CANTO IV. The further side of Acheron.--Virgil leads Dante into
Limbo, the First Circle of Hell, containing the spirits of those
who lived virtuously but without Christianity.--Greeting of
Virgil by his fellow poets.--They enter a castle, where are the
shades of ancient worthies.--Virgil and Dante depart.

A heavy thunder broke the deep sleep in my head, so that I
started up like a person who by force is wakened. And risen
erect, I moved my rested eye round about, and looked fixedly todistinguish the place where I was. True it is, that I found
myself on the verge of the valley of the woeful abyss that
gathers in thunder of infinite wailings. Dark, profound it was,
and cloudy, so that though I fixed my sight on the bottom I did
not discern anything there.

"Now we descend down here into the blind world," began the Poet all deadly pale, "I will be first, and thou shalt be second."

The good Master to me, "Thou dost not ask what spirits are these that thou seest. Now I would have thee know, before thou goest farther, that they sinned not; and if they have merits it sufficeth not, because they had not baptism, which is part of the faith that thou believest; and if they were before Christianity, they did not duly worship God: and of such as these am I myself.
Through such defects, and not through other guilt, are we lost,
and only so far harmed that without hope we live in desire."

Great woe seized me at my heart when I heard him, because I knew that people of much worth were suspended in that limbo. "Tell me, my Master, tell me, Lord," began I, with wish to be assured of that faith which vanquishes every error,[1] "did ever any one who afterwards was blessed go out from here, either by his own or by another's merit?" And he, who understood my covert speech, answered, "I was new in this state when I saw a Mighty One come hither crowned with sign of victory. He drew out hence the shade of the first parent, of Abel his son, and that of Noah, of Moses the law-giver and obedient, Abraham the patriarch, and David the King, Israel with his father, and with his offspring, and with
Rachel, for whom he did so much, and others many; and He made them blessed: and I would have thee know that before these, human spirits were not saved."

I saw Electra with many companions, among whom I knew both Hector and Aeneas, Caesar in armor, with his gerfalcon eyes; I saw Camilla and Penthesilea on the other side, and I saw the King Latinus, who was seated with Lavinia his daughter. I saw that Brutus who drove out Tarquin; Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia; and alone, apart, I saw the Saladin. When I raised my brow a little more, I saw the Master of those who know, seated amid the philosophic family; all regard him, all do him honor. Here I saw both Socrates and Plato, who before the others stand nearest to him; Democritus, who ascribes the world to chance; Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Zeno; and I saw the good collector of the qualities, Dioscorides, I mean; and I saw Orpheus, Tully, and Linus, and moral Seneca,
Euclid the geometer, and Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Avicenna, Galen, and Averrhoes, who made the great comment. I cannot report of all in full, because the long theme so drives me that many times speech comes short of fact.


CANTO V. The Second Circle, that of Carnal Sinners.--Minos.--
Shades renowned of old.--Francesca da Rimini.

Thus I descended from the first circle down into the second,
which girdles less space, and so much more woe that it goads to wailing. There abides Minos horribly, and snarls; he examines the sins at the entrance; he judges, and he sends according as he entwines himself. I mean, that, when the miscreant spirit comes there before him, it confesses itself wholly, and that discerner of sins sees what place of Hell is for it; he girdles himself with his tail so many times as the degrees he wills it should be sent down. Always before him stand many of them. They go, in turn, each to the judgment; they speak, and hear, and then are whirled below.

Now the woeful notes begin to make themselves heard; now am I come where much lamentation smites me. I had come into a place mute of all light, that bellows as the sea does in a tempest, if it be combated by opposing winds. The infernal hurricane that never rests carries along the spirits in its rapine; whirling and smiting it molests them. When they arrive before its rushing blast, here are shrieks, and bewailing, and lamenting; here they blaspheme the power divine. I understood that to such torment are condemned the carnal sinners who subject reason to appetite. And as their wings bear along the starlings in the cold season in a troop large and full, so that blast the evil spirits; hither, thither, down, up it carries them; no hope ever comforts them, not of repose, but even of less pain.

And as the cranes go singing their lays, making in air a long
line of themselves, so saw I come, uttering wails, shades borne
along by the aforesaid strife. Wherefore I said, "Master, who are those folk whom the black air so castigates?" "The first of these of whom thou wishest to have knowledge," said he to me then, "was empress of many tongues. To the vice of luxury was she so abandoned that lust she made licit in her law, to take away the blame she had incurred. She is Semiramis, of whom it is read that she succeeded Ninus and had been his spouse; she held the land which the Soldan rules. That other is she who, for love, killed herself, and broke faith to the ashes of Sichaeus. Next is Cleopatra, the luxurious. See Helen, for whom so long a time of ill revolved; and see the great Achilles, who at the end fought with love. See Paris, Tristan,--" and more than a thousand shades he showed me with his finger, and named them, whom love had parted from our life.


