulysses had lost all his companions ere he returned to Ithaca; and in theOdysseyTiresias prophesies to him that his last wanderings are to be inland. But any acquaintance that Dante had with Homer can only have been vague and fragmentary. He may have founded his narrative of how Ulysses ended his days upon some floating legend; or, eager to fill up what he took to be a blank in the world of imagination, he may have drawn wholly on his own creative power. In any case it is his Ulysses who, through the version of him given by a living poet, is most familiar to the English reader.

[685]The mighty main: The Atlantic Ocean. They bear to the left as they sail, till their course is due south, and crossing the Equator, they find themselves under the strange skies of the southern hemisphere. For months they have seen no land.

[686]A lofty mountain: This is the Mountain of Purgatory, according to Dante’s geography antipodal to Jerusalem, and the only land in the southern hemisphere.

[687]As pleased Another: Ulysses is proudly resigned to the failure of his enterprise, ‘for he was Greek.’

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