[736] Twenty miles and two: The Ninth Bolgia has a circumference of twenty-two miles, and as the procession of the shades is slow it would indeed involve a protracted halt to wait till all had passed beneath the bridge. Virgil asks ironically if he wishes to count them all. This precise detail, taken along with one of the same kind in the following Canto (line 86), has suggested the attempt to construct the Inferno to a scale. Dante wisely suffers us to forget, if we will, that—taking the diameter of the earth at 6500 miles, as given by him in the Convito—he travels from the surface of the globe to the centre at the rate of more than two miles a minute, counting downward motion alone. It is only when he has come to the lowest rings that he allows himself to give details of size; and probably the mention of the extent of the Ninth Bolgia, which comes on the reader as a surprise, is thrown out in order to impress on the imagination some sense of the enormous extent of the regions through which the pilgrim has already passed. Henceforth he deals in exact measurement.

[737] The moon: It is now some time after noon on the Saturday. The last indication of time was at Canto xxi. 112.

[738] The time, etc.: Before nightfall they are to complete their exploration of the Inferno, and they will have spent twenty-four hours in it.

[739] Geri del Bello: One of the Alighieri, a full cousin of Dante’s father. He was guilty of encouraging dissension, say the commentators; which is to be clearly inferred from the place assigned him in Inferno: but they do not agree as to how he met his death, nor do they mention the date of it. ‘Not avenged till thirty years after,’ says Landino; but does not say if this was after his death or the time at which Dante writes.

[740] Hautefort: Bertrand de Born’s castle in Gascony.

[741] My ruth: Enlightened moralist though Dante is, he yet shows himself man of his age enough to be keenly alive to the extremest claims of kindred; and while he condemns the vendetta by the words put into Virgil’s mouth, he confesses to a feeling of meanness not to have practised it on behoof of a distant relative. There is a high art in this introduction of Geri del Bello. Had they conferred together Dante must have seemed either cruel or pusillanimous, reproaching or being reproached. As it is, all the poetry of the situation comes out the stronger that they do not meet face to face: the threatening finger, the questions hastily put to Geri by the astonished shades, and his disappearance under the dark vault when by the law of his punishment the sinner can no longer tarry.

[742] With but clearer light: They have crossed the rampart dividing the Ninth Bolgia from the Tenth, of which they would now command a view, were it not so dark.

[743] The Brotherhood: The word used properly describes the Lay Brothers of a monastery. Philalethes suggests that Dante may regard the devils as the true monks of the monastery of Malebolge. The simile involves no contempt for the monastic life, but is naturally used with reference to those who live secluded and under a fixed rule. He elsewhere speaks of the College of the Hypocrites (Inf. xxiii. 91) and of Paradise as the Cloister where Christ is Abbot (Purg. xxvi.129).

[744] Valdichiana: The district lying between Arezzo and Chiusi; in Dante’s time a hotbed of malaria, but now, owing to drainage works promoted by the enlightened Tuscan minister Fossombroni (1823), one of the most fertile and healthy regions of Italy.

[745] Sardinia: Had in the middle ages an evil reputation for its fever-stricken air. The Maremma has been already mentioned (Inf. xxv.19). In Dante’s time it was almost unpeopled.

[746] The long ridge: One of the ribs of rock which, like the spokes of a wheel, ran from the periphery to the centre of Malebolge, rising into arches as they crossed each successive Bolgia. The utmost brink is the inner bank of the Tenth and last Bolgia. To the edge of this moat they descend, bearing as usual to the left hand.

[747] Doomed on earth, etc.: ‘Whom she here registers.’ While they are still on earth their doom is fixed by Divine justice.

[748] Ægina: The description is taken from Ovid (Metam. vii.).

[749] The scab, etc.: As if by an infernal alchemy the matter of the shadowy bodies of these sinners is changed into one loathsome form or another.

[750] To all eternity: This may seem a stroke of sarcasm, but is not. Himself a shade, Virgil cannot, like Dante, promise to refresh the memory of the shades on earth, and can only wish for them some slight alleviation of their suffering.

[751] An Aretine: Called Griffolino, and burned at Florence or Siena on a charge of heresy. Albert of Siena is said to have been a relative, some say the natural son, of the Bishop of Siena. A man of the name figures as hero in some of Sacchetti’s novels, always in a ridiculous light. There seems to be no authentic testimony regarding the incident in the text.

[752] DÆdalus: Who escaped on wings of his invention from the Cretan Labyrinth he had made and lost himself in.

[753] The Sienese: The comparison of these to the French would have the more cogency as Siena boasted of having been founded by the Gauls. ‘That vain people,’ says Dante of the Sienese in the Purgatory (xiii. 151). Among their neighbours they still bear the reputation of light-headedness; also, it ought to be added, of great urbanity.

[754] The Stricca: The exception in his favour is ironical, as is that of all the others mentioned.

[755] Nicholas: ‘The lavish custom of the clove’ which he invented is variously described. I have chosen the version which makes it consist of stuffing pheasants with cloves, then very costly.

[756] The club: The commentators tell that the two young Sienese nobles above mentioned were members of a society formed for the purpose of living luxuriously together. Twelve of them contributed a fund of above two hundred thousand gold florins; they built a great palace and furnished it magnificently, and launched out into every other sort of extravagance with such assiduity that in a few months their capital was gone. As that amounted to more than a hundred thousand pounds of our money, equal in those days to a million or two, the story must be held to savour of romance. That Dante refers to a prodigal’s club that actually existed some time before he wrote we cannot doubt. But it seems uncertain, to say the least, whether the sonnets addressed by the Tuscan poet Folgore da Gemignano to a jovial crew in Siena can be taken as having been inspired by the club Dante speaks of. A translation of them is given by Mr. Rossetti in his Circle of Dante. (See Mr. Symonds’s Renaissance, vol. iv. page 54, note, for doubts as to the date of Folgore.)—Caccia d’ Ascian: Whose short and merry club life cost him his estates near Siena.

[757] The Abbagliato: Nothing is known, though a great deal is guessed, about this member of the club. It is enough to know that, having a scant supply of wit, he spent it freely.

[758] Capocchio: Some one whom Dante knew. Whether he was a Florentine or a Sienese is not ascertained, but from the strain of his mention of the Sienese we may guess Florentine. He was burned in Siena in 1293.—(Scartazzini.) They had studied together, says the Anonimo. Benvenuto tells of him that one Good Friday, while in a cloister, he painted on his nail with marvellous completeness a picture of the crucifixion. Dante came up, and was lost in wonder, when Capocchio suddenly licked his nail clean—which may be taken for what it is worth.