CANTO VI. The Third Circle, that of the Gluttonous.--Cerberus.--
Ciacco.

I am in the third circle, that of the rain eternal, accursed,
cold, and heavy. Its rule and quality are never new. Coarse hail, and foul water and snow pour down through the tenebrous air; the earth that receives them stinks. Cerberus, a beast cruel and monstrous, with three throats barks doglike above the people that are here submerged. He has vermilion eyes, and a greasy and black beard, and a big belly, and hands armed with claws: he tears the spirits, flays them, and rends them. The rain makes them howl like dogs; of one of their sides they make a screen for the other; the profane wretches often turn themselves.

When Cerberus, the great worm, observed us he opened his mouths, and showed his fangs to us; not a limb had he that he kept quiet. And my Leader opened wide his hands, took some earth, and with full fists threw it into the ravenous gullets. As the dog that barking craves, and becomes quiet when he bites his food, and is intent and fights only to devour it, such became those filthy faces of the demon Cerberus, who so thunders at the souls that they would fain be deaf.

And he, "They are among the blacker souls: a different sin weighs them down to the bottom; if thou so far descendest, thou canst see them. But when thou shalt be in the sweet world I pray thee that thou bring me to the memory of others. More I say not to thee, and more I answer thee not." His straight eyes he twisted then awry, looked at me a little, and then bent his head, and fell with it level with the other blind.

Thus we passed along with slow steps through the foul mixture of the shades and of the rain, touching a little on the future life. Wherefore I said, "Master, these torments will they increase after the great sentence, or will they become less, or will they be just as burning?" And he to me, "Return to thy science, which declares that the more perfect a thing is the more it feels the good, and so the pain. Though this accursed people never can attain to true perfection, it expects thereafter to be more than now."

We took a circling course along that road, speaking far more than I repeat; and came to the point where the descent is. Here we found Pluto,[1] the great enemy.


CANTO VII. The Fourth Circle, that of the Avaricious and the
Prodigal.--Pluto.--Fortune.--The Styx.--The Fifth Circle, that of
the Wrathful and the Sullen.

"Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe,"--began Pluto with his clucking voice. And that gentle Sage, who knew everything, said to comfort me, "Let not thy fear hurt thee; for whatso power he have shall not take from thee the descent of this rock." Then he turned to that swollen lip and said, "Be silent, accursed wolf! inwardly consume thyself with thine own rage: not without cause is this going to the abyss; it is willed on high, there where Michael did vengeance on the proud adultery."[1] As sails swollen by the wind fall in a heap when the mast snaps, so fell to earth the cruel beast.

Here saw I people more than elsewhere many, and from one side and the other with great howls rolling weights by force of chest. They struck against each other, and then just there each turned, rolling backward, crying, "Why keepest thou?" and "Why flingest thou away?" Thus they turned through the dark circle on either hand to the opposite point, still crying out their opprobrious verse; then each, when he had come through his half circle, wheeled round to the other joust.

And I, who had my heart well-nigh pierced through, said, "My
Master, now declare to me what folk is this, and if all these
tonsured ones on our left were clerks."

And he to me, "All of these were so asquint in mind in the first
life that they made no spending there with measure. Clearly
enough their voices bay it out, when they come to the two points of the circle where the contrary sin divides them. These were clerks who have no hairy covering on their head, and Popes and Cardinals, in whom avarice practices its excess."

And I, "Master, among such as these I ought surely to recognize some who were polluted with these evils."

And he to me, "Vain thought thou harborest; the undiscerning life that made them foul, to all recognition now makes them dim. Forever will they come to the two buttings; these will rise from the sepulchre with closed fist, and these with shorn hair.
Ill-giving and ill-keeping have taken from them the fair world,
and set them to this scuffle; such as it is, I adorn not words
for it. Now canst thou, son, see the brief jest of the goods that
are committed unto Fortune, for which the human race so scramble; for all the gold that is beneath the moon, or that ever was, of
these weary souls could not make a single one repose."


CANTO IX. The City of Dis.--Erichtho.--The Three Furies.--The
Heavenly Messenger.--The Sixth Circle, that of the Heresiarchs.

That color which cowardice painted outwardly on me when I saw my Guide turn back, repressed more speedily his own new color. He stopped attentive, like a man that listens, for the eye could not lead him far through the black air, and through the dense fog.

"Into this depth of the dismal shell does any one ever descend
from the first grade who has for penalty only hope cut off?"[1]
This question I put, and he answered me, "Seldom it happens that any one of us maketh the journey on which I am going. It is true that another time I was conjured down here by that cruel Erichtho who was wont to call back shades into their bodies. Short while had my flesh been bare of me, when she made me enter within that wall in order to drag out for her a spirit from the circle of Judas. That is the lowest place, and the darkest, and the farthest from the Heaven that encircles all. Well do I know the road: therefore assure thyself. This marsh which breathes out the great stench girds round about the woeful city wherein now we cannot enter without anger."


