[275] Cerberus: In the Greek mythology Cerberus is the watch-dog of the under world. By Dante he is converted into a demon, and with his three throats, canine voracity, and ugly inflamed bulk, is appropriately set to guard the entrance to the circle of the gluttonous and wine-bibbers.

[276] And oft, etc.: On entering the circle the shades are seized and torn by Cerberus; once over-nice in how they fed, they are now treated as if they were food for dogs. But their enduring pain is to be subjected to every kind of physical discomfort. Their senses of hearing, touch, and smell are assailed by the opposite of what they were most used to enjoy at their luxurious feasts.

[277] Great worm: Though human in a monstrous form, Cerberus is so called as being a disgusting brute.

[278] Semblances, etc.: ‘Emptiness which seems to be a person.’ To this conception of the shades as only seeming to have bodies, Dante has difficulty in remaining true. For instance, at line 101 they mix with the sleet to make a sludgy mass; and cannot therefore be impalpable.

[279] Ciacco at once perceives by the weight of Dante’s tread that he is a living man.

[280] Ciacco: The name or nickname of a Florentine wit, and, in his day, a great diner-out. Boccaccio, in his commentary, says that, though poor, Ciacco associated with men of birth and wealth, especially such as ate and drank delicately. In the Decameron, ix. 8, he is introduced as being on such terms with the great Corso Donati as to be able to propose himself to dinner with him. Clearly he was not a bad fellow, and his pitiful case, perhaps contrasted with the high spirits and jovial surroundings in which he was last met by Dante, almost, though not quite, win a tear from the stern pilgrim.

[281] The citizens, etc.: Dante eagerly confers on Florentine politics with the first Florentine he encounters in Inferno.

[282] After, etc.: In the following nine lines the party history of Florence for two years after the period of the poem (March 1300) is roughly indicated. The city was divided into two factions—the Whites, led by the great merchant Vieri dei Cerchi, and the Blacks, led by Corso Donati, a poor and turbulent noble. At the close of 1300 there was a bloody encounter between the more violent members of the two parties. In May 1301 the Blacks were banished. In the autumn of that year they returned in triumph to the city in the train of Charles of Valois, and got the Whites banished in April 1302, within three years, that is, of the poet’s talk with Ciacco. Dante himself was associated with the Whites, but not as a violent partisan; for though he was a strong politician no party quite answered his views. From the middle of June till the middle of August 1300 he was one of the Priors. In the course of 1301 he is believed to have gone on an embassy to Rome to persuade the Pope to abstain from meddling in Florentine affairs. He never entered Florence again, being condemned virtually to banishment in January 1302.

[283] The boorish party: la parte selvaggia. The Whites; but what is exactly meant by selvaggia is not clear. Literally it is ‘woodland,’ and some say it refers to the Cerchi having originally come from a well-wooded district; which is absurd. Nor, taking the word in its secondary meaning of savage, does it apply better to one party than another—not so well, perhaps, to the Whites as to the Blacks. Villani also terms the Cerchi salvatichi (viii. 39), and in a connection where it may mean rude, ill-mannered. I take it that Dante here indulges in a gibe at the party to which he once belonged, but which, ere he began the Comedy, he had quite broken with. In Parad. xvii. 62 he terms the members of it ‘wicked and stupid.’ The sneer in the text would come well enough from the witty and soft-living Ciacco.

[284] Holpen, etc.: Pope Boniface, already intriguing to gain the preponderance in Florence, which for a time he enjoyed, with the greedy and faithless Charles of Valois for his agent.

[285] Two just: Dante and another, unknown. He thus distinctly puts from himself any blame for the evil turn things had taken in Florence. How thoroughly he had broken with his party ere he wrote this is proved by his exclusion of the irresolute but respectable Vieri dei Cerchi from the number of the just men. He, in Dante’s judgment, was only too much listened to.—It will be borne in mind that, at the time assigned to the action of the Comedy, Dante was still resident in Florence.

[286] Tegghiaio: See Inf. xvi. 42. Farinata: Inf. x. 32.

[287] Rusticucci: Inf. xvi. 44. Mosca: Inf. xxviii. 106. Arrigo: Cannot be identified. All these distinguished Florentines we may assume to have been hospitable patrons of Ciacco’s.

[288] But when, etc.: In the Inferno many such prayers are addressed to Dante. The shades in Purgatory ask to have their friends on earth stirred to offer up petitions for their speedy purification and deliverance; but the only alleviation possible for the doomed spirits is to know that they are not yet forgotten up in the ‘sweet world.’ A double artistic purpose is served by representing them as feeling thus. It relieves the mind to think that in such misery there is any source of comfort at all. And by making them be still interested on their own account in the thoughts of men, the eager colloquies in which they engage with Dante on such unequal terms gain in verisimilitude.

[289] And list, etc.: The final sentence against them is to echo, in its results, through all eternity.

[290] The world to come: The life after doomsday.

[291] Thy Science: To Aristotle. In the Convito, iv. 16, he quotes ‘the Philosopher’ as teaching that ‘everything is then at its full perfection when it thoroughly fulfils its special functions.’

[292] Than now: Augustine says that ‘after the resurrection of the flesh the joys of the blessed and the sufferings of the wicked will be enhanced.’ And, according to Thomas Aquinas, ‘the soul, without the body, is wanting in the perfection designed for it by Nature.’