The Divine Comedy. Dante Alighieri

we departed.

      When we were there where it opens below to give passage to the scourged, the Leader said, "Stop, and let the sight strike on thee of these other miscreants, of whom thou hast not yet seen the face, because they have gone along in the same direction with us."

      From the ancient bridge we looked at the train that was coining toward us from the other side, and which the whip in like manner drives on. The good Master, without my asking, said to me, "Look at that great one who is coming, and seems not to shed a tear for pain. What royal aspect he still retains! He is Jason, who by courage and by wit despoiled the Colchians of their ram. He passed by the isle of Lemnos, after the undaunted women pitiless had given all their males to death. There with tokens and with ornate words he deceived Hypsipyle, the maiden, who first had deceived all the rest. There he left her pregnant, and alone; such sin condemns him to such torment; and also for Medea is vengeance done. With him goes whoso in such wise deceives. And let this suffice to know of the first valley, and of those that it holds in its fangs."

      Now we were where the narrow path sets across the second dyke, and makes of it shoulders for another arch. Here we heard people moaning in the next pit, and snorting with their muzzles, and with their palms beating themselves. The banks were encrusted with a mould because of the breath from below that sticks on them, and was making quarrel with the eyes and with the nose. The bottom is so hollowed out that no place sufficeth us for seeing it, without mounting on the crest of the arch where the crag rises highest. Hither we came, and thence, down in the ditch, I saw people plunged in an excrement that seemed as if it proceeded from human privies.

And while I am searching down there with my eye, I saw one with his head so foul with ordure that it was not apparent whether he were layman or clerk. He shouted to me, "Why art so greedy to look more at me than at the other filthy ones?" And I to him, "Because, if I remember rightly, ere now I have seen thee with dry hair, and thou art Alessio Interminei of Lucca9; therefore I eye thee more than all the rest." And he then, beating his pate, "Down here those flatteries wherewith my tongue was never cloyed have submerged me."

Hereupon my Leader, "Mind thou push thy sight a little farther forward so that with thine eyes thou mayest quite reach the face of that dirty and disheveled creature, who is scratching herself there with her nasty nails, and now is crouching down and now standing on foot. She is Thais the prostitute, who answered her paramour when he said, 'Have I great thanks from thee?'—'Nay, marvelous.'" 10 And herewith let our sight be satisfied.

      Footnotes

1 Bolgia, literally, budget, purse, sack, here used for circular valley, or pit.

2 The year 1299-1300, from Christmas to Easter.

3 Of Sant' Angelo.

4 The Capitoline.

5 His own sister; the unseemly tale is known only through Dante and his fourteenth-century commentators, and the latter, while agreeing that the Marquis was one of the Esti of Ferrara, do not agree as to which of them he was.

6 Bologna lies between the Savena and the Reno; sipa is the Bolognese form of sia, or si.

7 Forming a bridge, thrown like an arch across the pit.

8 The course of the Poets, which has mostly been to the left through the upper Circles, is now generally to proceed straight across the lower Circles where Fraud is punished. They had been going to the left at the foot of the precipice, and consequently turn to the right to ascend the bridge. The allegorical intention in the direction of their course is evident.

9 Of him nothing is known but what these words tell.

10 These words are derived from Terence, Eunuchus, act iii. sc. 1.

      Canto XIX

       Table of Contents

      Eighth Circle third pit: simonists.—Pope Nicholas III.

      Oh Simon Magus! Oh ye his wretched followers, who, rapacious, do prostitute for gold and silver the things of God that ought to be the brides of righteousness, now it behoves for you the trumpet sound, since ye are in the third pit!

Already were we come to the next tomb,1 mounted on that part of the crag which just above the middle of the ditch hangs plumb. Oh Supreme Wisdom, how great is the art that Thou displayest in Heaven, on Earth, and in the Evil World! and how justly doth Thy Power distribute!

I saw along the sides, and over the bottom, the livid stone full of holes all of one size, and each was circular. They seemed to me not less wide nor larger than those that in my beautiful Saint John are made as place for the baptizers 2 one of which, not many years ago, I broke for sake of one who was stifling in it; and be this the seal to undeceive all men. Forth from the mouth of each protruded the feet of a sinner, and his legs up to the calf, and the rest was within. The soles of all were both on fire, wherefore their joints quivered so violently that they would have snapped withes and bands. As the flaming of things oiled is wont to move only on the outer surface, so was it there from the heels to the toes.

"Who is he, Master, that writhes, quivering more than the others his consorts," said I, "and whom a ruddier flame is sucking?" And he to me, "If thou wilt that I carry thee down there by that bank which slopes the most,3 from him thou shalt know of himself and of his wrongs." And I, "Whatever pleaseth thee even so is good to me. Thou art Lord, and knowest that I part me not from thy will, and thou knowest that which is unspoken."

      Then we went upon the fourth dyke, turned, and descended on the left hand, down to the bottom pierced with holes, and narrow. And the good Master set me not down yet from his haunch, till he brought me to the cleft of him who was thus lamenting with his shanks.

"O whoe'er thou art, that keepest upside down, sad soul, planted like a stake," I began to say, "speak, if thou canst." I was standing like the friar who confesses the perfidious assassin,4 who, after he is fixed, recalls him, in order to delay his death.

And he5 cried out, "Art thou already standing there? Art thoh already standing there, Boniface? By several years the record lied to me. Art thou so quickly sated with that having, for which thou didst not fear to seize by guile the beautiful Lady,6 and then to do her outrage?"

      Such I became as those that, not comprehending that which is replied to them, stand as if mocked, and know not what to answer.

Then Virgil said, "Tell him quickly, I am not he, I am not he thou thinkest." And I answered