And more he said, but I hold it not in mind because my eye had wholly attracted me toward the high tower with the ruddy summit, where in an instant were uprisen suddenly three infernal furies, stained with blood, who had the limbs of women and their action, and were girt with greenest hydras. Little serpents and cerastes they had for hair, wherewith their savage brows were bound.

With her nails each was tearing her breast, they beat themselves with their hands, and cried out so loud that I pressed close to the Poet through dread. "Let Medusa come, so we will make him of stone," they all said, looking down. "Ill was it we avenged not on Theseus his assault."

"Turn thy back, and keep thy sight closed, for if the Gorgon show herself, and thou shouldest see her, no return upward would there ever be." Thus said the Master, and he himself turned me, and did not so trust to my hands that with his own he did not also blindfold me.

As frogs before the hostile snake all scatter through the water,
till each huddles on the ground, I saw more than a thousand
destroyed souls flying thus before one, who at the ford was
passing over the Styx with dry feet. From his face he removed
that thick air, waving his left hand oft before him, and only
with that trouble seemed he weary. Well I perceived that he was sent from Heaven, and I turned me to the Master, and he made sign that I should stand quiet and bow down unto him. Ah, how full of disdain he seemed to me! He reached the gate and with a little rod he opened it, for there was no withstanding.

"O outcasts from Heaven, folk despised," began he upon the
horrible threshold, "wherefore is this overweening harbored in
you? Why do ye kick against that will from which its end can
never be cut short, and which many a time hath increased your grief? What avails it to butt against the fates? Your Cerberus, if ye remember well, still bears his chin and his throat peeled for that." Then he turned back upon the filthy road and said no word to us, but wore the semblance of a man whom other care constrains and stings, than that of him who is before him.


CANTO XII. First round of the Seventh Circle; those who do
violence to others; Tyrants and Homicides.--The Minotaur.--The Centaurs.--Chiron.--Nessus.--The River of Boiling Blood, and the Sinners in it.

The place where we came to descend the bank was rugged, and, because of what was there besides, such that every eye would be shy of it.

As is that ruin which, on this side of Trent, struck the Adige on
its flank, either by earthquake or by failure of support,--for
from the top of the mountain whence it moved, to the plain, the cliff has so fallen down that it might give a path to one who was above,--so was the descent of that ravine. And on the edge of the broken chasm lay stretched out the infamy of Crete, that was conceived in the false cow. And when he saw us he bit himself even as one whom wrath rends inwardly. My Sage cried out toward him, "Perchance thou believest that here is the Duke of Athens who up in the world brought death to thee? Get thee gone, beast, for this one comes not instructed by thy sister, but he goes to behold your punishments."

As a bull that breaks away at the instant he has now received his mortal stroke, and cannot go, but plunges hither and thither, the Minotaur I saw do the like.

And that wary one cried out, "Run to the pass; while he is raging it is well that thou descend." So we took our way down over the discharge of those stones, which often moved under my feet because of the novel burden.

I saw a broad ditch, bent in an arc, like one that embraces all
the plain; according as my Guide had said. And between the foot of the bank and it, in a file were running Centaurs armed with arrows, as they were wont in the world to go to the chase. Seeing us descending, all stopped, and from the troop three detached themselves, with bows and arrows first selected. And one shouted from afar, "To what torment are ye coming, ye who descend the slope? Tell it from there; if not, I draw the bow." My Master said, "We will make answer unto Chiron near you there: ill was it that thy will was ever thus hasty."


CANTO XIII. Second round of the Seventh Circle: of those who have done violence to themselves and to their goods.--The Wood of Self-murderers.--The Harpies.--Pier delle Vigne.--Lano of Siena and others.

Here the foul Harpies make their nests, who chased the Trojans from the Strophades with dismal announcement of future calamity. They have broad wings, and human necks and faces, feet with claws, and a great feathered belly. They make lament upon the strange trees.

Therefore said the Master, "If thou break off a twig from one of these plants, the thoughts thou hast will all be cut short." Then I stretched my hand a little forward and plucked a branchlet from a great thorn-bush, and its trunk cried out, "Why dost thou rend me?" When it had become dark with blood it began again to cry, "Why dost thou tear me? hast thou not any spirit of pity? Men we were, and now we are become stocks; truly thy hand ought to be more pitiful had we been the souls of serpents."

As from a green log that is burning at one of its ends, and from
the other drips, and hisses with the air that is escaping, so
from that broken splinter came out words and blood together;
whereon I let the tip fall, and stood like a man who is afraid.

