E'en from their threshold to the brink without, The thronging multitudes, their means devise Saint Peter's fane, on the other towards the mount. Ah! how they made them bound at the first stripe! Meantime, as on I pass'd, one met my sight, Whom soon as view'd, "Of him," cried I, "not yet Mine eye hath had his fill." I therefore stay'd3 My feet to scan him, and the teacher kind Paused with me, and consented I should walk Backward a space; and the tormented spirit, Who thought to hide him, bent his visage down. 1 With us beyond.] Beyond the middle point they tended the same way with us, but their pace was quicker than ours. 2 E'en thus the Romans.] In the year 1300, Pope Boniface VIII, to remedy the inconvenience occasioned by the press of people who were passing over the bridge of St. Angelo during the time of the Jubilee, caused it to be divided lengthwise by a partition; and ordered, that all those who were going to St. Peter's should keep one side, and those returning the other. G. Villani, who was present, describes the order that was preserved, lib. viii. cap. 36. It was at this time, and on this occasion, as the honest historian tells us, that he first conceived the design of "compiling his book." 3 I therefore stay'd.] "I piedi affissi" is the reading of the Nidobeatina edition; but Lombardi is under an error, when he tells us that the other editions have "gli occhi affissi"; for Vellutello's at least, printed in 1511, agrees with the Nidobeatina. But it avail'd him nought; for I exclaim'd : 66 But thy clear speech, that to my mind recals Nor alone, Bologna hither sendeth me to mourn. Him speaking thus, a demon with his thong Upon its splinter turning, we depart From those eternal barriers. When arrived Strike on thy ken; faces not yet beheld, 1 Venedico.] Venedico Caccianimico, a Bolognese, who prevailed on his sister Ghisola to prostitute herself to Obizzo da Este, Marquis of Ferrara, whom we have seen among the tyrants, Canto xii. 2 Seasoning.] Salse. Monti, in his Proposta, following Benvenuto da Imola, takes this to be the name of a place. If so, a play must have been intended on the word, which cannot be preserved in English. 3 To answer Sipa.] He denotes Bologna by its situation between the rivers Savena to the east, and Reno to the west of that city; and by a peculiarity of dialect, the use of the affirmative sipa instead either of si, or, as Monti will have of it, of sia. "Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends, Who first had all the rest herself beguiled. Hence, in the second chasm we heard the ghosts, One with his head so grimed, 't were hard to deem If he were clerk or layman. Loud he cried : Why greedily thus bendest more on me, 66 Than on these other filthy ones, thy ken ?" 66 Because, if true my memory," I replied, "I heretofore have seen thee with dry locks; And thou Alessio2 art, of Lucca sprung. Therefore than all the rest I scan thee more." Then beating on his brain, these words he spake : 1 Hypsipyle.] See Apollonius Rhodius, 1. i. and Valerius Flaccus, 1. ii. Hypsipyle deceived the other women, by concealing her father Thoas, when they had agreed to put all their males to death. 2 Alessio.] Alessio, of an ancient and considerable family in Lucca, called the Interminei. "Me thus low down my flatteries have sunk, Who there doth rend her with defiled nails, CANTO XIX. ARGUMENT. They come to the third gulf, wherein are punished those who have been guilty of simony. These are fixed with the head downwards in certain apertures, so that no more of them than the legs appears without, and on the soles of their feet are seen burning flames. Dante is taken down by his guide into the bottom of the gulf; and there finds Pope Nicholas the Fifth, whose evil deeds, together with those of other pontiffs, are bitterly reprehended. Virgil then carries him up again to the arch, which affords them a passage over the following gulf. WOE to thee, Simon Magus! woe to you, For gold and silver in adultery. Now must the trumpet sound for you, since yours Is the third chasm. Upon the following vault We now had mounted, where the rock impends Directly o'er the centre of the foss. Wisdom Supreme! how wonderful the art, Which thou dost manifest in heaven, in earth, And in the evil world, how just a meed Allotting by thy virtue unto all. I saw the livid stone, throughout the sides All equal in their width, and circular each. 1 Thais.] He alludes to that passage in the Eunuchus of Terence, where Thraso asks if Thaïs was obliged to him for the present he had sent her; and Gnatho replies, that she had expressed her obligation in the most forcible terms. T. Magnas vero agere gratias Thaïs mihi? G. Ingentes. Eun. a. iii. s. i. Than, in Saint John's fair dome1 of me beloved, Those framed to hold the pure baptismal streams, One of the which I brake, some few years past, To save a whelming infant: and be this A seal to undeceive whoever doubts The motive of my deed. From out the mouth And of the legs high upward as the calf. The soles were burning; whence the flexile joints A ruddier flame doth prey ?" I thus inquired. Quivering express'd his pang. "Whoe'er thou art, There stood I like the friar, that doth shrive 1 Saint John's fair dome.] The apertures in the rock were of the same dimensions as the fonts of St. John the Baptist at Florence; one of which, Dante says, he had broken, to rescue a child that was playing near and fell in. He intimates, that the motive of his breaking the font had been maliciously represented by his enemies. 2 When fix'd.] The commentators on Boccaccio's Decameron, p. 72. ediz. Giunti, 1573, cite the words of the statute by which murderers were sentenced thus to suffer at Florence. "Assassinus trahatur ad caudam muli seu asini usque ad locum justitiæ; et ibidem plantetur capite deorsum, ita quod moriatur. "Let the assassin be dragged at the tail of a mule or ass to the place of justice; and there let him be set in the ground with his face downward, so that he die." |