[375] Vast abyss: They are now at the inner side of the Sixth Circle, and upon the verge of the rocky steep which slopes down from it into the Seventh. All the lower Hell lies beneath them, and it is from that rather than from the next circle in particular that the stench arises, symbolical of the foulness of the sins which are punished there. The noisome smells which make part of the horror of Inferno are after this sometimes mentioned, but never dwelt upon (Inf. xviii. 106, and xxix. 50).

[376] Pope Anastasius: The second of the name, elected Pope in 496. Photinus, bishop of Sirenium, was infected with the Sabellian heresy, but he was deposed more than a century before the time of Anastasius. Dante follows some obscure legend in charging Anastasius with heresy. The important point is that the one heretic, in the sense usually attached to the term, named as being in the city of unbelief, is a Pope.

[377] Three small circles: The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth; small in circumference compared with those above. The pilgrims are now deep in the hollow cone.

[378] That sight, etc.: After hearing the following explanation Dante no longer asks to what classes the sinners met with belong, but only as to the guilt of individual shades.

[379] Injury: They have left above them the circles of those whose sin consists in the exaggeration or misdirection of a wholesome natural instinct. Below them lie the circles filled with such as have been guilty of malicious wickedness. This manifests itself in two ways: by violence or by fraud. After first mentioning in a general way that the fraudulent are set lowest in Inferno, Virgil proceeds to define violence, and to tell how the violent occupy the circle immediately beneath them—the Seventh. For division of the maliciously wicked into two classes Dante is supposed to be indebted to Cicero: ‘Injury may be wrought by force or by fraud.... Both are unnatural for man, but fraud is the more hateful.’—De Officiis, i. 13. It is remarkable that Virgil says nothing of those in the Sixth Circle in this account of the classes of sinners.

[380] To man alone, etc.: Fraud involves the corrupt use of the powers that distinguish us from the brutes.

[381] Who gamble, etc.: A different sin from the lavish spending punished in the Fourth Circle (Inf. vii.). The distinction is that between thriftlessness and the prodigality which, stripping a man of the means of living, disgusts him with life, as described in the following line. It is from among prodigals that the ranks of suicides are greatly filled, and here they are appropriately placed together. It may seem strange that in his classification of guilt Dante should rank violence to one’s self as a more heinous sin than that committed against one’s neighbour. He may have in view the fact that none harm their neighbours so much as they who are oblivious of their own true interest.

[382] Sodom and Cahors: Sins against nature are reckoned sins against God, as explained lower down in this Canto. Cahors in Languedoc had in the Middle Ages the reputation of being a nest of usurers. These in old English Chronicles are termed Caorsins. With the sins of Sodom and Cahors are ranked the denial of God and blasphemy against Him—deeper sins than the erroneous conceptions of the Divine nature and government punished in the Sixth Circle. The three concentric rings composing the Seventh Circle are all on the same level, as we shall find.

[383] Fraud, etc.: Fraud is of such a nature that conscience never fails to give due warning against the sin. This is an aggravation of the guilt of it.

[384] The second circle: The second now beneath them; that is, the Eighth.

[385] Seat of Dis: The Ninth and last Circle.

[386] Thy Ethics: The Ethics of Aristotle, in which it is said: ‘With regard to manners, these three things are to be eschewed: incontinence, vice, and bestiality.’ Aristotle holds incontinence to consist in the immoderate indulgence of propensities which under right guidance are adapted to promote lawful pleasure. It is, generally speaking, the sin of which those about whom Dante has inquired were guilty.—It has been ingeniously sought by Philalethes (GÖtt. Com.) to show that Virgil’s disquisition is founded on this threefold classification of Aristotle’s—violence being taken to be the same as bestiality, and malice as vice. But the reference to Aristotle is made with the limited purpose of justifying the lenient treatment of incontinence; in the same way as a few lines further on Genesis is referred to in support of the harsh treatment of usury.

[387] Physics: The Physics of Aristotle, in which it is said: ‘Art imitates nature.’ Art includes handicrafts.

[388] Genesis: ‘And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden to dress it and to keep it.’ ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’

[389] His disdain: The usurer seeks to get wealth independently of honest labour or reliance on the processes of nature. This far-fetched argument against usury closes one of the most arid passages of the Comedy. The shortness of the Canto almost suggests that Dante had himself got weary of it.

[390] But come, etc.: They have been all this time resting behind the lid of the tomb.

[391] The Fishes, etc.: The sun being now in Aries the stars of Pisces begin to rise about a couple of hours before sunrise. The Great Bear lies above Caurus, the quarter of the N.N.W. wind. It seems impossible to harmonise the astronomical indications scattered throughout the Comedy, there being traces of Dante’s having sometimes used details belonging rather to the day on which Good Friday fell in 1300, the 8th of April, than to the (supposed) true anniversary of the crucifixion. That this, the 25th of March, is the day he intended to conform to appears from Inf. xxi. 112.—The time is now near dawn on the Saturday morning. It is almost needless to say that Virgil speaks of the stars as he knows they are placed, but without seeing them. By what light they see in Inferno is nowhere explained. We have been told that it was dark as night (Inf. iv. 10, v. 28).