"If he had been able to believe before," replied my Sage, "O
wounded soul, what he has seen only in my verse,[1] he would not upon thee have stretched his hand. But the incredible thing made me prompt him to an act which grieves my very self. But tell him who thou wast, so that, by way of some amends, he may refresh thy fame in the world above, whereto it is allowed him to return."

And the trunk, "So with sweet speech dost thou allure me, that I cannot be silent, and may it not displease you, that I am enticed to speak a little. I am he who held both the keys of the heart of Frederick, and who turned them, locking and unlocking so softly, that from his confidence I kept almost every one.[1] Fidelity so great I bore to the glorious office, that I lost slumber and strength thereby. The harlot,[2] that never from the abode of Caear turned her strumpet eyes,--the common death and vice of courts,--inflamed all minds against me, and they, inflamed, did so inflame Augustus that my glad honors turned to dismal sorrows. My mind, in scornful temper thinking to escape scorn by death, made me unjust toward my just self. By the strange roots of this tree I swear to you, that I never broke faith unto my lord who was so worthy of honor. And if one of you returneth to the world, let him comfort my memory that yet lies prostrate from the blow that envy gave it."

CANTO XIV. Third round of the Seventh Circle of those who have done violence to God.--The Burning Sand.--Capaneus.--Figure of the Old Man in Crete.--The Rivers of Hell.

To make clearly manifest the new things, I say that we had
reached a plain which from its bed removeth every plant. The
woeful wood is a garland round about it, even as the dismal foss to that. Here, on the very edge, we stayed our steps. The floor was a dry and dense sand, not made in other fashion than that which of old was trodden by the feet of Cato.

O vengeance of God, how much thou oughtest to be feared by every one who readeth that which was manifest unto mine eyes!

Of naked souls I saw many flocks, that were all weeping very
miserably, and diverse law seemed imposed upon them. Some folk were lying supine on the ground, some were seated all crouched up, and others were going about continually. Those who were going around were far the more, and those the fewer who were lying down under the torment, but they had their tongues more loose for wailing.

Over all the sand, with a slow falling, were raining down dilated flakes of fire, as of snow on alps without a wind. As the flames which Alexander in those hot parts of India saw falling upon his host, solid to the ground, wherefore he took care to trample the soil by his troops, because the vapor was better extinguished while it was single; so was descending the eternal glow whereby the sand was kindled, like tinder beneath the steel, for doubling of the dole. Without repose was ever the dance of the wretched hands, now there, now here, brushing from them the fresh burning.

"In mid sea sits a wasted land," said he then, "which is named
Crete, under whose king the world of old was chaste. A mountain is there that of old was glad with waters and with leaves, which is called Ida; now it is desert, like a thing outworn. Rhea chose it of old for the trusty cradle of her little son, and to conceal him better when he cried had shoutings made there. Within the mountain stands erect a great old man, who holds his shoulders turned towards Damietta, and looks at Rome as if his mirror. His head is formed of fine gold, and pure silver are his arms and breast; then he is of brass far as to the fork. From there downward he is all of chosen iron, save that his right foot is of baked clay, and he stands erect on that more than on the other.[1] Every part except the gold is cleft with a fissure that trickles tears, which collected perforate that cavern. Their course falls from rock to rock into this valley; they form Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon; then it goes down through this narrow channel far as where there is no more descending. They form Cocytus, and what that pool is, thou shalt see; therefore here is it not told."

CANTO XVIII. Eighth Circle: the first pit: panders and seducers.-- Venedico Caccianimico.--Jason.--Second pit: false flatterers.-- Alessio Interminei.--Thais.

There is a place in Hell called Malebolge, all of stone of the
color of iron, as is the encircling wall that surrounds it. Right
in the middle of this field malign yawns an abyss exceeding wide and deep, the structure of which I will tell of in its place.
That belt, therefore, which remains between the abyss and the
foot of the high bank is circular, and it has its ground divided
into ten valleys. Such an aspect as where, for guard of the
walls, many moats encircle castles, the place where they are
presents, such image did these make here. And as in such
strongholds from their thresholds to the outer bank are little
bridges, so from the base of the precipitous wall started crags
which traversed the dykes and the moats far as the abyss that
collects and cuts them off.Along the gloomy rock, on this side and on that, I saw horned demons with great scourges, who were beating them cruelly from behind. Ah! how they made them lift their heels at the first blows; truly not one waited for the second, or the third.


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 mannerdrives 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.

CANTO XX. Eighth Circle: fourth pit: diviners, soothsayers, and magicians.--Amphiaraus.--Tiresias.--Aruns.--Manto.--Eurypylus.-- Michael Scott.--Asdente.

