The Divine Comedy (Complete Annotated Edition). Dante Alighieri

Philip IV. See G. Villani, lib. viii. c. lxxx.

7 Acts of the Apostles, ch. i. 26.

8 “The condemned soul.” Judas.

9 Nicholas III was enraged against Charles I, King of Sicily, because he rejected with scorn his proposition for an alliance between their families. See G. Villani, Hist., lib. iii.

10 He alludes to the pretended gift of the Lateran by Constantine to Sylvester, of which Dante himself seems to imply a doubt, in his treatise “De Monarchâ.”

      Canto XX

       Table of Contents

      ARGUMENT.—The Poet relates the punishment of such as presumed, while living, to predict future events. It is to have their faces reversed and set the contrary way on their limbs, so that, being deprived of the power to see before them, they are constrained ever to walk backward. Among these Virgil points out to him Amphiaraüs, Tiresias, Aruns, and Manto (from the mention of whom he takes occasion to speak of the origin of Mantua), together with several others, who had practised the arts of divination and astrology.

      AND now the verse proceeds to torments new,

      Fit argument of this the twentieth strain

      Of the first song, whose awful theme records

      The spirits whelm’d in woe. Earnest I look’d

      Into the depth, that open’d to my view,

      Moisten’d with tears of anguish, and beheld

      A tribe, that came along the hollow vale,

      In silence weeping: such their step as walk

      Quires chanting solemn litanies on earth.

      As on them more direct mine eye descends,

      Each wondrously seem’d to be revers’d

      At the neck-bone, so that the countenance

      Was from the reins averted: and because

      None might before him look, they were compell’d

      To’ advance with backward gait. Thus one perhaps

      Hath been by force of palsy clean transpos’d,

      But I ne’er saw it nor believe it so.

      Now, reader! think within thyself, so God

      Fruit of thy reading give thee! how I long

      Could keep my visage dry, when I beheld

      Near me our form distorted in such guise,

      That on the hinder parts fall’n from the face

      The tears down-streaming roll’d. Against a rock

      I leant and wept, so that my guide exclaim’d:

      “What, and art thou too witless as the rest?

      Here pity most doth show herself alive,

      When she is dead. What guilt exceedeth his,

      Who with Heaven’s judgment in his passion strives?

      Raise up thy head, raise up, and see the man,

Before whose eyes1 earth gap’d in Thebes, when all

      Cried out, ‘Amphiaraus, whither rushest?

      ‘Why leavest thou the war?’ He not the less

      Fell ruining far as to Minos down,

      Whose grapple none eludes. Lo! how he makes

      The breast his shoulders, and who once too far

      Before him wish’d to see, now backward looks,

      And treads reverse his path. Tiresias note,

      Who semblance chang’d, when woman he became

      Of male, through every limb transform’d, and then

      Once more behov’d him with his rod to strike

      The two entwining serpents, ere the plumes,

      That mark’d the better sex, might shoot again.

      “Aruns, with rere his belly facing, comes.

      On Luni’s mountains ’midst the marbles white,

      Where delves Carrara’s hind, who wons beneath,

      A cavern was his dwelling, whence the stars

      And main-sea wide in boundless view he held.

      “The next, whose loosen’d tresses overspread

      Her bosom, which thou seest not (for each hair

      On that side grows) was Manto, she who search’d

      Through many regions, and at length her seat

      Fix’d in my native land, whence a short space

      My words detain thy audience. When her sire

      From life departed, and in servitude

      The city dedicate to Bacchus mourn’d,

      Long time she went a wand’rer through the world.

      Aloft in Italy’s delightful land

      A lake there lies, at foot of that proud Alp,

      That o’er the Tyrol locks Germania in,

      Its name Benacus, which a thousand rills,

      Methinks, and more, water between the vale

      Camonica and Garda and the height

Of Apennine remote. There is a spot2

      At midway of that lake, where he who bears

      Of Trento’s flock the past’ral staff, with him

      Of Brescia, and the Veronese, might each

      Passing that way his benediction give.

      A garrison of goodly site and strong

Peschiera3 stands, to awe with front oppos’d

      The Bergamese and Brescian, whence the shore

      More slope each way descends. There, whatsoev’er

      Benacus’ bosom holds not, tumbling o’er

      Down falls, and winds a river flood beneath

      Through the green pastures. Soon as in his course

      The steam makes head, Benacus then no more

      They call the name, but Mincius, till at last

      Reaching Governo into Po he falls.

      Not far his course hath run, when a wide flat

      It finds, which overstretchmg as a marsh

      It covers, pestilent in summer oft.

      Hence journeying, the savage maiden saw

      ’Midst