The Portable Dante by Dante Alighieri
O Constantine, what evil did you sire, not by your conversion, but by the dower that the first wealthy Father got from you!”
117
And while I sang these very notes to him, his big flat feet kicked fiercely out of anger, —or perhaps it was his conscience gnawing him.
120
I think my master liked what I was saying, for all the while he smiled and was intent on hearing the ring of truly spoken words.
123
Then he took hold of me with both his arms, and when he had me firm against his breast, he climbed back up the path he had come down.
126
He did not tire of the weight clasped tight to him, but brought me to the top of the bridge’s arch, the one that joins the fourth bank to the fifth.
129
And here he gently set his burden down— gently, for the ridge, so steep and rugged, would have been hard even for goats to cross.
132
From there another valley opened to me.
115-117. Constantine the Great, emperor of Rome (306-387), was converted to Christianity in the year 312. Having conquered the eastern Mediterranean lands, he transferred the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople (360). This move, according to tradition, stemmed from Constantine’s decision to place the western part of the empire under the jurisdiction of the Church in order to repay Pope Sylvester (“the first wealthy Father”) for healing him of leprosy. The so-called “Donation of Constantine, ” though it was proved in the fifteenth century to be a complete fabrication on the part of the clergy, was universally accepted as the truth in the Middle Ages. Dante the Pilgrim reflects this tradition in his sad apostrophe to the individual who first would have introduced wealth to the Church and who, unknowingly, would be ultimately responsible for its present corruption.
CANTO XX
IN THE FOURTH Bolgia they see a group of shades weeping as they walk slowly along the valley; they are the Soothsayers and their heads are twisted completely around so that their hair flows down their fronts and their tears flow down to their buttocks. Virgil points out many of them, including Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, and Manto. It was Manto who first inhabited the site of Virgil’s home city of Mantua, and the poet gives a long description of the city’s founding, after which he names more of the condemned soothsayers: Eurypylus, Michael Scot, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente.
Now I must turn strange torments into verse to form the matter of the twentieth canto of the first chant, the one about the damned.
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Already I was where I could look down into the depths of the ditch: I saw its floor was wet with anguished tears shed by the sinners,
6
and I saw people in the valley’s circle, silent, weeping, walking at a litany pace the way processions push along in our world.
9
And when my gaze moved down below their faces, I saw all were incredibly distorted, the chin was not above the chest, the neck
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was twisted—their faces looked down on their backs; they had to move ahead by moving backward, for they never saw what was ahead of them.
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Perhaps there was a case of someone once in a palsy fit becoming so distorted, but none that I know of! I doubt there could be!
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So may God grant you, Reader, benefit from reading of my poem, just ask yourself how I could keep my eyes dry when, close by,
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I saw the image of our human form so twisted—the tears their eyes were shedding streamed down to wet their buttocks at the cleft.
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Indeed I did weep, as I leaned my body against a jut of rugged rock. My guide: “So you are still like all the other fools?
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In this place piety lives when pity is dead, for who could be more wicked than that man who tries to bend divine will to his own!
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Lift your head up, lift it, see him for whom the earth split wide before the Thebans’ eyes, while they all shouted, ‘Where are you rushing off to,
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Amphiaraus? Why do you quit the war?’ He kept on rushing downward through the gap until Minos, who gets them all, got him.
36
You see how he has made his back his chest: because he wished to see too far ahead, he sees behind and walks a backward track.
39
Behold Tiresias, who changed his looks: from a man he turned himself into a woman, transforming all his body, part for part;
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then later on he had to take the wand and strike once more those two snakes making love before he could get back his virile parts.
45
34-36. Amphiaraus was a seer and one of the seven kings who led the expedition against Thebes (see Canto XIV, 68-69). He foresaw that he would die during the siege, and to avoid his fate he hid himself so that he would not have to fight. But his wife Eriphyle revealed his hiding place to Polynices, and Amphiaraus was forced to go to battle. He met his death when the earth opened up and swallowed him.
40-45. Tiresias was the famous soothsayer of Thebes. According to Ovid, Tiresias with his rod once separated two serpents that were coupled together, whereupon he was transformed into a woman. Seven years later he found the same two serpents, struck them again, and became a man once more. Later Jupiter and Juno asked Tiresias, who had the experience of belonging to both sexes, which sex enjoyed love-making more. When Tiresias answered “woman, ” Juno struck him blind. However, Jupiter in compensation gave him the gift of prophesy.
Backing up to this one’s chest comes Aruns, who, in the hills of Luni, worked by peasants of Carrara dwelling in the valley’s plain,
48
lived in white marble cut into a cave, and from this site, where nothing blocked his view, he could observe the sea and stars with ease.
51
And that one, with her hair loose, flowing back to cover both her breasts you cannot see, and with her hairy parts in front behind her,
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was Manto, who had searched through many lands before she came to dwell where I was born; now let me tell you something of her story.