Of a new punishment needs must I make verses, and give matetial to the twentieth canto of the first lay, which is of the
submerged.[1]

I was now wholly set on looking into the disclosed depth that was bathed with tears of anguish, and I saw folk coming, silent and weeping, through the circular valley, at the pace at which
lltanies go in this world. As my sight descended deeper among
them, each appeared marvelously distorted from the chin to the beginning of the chest; for toward their reins their face was
turned, and they must needs go backwards, because they were deprived of looking forward. Perchance sometimes by force of palsy one has been thus completely twisted, but I never saw it, nor do I think it can be.

So may God let thee, Reader, gather fruit from thy reading, now think for thyself how I could keep my face dry, when near by I saw our image so contorted that the weeping of the eyes bathed the buttocks along the cleft. Truly I wept, leaning on one of the rocks of the hard crag, so that my Guide said to me, "Art thou also one of the fools? Here pity liveth when it is quite dead.[1]

Who is more wicked than he who feels compassion at the Divine Judgment? Lift up thy head, lift up, and see him [2] for whom the earth opened before the eyes of the Thebans, whereon they shouted all, 'Whither art thou rushing, Amphiaraus? Why dost thou leave
the war?' And he stopped not from falling headlong down far as Minos, who seizes hold of every one. Look, how he has made a breast of his shoulders! Because he wished to see too far before him, he looks behind and makes a backward path.


"See Tiresias,[1] who changed his semblance, when from a male he became a female, his members all of them being transformed; and afterwards was obliged to strike once more the two entwined serpents with his rod, ere he could regain his masculine plumage. Aruns[2] is he that to this one's belly has his back, who on the mountains of Luni (where grubs the Carrarese who dwells beneath), amid white marbles, had a cave for his abode, whence for looking at the stars and the sea his view was not cut off.


CANTO XXIV. Eighth Circle. The poets climb from the sixth pit.-- Seventh pit, filled with serpents, by which thieves are
tormented.--Vanni Fucci.--Prophecy of calamity to Dante.


"Now it behoves thee thus to put off sloth," said the Master,
"for, sitting upon down or under quilt, one attains not fame,
without which he who consumes his life leaves of himself such
trace on earth as smoke in air, or in water the foam. And
therefore rise up, conquer the exhaustion with the spirit that
conquers every battle, if by its heavy body it be not dragged
down. A longer stairway needs must be ascended; it is not enough from these to have departed; if thou understandest me, now act so that it avail thee." Then I rose up, showing myself furnished better with breath than I felt, and said, "Go on, for I am strong and resolute."

Up along the crag we took the way, which was rugged, narrow, and difficult, and far steeper than the one before. I was going along speaking in order not to seem breathless, and a voice, unsuitable for forming words, came out from the next ditch. I know not what it said, though I was already upon the back of the arch that crosses here; but he who was speaking seemed moved to anger. I had turned downwards, but living eyes could not go to the bottom, because of the obscurity. Wherefore I said, "Master, see that thou go on to the next girth, and let us descend the wall, for as from hence I hear and do not understand, so I look down and shapeout nothing." "Other reply," he said, "I give thee not than
doing, for an honest request ought to be followed by the deed in silence."

We descended the bridge at its head, where it joins on with the
eighth bank, and then the pit was apparent to me. And I saw
therewithin a terrible heap of serpents, and of such hideous look that the memory still curdles my blood. Let Libya with her sand vaunt herself no more; for though she brings forth chelydri, jaculi, and phareae, and cenchri with amphisboena, she never, with all Ethiopia, nor with the land that lies on the Red Sea, showed either so many plagues or so evil.

Amid this cruel and most dismal store were running people naked and in terror, without hope of hole or heliotrope.[1] They had their hands tied behind with serpents, which fixed through the reins their tail and their head, and were knotted up in front.

And lo! at one, who was on our side, darted a serpent that
transfixed him there where the neck is knotted to the shoulders. Nor _O_ nor _I_ was ever so quickly written as he took fire and burned, and all ashes it behoved him to become in falling. And when upon the ground he lay thus destroyed, the dust drew together of itself, and into that same one instantly returned. Thus by the great sages it is affirmed that the Phoenix dies, andthen is reborn when to her five hundredth year she draws nigh. Nor herb nor grain she feeds on in her life, but only on tears of incense and on balsam, and nard and myrrh are her last winding-sheet.

And as he who falls and knows not how, by force of demon that
drags him to ground, or of other attack that seizeth the man;
when he arises and around him gazes, all bewildered by the great anguish that he has suffered, and in looking sighs, such was that sinner after he had risen. Oh power of God! how just thou art that showerest down such blows for vengeance!


CANTO XXVI. Eighth Circle: eighth pit fraudulent counselors.--
Ulysses and Diomed.

Who is in that fire that cometh so divided
at its top that it seems to rise from the pyre on which Eteocles
was put with his brother?" [1] He answered me, "There within are tormented Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together they go in punishment, as of old in wrath.[2] And within their flame they groan for the ambush of the horse that made the gate, whence the gentle seed of the Romans issued forth. Within it they lament for the artifice whereby the dead Deidamia still mourns for Achilles, and there for the Palladium they bear the penalty." "If they can speak within those sparkles," said I, "Master, much I pray thee, and repray that the prayer avail a thousand, that thou make not to me denial of waiting till the horned flame come hither; thou seest that with desire I bend me toward it." And he to me, "Thy prayer is worthy of much praise, and therefore I accept it, but take heed that thy tongue restrain itself. Leave speech to me, for I have conceived what thou wishest, for, because they are Greeks, they would be shy, perchance, of thy words."

When the flame had come there where it seemed to my Leader timeand place, in this form I heard him speak to it: "O ye who are two within one fire, if I deserved of you while I lived, if I deserved of you much or little, when in the world I wrote thelofty verses, move not, but let one of you tell us, where, havinglost himself, he went away to die." The greater horn of theancient flame began to waver, murmuring, even as a flame that thewind wearies. Then moving its tip hither and thither, as it had been the tongue that would speak, it cast forth a voice, and said,--

"When I departed from Circe, who had retained me more than a year there near to Gaeta, before Aeneas had so named it, neither fondness for my son, nor piety for my old father, nor the duelove that should have made Penelope glad, could overcome withinme the ardor that I had to gain experience of the world, and of the vices of men, and of their valor. But I put forth on thedeep, open sea, with one vessel only, and with that littlecompany by which I had not been deserted. One shore and the other[1] I saw as far as Spain, far as Morocco and the island of Sardinia, and the rest which that sea bathes round about. I and my companions were old and slow when we came to that narrowstrait where Hercules set up his bounds, to the end that man maynot put out beyond.[2] On the right hand I left Seville, on theother already I had left Ceuta. 'O brothers,' said I, 'whothrough a hundred thousand perils have reached the West, to this so little vigil of your senses that remains be ye unwilling todeny, the experience, following the sun, of the world that hath no people. Consider ye your origin; ye were not made to live as brutes, but for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.' With thislittle speech I made my companions so eager for the road that hardly afterwards could I have held them back. And turning ourstern to the morning, with our oars we made wings for the mad flight, always gaining on the left hand side. The night saw now all the stars of the other pole, and ours so low that it rose notforth from the ocean floor. Five times rekindled and as many quenched was the light beneath the moon, since we had entered on the deep pass, when there appeared to us a mountain dim through the distance, and it appeared to me so high as I had not seen any. We rejoiced thereat, and soon it turned to lamentation, for from the strange land a whirlwind rose, and struck the fore part of the vessel. Three times it made her whirl with all the waters,
the fourth it made her stern lift up, and the prow go down, as
pleased Another, till the sea had closed over us."


CANTO XXVIII. Eighth Circle: ninth pit: sowers of discord and
schism.--Mahomet and Ali.--Fra Dolcino.--Pier da Medicina.
-Curio.--Mosca.--Bertrau de Born.

Who, even with words unfettered,[1] could ever tell in full of
the blood and of the wounds that I now saw, though many times narrating? Every tongue assuredly would come short, by reason ofour speech and our memory that have small capacity to comprise somuch.

Truly cask, by losing mid-board or cross-piece, is not so split
open as one I saw cleft from the chin to where the wind is
broken: between his legs were hanging his entrails, his
inner parts were visible, and the dismal sack that makes ordureof what is swallowed. Whilst all on seeing him I fix myself, he looked at me, and with his hands opened his breast, saying, "Now see how I rend myself, see how mangled is Mahomet. Ali [1] goeth before me weeping, cleft in the face from chin to forelock; and all the others whom thou seest here were, when living, sowers of scandal and of schism, and therefore are they so cleft. A devil is here behind, that adjusts us so cruelly, putting again to the edge of the sword each of this crew, when we have turned the doleful road, because the wounds are closed up ere one passe again before him. But thou, who art thou, that musest on the crag, perchance to delay going to the punishment that is adjudged on thine own accusations?" [2] "Nor death hath reached him yet,"
replied my Master, "nor doth sin lead him to torment him; but, in order to give him full experience, it behoves me, who am dead, to lead him through Hell down here, from circle to circle; and this is true as that I speak to thee."


CANTO XXIX. Eighth Circle ninth pit.--Geri del Bello.--Tenth pit: falsifiers of all sorts.--Griffolino of Arezzo.--Capocchio.

The many people and the diverse wounds had so inebriated mine eyes that they were fain to stay for weeping. But Virgil said to me, "What art thou still watching? why is thy sight still fixed down there among the dismal mutilated shades? Thou hast not done so at the other pits; consider if thou thinkest to count them, that the valley circles two and twenty miles; and already themoon is beneath our feet; the time is little now that is conceded to us, and other things are to be seen than thou seest." "If thou hadst," replied I thereupon, "attended to the reason why I was looking perhaps thou wouldst have permitted me yet to stay."