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When her father had departed from the living, and Bacchus’ sacred city fell enslaved, she wandered through the world for many years.
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High in fair Italy there spreads a lake, beneath the mountains bounding Germany beyond the Tyrol, known as Lake Benaco;
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by a thousand streams and more, I think, the Alps are bathed from Garda to the Val Camonica with the waters flowing down into that lake;
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46-51. Aruns was the Etruscan diviner who forecast the Roman civil war and its outcome. He made his home “in the hills of Luni” (47), the area now known as Carrara and renowned for its white marble.
52-60. Manto, upon the death of her father, Tiresias, fled Thebes (“Bacchus’ sacred city, ” 59) and its tyrant Creon. She finally arrived in Italy and there founded the city of Mantua, Virgil’s birthplace (56).
63. Lake Benaco, today Lake Garda, lies in northern Italy at the center of the triangle formed by the cities of Trent, Brescia, and Verona.
64-66. Here, the “Alps” refers to that range between the Camonica valley, west of Lake Garda, and the city of Garda, on the lake’s eastern shore, that is watered by many streams, which ultimately flow into Lake Garda.
at its center is a place where all three bishops of Trent and Brescia and Verona could, if they would ever visit there, say Mass;
69
Peschiera sits, a handsome well-built fortress, to ward off Brescians and the Bergamese, along the lowest point of that lake’s shore,
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where all the water that Benaco’s basin cannot hold must overflow to make a stream that winds its way through countrysides of green;
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but when the water starts to flow, its name is not Benaco but Mencio, all the way to Governol, where it falls into the Po;
78<
but before its course is run it strikes a lowland, on which it spreads and turns into a marsh that can become unbearable in summer.
81
Passing this place one day the savage virgin saw land that lay in the center of the mire, untilled and empty of inhabitants.
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There, to escape all human intercourse, she stopped to practice magic with her servants; there she lived, and there she left her corpse.
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Later on, the men who lived around there gathered on that very spot, for it was well protected by the bog that girded it on every side.
90
67-69. On an island in Lake Garda (Benaco) the boundaries of the dioceses of Trent, Brescia, and Verona met, thereby making it possible for all three bishops to hold services or “say Mass” there.
70-72. The fortress of Peschiera and the town of the same name are on the southeast shore of Lake Garda.
78. Governol, now called Governolo, is twelve miles from Mantua and situated at the junction of the Mincio and the Po rivers.
They built a city over her dead bones, and for her, the first to choose that place, they named it Mantua, without recourse to sorcery.
93
Once, there were far more people living there, before the foolish Casalodi listened to the fraudulent advice of Pinamonte.
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And so, I warn you, should you ever hear my city’s origin told otherwise, let no false tales adulterate the truth. ”
99
And I replied: “Master, your explanations are truth for me, winning my faith entirely; any others would be just like burned-out coals.
102
But speak to me of these shades passing by, if you see anyone that is worth noting; for now my mind is set on only that. ”
105
He said: “That one, whose beard flows from his cheeks and settles on his back and makes it dark, was (when the war stripped Greece of all its males,
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so that the few there were still rocked in cradles) an augur who, with Calchas, called the moment to cut the first ship’s cable free at Aulis:
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he is Eurypylus. I sang his story this way, somewhere in my high tragedy: you should know where—you know it, every line.
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That other one, whose thighs are scarcely fleshed, was Michael Scot, who most assuredly knew every trick of magic fraudulence.
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93. The customs of ancient peoples dictated that the name of a newly founded city be obtained through sorcery. Such was not the case with Mantua.
113. The “high tragedy” is the Aeneid (II, 114-119). In this work, however, Eurypylus is not an augur, but a soldier sent to the oracle to discover Apollo’s predictions as to the best time to set sail from Troy.
116-117. Michael Scot was a Scottish philosopher attached to Frederick II’s court at Palermo (see Canto X, 119), who translated the works of Aristotle from the Arabic of his commentator, Avicenna (see Canto IV, 143). By reputation he was a magician and augur. (Cf. Boccaccio, Decameron, VIII, 9.)
See there Guido Bonatti; see Asdente, who wishes now he had been more devoted to making shoes—too late now for repentance.
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And see those wretched hags who traded in needle, spindle, shuttle, for fortune-telling, and cast their spells with image-dolls and potions.
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Now come along. Cain with his thorn-bush straddles the confines of both hemispheres already and dips into the waves below Seville;
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and the moon last night already was at full; and you should well remember that at times when you were lost in the dark wood she helped you. ”
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And we were moving all the time he spoke.