Thus we spake far as the place on the crag which first shows the next valley, if more light were there, quite to the bottom. When we were above the last cloister of Malebolge so that its lay brothers could appear to our sight, divers lamentations pierced me, that had their arrows barbed with pity; wherefore I covered my ears with my hands.

Such pain as there would be if, between July and September, from the hospitals of Valdichiana and of Maremma and of Sardinia[1]the sick should all be in one ditch together, such was there here; and such stench came forth therefrom, as is wont to come from putrescent limbs. We descended upon the last bank of thelong crag, ever to the left hand, and then my sight became more vivid down toward the bottom, where the ministress of the High Lord--infallible Justice--punishes the falsifiers whom on earth she registers.

I do not think it was a greater sorrow to see the whole people in Egina sick, when the air was so full of pestilence that the
animals, even to the little worm, all fell dead (and afterwards
the ancient people, according as the poets hold for sure, were
restored by seed of ants), than it was to see the spirits
languishing in different heaps through that dark valley. This one over the belly, and that over the shoulders of another was lying, and this one, crawling, was shifting himself along the dismal path. Step by step we went without speech, looking at and listening to the sick, who could not lift their persons.

I saw two seated leaning on each other, as pan is leaned against pan to warm, spotted from head to foot with scabs; and never did I see currycomb plied by a boy for whom his lord is waiting nor by one who keeps awake unwillingly, as each often plied the bite of his nails upon himself, because of the great rage of his itching which has no other relief. And the nails dragged down the scab, even as a knife the scales of bream or of other fish that may have them larger.

But that thou mayest know who thus seconds thee against the Sienese, so sharpen thine eye toward me that my face may answer well to thee, so shalt thou see that I am the shade of Capocchio, who falsified the metals by alchemy; and thou shouldst recollect, if I descry thee aright, how I was a good ape of nature."



CANTO XXXIII. Ninth circle: traitors. Second ring:
Antenora.--Count Ugolino.--Third ring Ptolomaea.--Brother
Alberigo. Branca d' Oria.

From his savage repast that sinner raised his mouth, wiping it
with the hair of the head that he had spoiled behind: then he
began, "Thou willest that I renew a desperate grief that
oppresses my heart already only in thinking ere I speak of it.
But, if my words are to be seed that may bear fruit of infamy for the traitor whom I gnaw, thou shalt see me speak and weep at once. I know not who thou art, nor by what mode thou art come down hither, but Florentine thou seemest to me truly when I hear thee. Thou hast to know that I was the Count Ugolino and he the Archbishop Ruggieri.[1] Now will I tell thee why I am such a neighbor. That by the effect of his evil thoughts, I, trusting tohim, was taken and then put to death, there is no need to tell. But that which thou canst not have heard, namely, how cruel was my death, thou shalt hear, and shalt know if he hath wronged me.


"A narrow slit in the mew, which from me has the name of Famine, and in which others yet must be shut up, had already shown me through its opening many moons, when I had the bad dream that rent for me the veil of the future. "This one appeared to me master and lord, chasing the wolf and his whelps upon the mountain[1] for which the Pisans cannot see Lucca. With lean, eager, and trained hounds, Gualandi with Sismondi and with Lanfranchi[2] he had put before him at the front. After short course, the father and his sons seemed to me weary, and it seemed to me I saw their flanks torn by the sharp fangs.


"When I awoke before the morrow, I heard my sons, who were with me, wailing in their sleep, and asking for bread. Truly thou art cruel if already thou grievest not, thinking on what my heart foretold; and if thou weepest not, at what art thou wont to weep? Now they were awake, and the hour drew near when food was wont to be brought to us, and because of his dream each one was apprehensive. And I heard the door below of the horrible tower locking up; whereat I looked on the faces of my sons without saying a word. I wept not, I was so turned to stone within. They wept; and my poor little Anselm said, 'Thou lookest so, father, what aileth thee?' Yet I did not weep; nor did I answer all that day, nor the night after, until the next sun came out upon the world. When a little ray entered the woeful prison, and I discerned by their four faces my own very aspect, both my hands I bit for woe; and they, thinking I did it through desire of eating, of a sudden rose, and said, 'Father, it will be far less pain to us if thou eat of us; thou didst clothe us with this wretched flesh, and do thou strip it off.' I quieted me then, not to make them more sad: that day and the next we all stayed dumb. Ah, thou hard earth! why didst thou not open? After we had come to the fourth day, Gaddo threw himself stretched out at my feet, saying, 'My father, why dost thou not help me?' Here he died:
and, even as thou seest me, I saw the three fall one by one
between the fifth day and the sixth; then I betook me, already
blind, to groping over each, and two days I called them after
they were dead: then fasting had more power than grief."