CANTO XXI
WHEN THE TWO reach the summit of the arch over the Fifth Bolgia, they see in the ditch below the bubbling of boiling pitch. Virgil’s sudden warning of danger frightens the Pilgrim even before he sees a black devil rushing toward them, with a sinner slung over his shoulder. From the bridge the devil flings the sinner into the pitch, where he is poked at and tormented by the family of Malebranche devils. Virgil, advising his ward to hide behind a rock, crosses the bridge to face the devils alone. They threaten him with their pitchforks, but when he announces to their leader, Malacoda, that Heaven has willed that he lead another through Hell, the devil’s arrogance collapses. Virgil calls the Pilgrim back to him. Scarmiglione, who tries to take a poke at him, is rebuked by his leader, who tells the travelers that the sixth arch is broken here but farther on they will find another bridge to cross. He chooses a squad of his devils to escort them there: Alichino, Calcabrina, Cagnazzo, Barbariccia, Libicocco, Draghignazzo, Ciriatto, Graffiacane, Farfarello, and Rubicante. The Pilgrim’s suspicion about their unsavory escorts is brushed aside by his guide, and the squad starts off, giving an obscene salute to their captain, who returns their salute with a fart.
118-120. Guido Bonatti, a native of Forlì, was a well-known astrologer and diviner. Benvenuto (or Asdente, “toothless, ” as he was called) was a cobbler from Parma who supposedly possessed certain magic powers.
124-126. By some mysterious power Virgil is able to reckon time in the depths of Hell. The moon (referred to as “Cain with his thorn-bush, ” 124, the medieval Italian counterpart of our “Man in the Moon”) is directly over the line of demarcation between the Northern (land) and the Southern (water) hemispheres and is setting on the western horizon (the “waves below Seville, ” 126). The time is approximately six A.M.
From this bridge to the next we walked and talked of things my Comedy does not care to tell; and when we reached the summit of the arch,
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we stopped to see the next fosse of Malebolge and to hear more lamentation voiced in vain: I saw that it was very strangely dark!
6
In the vast and busy shipyard of the Venetians there boils all winter long a tough, thick pitch that is used to caulk the ribs of unsound ships.
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Since winter will not let them sail, they toil: some build new ships, others repair the old ones, plugging the planks come loose from many sailings;
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some hammer at the bow, some at the stern, one carves the oars while others twine the ropes, one mends the jib, one patches up the mainsail;
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here, too, but heated by God’s art, not fire, a sticky tar was boiling in the ditch that smeared the banks with viscous residue.
18
I saw it there, but I saw nothing in it, except the rising of the boiling bubbles breathing in air to burst and sink again.
21
7-15. During the Middle Ages the shipyard at Venice, built in 1104, was one of the most active and productive in all Europe. The image of the busy shipyard with its activity revolving around a vat of viscous pitch establishes the tone for this canto (and the next) as one of tense and excited movement.
I stood intently gazing there below, my guide, shouting to me: “Watch out, watch out!” took hold of me and drew me to his side.
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I turned my head like one who can’t resist looking to see what makes him run away (his body’s strength draining with sudden fear),
27
but, looking back, does not delay his flight; and I saw coming right behind our backs, rushing along the ridge, a devil, black!
30
His face, his look, how frightening it was! With outstretched wings he skimmed along the rock, and every single move he made was cruel;
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on one of his high-hunched and pointed shoulders he had a sinner slung by both his thighs, held tightly clawed at the tendons of his heels.
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He shouted from our bridge: “Hey, Malebranche, here’s one of Santa Zita’s elders for you! You stick him under—I’ll go back for more;
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I’ve got that city stocked with the likes of him, they’re all a bunch of grafters, save Bonturo! You can chan
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He flung him in, then from the flinty cliff sprang off. No hound unleashed to chase a thief could have taken off with greater speed than he.
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That sinner plunged, then floated up stretched out, and the devils underneath the bridge all shouted: “You shouldn’t imitate the Holy Face!
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The swimming’s different here from in the Serchio! We have our grappling-hooks along with us— don’t show yourself above the pitch, or else!”
51
46-51. The “Holy Face” was a wooden crucifix at Lucca. The sinner surfaces stretched out (46) on his back with arms flung wide like the figure on a crucifix—and this gives rise to the devil’s remark that here in Hell one does not swim the same way as in the Serchio (a river near Lucca). In other words, in the Serchio people swim for pleasure, often floating on their backs (in the position of a crucifix).
With a hundred prongs or more they pricked him, shrieking: “You’ve got to do your squirming under cover, try learning how to cheat beneath the surface. ”
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They were like cooks who make their scullery boys poke down into the caldron with their forks to keep the meat from floating to the top.
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My master said: “We’d best not let them know that you are here with me; crouch down behind some jutting rock so that they cannot see you;
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whatever insults they may hurl at me, you must not fear, I know how things are run here; I have been caught in as bad a fix before. ”
63
He crossed the bridge and walked on past the end; as soon as he set foot on the sixth bank he forced himself to look as bold as possible.
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With all the sound and fury that breaks loose when dogs rush out at some poor begging tramp, making him stop and beg from where he stands,
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the ones who hid beneath the bridge sprang out and blocked him with a flourish of their pitchforks, but he shouted: “All of you behave yourselves!