When he had said this, with his eyes distorted, he seized again
the wretched skull with his teeth, that were strong as a dog's
upon the bone.

Ah Pisa! reproach of the people of the fair country where the si
doth sound,[1] since thy neighbors are slow to punish thee, let
Caprara and Gorgona [2] move and make a hedge for Arno at its mouth, so that it drown every person in thee; for if Count
Ugolino had repute of having betrayed thee in thy towns, thou
oughtest not to have set his sons on such a cross. Their young
age, thou modern Thebes! made Uguccione and the Brigata innocent, and the other two that the song names above.


CANTO XXXIV. Ninth Circle: traitors. Fourth ring: Judecca.--
Lucifer.--Judas, Brutus and Cassius.--Centre of the universe.--
Passage from Hell.--Ascent to the surface of the Southern
Hemisphere.

Then, because of the wind, I drew me behind my Leader; for there was no other shelter. I was now, and with fear I put it in verse, there[1] where the shades were wholly covered, and showed through like a straw in glass. Some are lying; some stand erect, this on his head, and that on his soles; another like a bow inverts his face to his feet.

The emperor of the woeful realm from his midbreast issued forth from the ice; and I match better with a giant, than the giants do with his arms. See now how great must be that whole which corresponds to such parts. If he was as fair as he now is foul, and against his Maker lifted up his brow, surely may all
tribulation proceed from him. Oh how great a marvel it seemed to me, when I saw three faces on his head! one in front, and that was red; the others were two that were joined to this above the very middle of each shoulder, and they were joined together at the place of the crest; and the right seemed between white and yellow, the left was such to sight as those who come from where the Nile flows valleyward. Beneath each came forth two great wings, of size befitting so huge a bird. Sails of the sea never saw I such. They had no feathers, but their fashion was of a bat; and he was flapping them so that three winds went forth from him, whereby Cocytus was all congealed. With six eyes he was weeping, and over three chins trickled the tears and bloody drivel. With
each mouth he was crushing a sinner with his teeth, in manner of a brake, so that he thus was making three of them woeful. To the one in front the biting was nothing to the clawing, so that sometimes his spine remained all stripped of skin.

"That soul up there which has the greatest punishment," said the Master, "is Judas Iscariot, who has his head within, and plies his legs outside. Of the other two who have their heads down, he who hangs from the black muzzle is Brutus; see how he writhes and says no word; and the other is Cassius, who seems so large-limbed. But the night is rising again, and now we must depart, for we have seen the whole."

As was his pleasure, I clasped his neck, and he took opportunity of time and place, and when the wings were opened wide he caught hold on the shaggy flanks; from shag to shag he then descended between the bushy hair and the frozen crusts. When we were just where the thigh turns on the thick of the haunch, my Leader, with effort and stress of breath, turned his head where he had his shanks, and clambered by the hair as a man that ascends, so that
I thought to return again to hell.

"Cling fast hold," said the Master, panting like one weary, "for
by such stairs it behoves to depart from so much evil." Then he came forth through the opening of a rock, and placed me upon its edge to sit; then stretched toward me his cautious step.

I raised my eyes, and thought to see Lucifer as I had left him,
and I saw him holding his legs upward. And if I then became
perplexed, let the dull folk think it that see not what that
point is that I had passed.


"Rise up," said the Master, "on thy feet; the way is long and the road is difficult, and already the sun unto mid-tierce[1]
returns."


It was no hallway of a palace where we were, but a natural
dungeon that had a bad floor, and lack of light. "Before I tear
me from the abyss," said I when I had risen up, "my Master, speak a little to me to draw me out of error. Where is the ice? and this one, how is he fixed thus upside down? and how in such short while has the sun from eve to morn made transit?" And he to me, "Thou imaginest that thou still art on the other side of the centre where I laid hold on the hair of the guilty Worm that pierces the world. On that side wast thou so long as I descended; when I turned thou didst pass the point to which from all parts whatever has weight is drawn; and thou art now arrived beneath the hemisphere opposite to that which the great dry land covers, and beneath whose zenith the Man was slain who was born and lived without sin. Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere which forms the other face of the Judecca. Here it is morning when there it is evening; and he who made for us a stairway with his hair is still fixed even as he was before. Upon this side he fell down from heaven, and the earth, which before was spread out here, through fear of him made of the sea a veil, and came to your hemisphere; and perchance to flee from him that land[1] which on this side appears left here this empty space and upward ran back.


A place is there below, stretching as far from Beelzebub as his
tomb extends,[1] which not by sight is known, but by the sound of a rivulet that here descends along the hollow of a rock that it has gnawed with its course that winds and little falls. My Leader and I entered through that hidden way, to return to the bright world. And without care, to have any repose, we mounted up, he first and I second, till through a round opening I saw of those beauteous things which heaven bears, and thence we came forth to see again the stars.