The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno

CANTO XXVIII.

Could any, even in words unclogged by rhyme
Recount the wounds that now I saw,[715] and blood,
Although he aimed at it time after time?
Here every tongue must fail of what it would,
Because our human speech and powers of thought
To grasp so much come short in aptitude.
If all the people were together brought
Who in Apulia,[716] land distressed by fate,
Made lamentation for the bloodshed wrought
By Rome;[717] and in that war procrastinate[718]10
When the large booty of the rings was won,
As Livy writes whose every word has weight;
With those on whom such direful deeds were done
When Robert Guiscard[719] they as foes assailed;
And those of whom still turns up many a bone
At Ceperan,[720] where each Apulian failed
In faith; and those at Tagliacozzo[721] strewed,
Where old Alardo, not by arms, prevailed;
And each his wounds and mutilations showed,
Yet would they far behind by those be left20
Who had the vile Ninth Bolgia for abode.
No cask, of middle stave or end bereft,
E’er gaped like one I saw the rest among,
Slit from the chin all downward to the cleft.
Between his legs his entrails drooping hung;
The pluck and that foul bag were evident
Which changes what is swallowed into dung.
And while I gazed upon him all intent,
Opening his breast his eyes on me he set,
Saying: ‘Behold, how by myself I’m rent!30
See how dismembered now is Mahomet![722]
Ali[723] in front of me goes weeping too;
With visage from the chin to forelock split.
By all the others whom thou seest there grew
Scandal and schism while yet they breathed the day;
Because of which they now are cloven through.
There stands behind a devil on the way,
Us with his sword thus cruelly to trim:
He cleaves again each of our company
As soon as we complete the circuit grim;40
Because the wounds of each are healed outright
Or e’er anew he goes in front of him.
But who art thou that peerest from the height,
It may be putting off to reach the pain
Which shall the crimes confessed by thee requite?’
‘Death has not seized him yet, nor is he ta’en
To torment for his sins,’ my Master said;
‘But, that he may a full experience gain,
By me, a ghost, ’tis doomed he should be led
Down the Infernal circles, round on round;50
And what I tell thee is the truth indeed.’
A hundred shades and more, to whom the sound
Had reached, stood in the moat to mark me well,
Their pangs forgot; so did the words astound.
‘Let Fra Dolcin[724] provide, thou mayst him tell—
Thou, who perchance ere long shalt sunward go—
Unless he soon would join me in this Hell,
Much food, lest aided by the siege of snow
The Novarese should o’er him victory get,
Which otherwise to win they would be slow.’60
While this was said to me by Mahomet
One foot he held uplifted; to the ground
He let it fall, and so he forward set
Next, one whose throat was gaping with a wound,
Whose nose up to the brows away was sheared
And on whose head a single ear was found,
At me, with all the others, wondering peered;
And, ere the rest, an open windpipe made,
The outside of it all with crimson smeared.
‘O thou, not here because of guilt,’ he said;70
‘And whom I sure on Latian ground did know
Unless by strong similitude betrayed,
Upon Pier da Medicin[725] bestow
A thought, shouldst thou revisit the sweet plain
That from Vercelli[726] slopes to MarcabÒ.
And make thou known to Fano’s worthiest twain—
To Messer Guido and to Angiolel—
They, unless foresight here be wholly vain,
Thrown overboard in gyve and manacle
Shall drown fast by Cattolica, as planned80
By treachery of a tyrant fierce and fell.
Between Majolica[727] and Cyprus strand
A blacker crime did Neptune never spy
By pirates wrought, or

[715] That now I saw: In the Ninth Bolgia, on which he is looking down, and in which are punished the sowers of discord in church and state.

[716] Apulia: The south-eastern district of Italy, owing to its situation a frequent battle-field in ancient and modern times.

[717] Rome: ‘Trojans’ in most MSS.; and then the Romans are described as descended from Trojans. The reference may be to the defeat of the Apulians with considerable slaughter by P. Decius Mus, or to their losses in general in the course of the Samnite war.

[718] War procrastinate: The second Punic war lasted fully fifteen years, and in the course of it the battle of CannÆ was gained by Hannibal, where so many Roman knights fell that the spoil of rings amounted to a peck.

[719] Guiscard: One of the Norman conquerors of the regions which up to our own time constituted the kingdom of Naples. In Apulia he did much fighting against Lombards, Saracens, and Greeks. He is found by Dante in Paradise among those who fought for the faith (Par. xviii. 48). His death happened in Cephalonia in 1085, at the age of seventy, when he was engaged on an expedition against Constantinople.

[720] Ceperan: In the swift and decisive campaign undertaken by Charles of Anjou against Manfred, King of Sicily and Naples, the first victory was obtained at Ceperano; but it was won owing to the treachery of Manfred’s lieutenant, and not by the sword. The true battle was fought at Benevento (Purg. iii. 128). Ceperano may be named by Dante as the field where the defeat of Manfred was virtually begun, and where the Apulians first failed in loyalty to their gallant king. Dante was a year old at the time of Manfred’s overthrow (1266).

[721] Tagliacozzo: The crown Charles had won from Manfred he had to defend against Manfred’s nephew Conradin (grandson and last representative of Frederick II. and the legitimate heir to the kingdom of Sicily), whom, in 1268, he defeated near Tagliacozzo in the Abruzzi. He made his victory the more complete by acting on the advice of Alardo or Erard de Valery, an old Crusader, to hold good part of his force in reserve. Charles wrote to the Pope that the slaughter was so great as far to exceed that at Benevento. The feet of all the low-born prisoners not slain on the field were cut off, while the gentlemen were beheaded or hanged.

[722] Mahomet: It has been objected to Dante by M. LittrÉ that he treats Mahomet, the founder of a new religion, as a mere schismatic. The wonder would have been had he dwelt on the good qualities of the Prophet at a time when Islam still threatened Europe. He goes on the fact that Mahomet and his followers rent great part of the East and South from Christendom; and for this the Prophet is represented as being mutilated in a sorer degree than the other schismatics.

[723] Ali: Son-in-law of Mahomet.

[724] Fra Dolcin: At the close of the thirteenth century, Boniface being Pope, the general discontent with the corruption of the higher clergy found expression in the north of Italy in the foundation of a new sect, whose leader was Fra Dolcino. What he chiefly was—enthusiast, reformer, or impostor—it is impossible to ascertain; all we know of him being derived from writers in the Papal interest. Among other crimes he was charged with that of teaching the lawfulness of telling an Inquisitor a lie to save your life, and with prophesying the advent of a pious Pope. A holy war on a small scale was preached against him. After suffering the extremities of famine, snowed up as he was among the mountains, he was taken prisoner and cruelly put to death (1307). It may have been in order to save himself from being suspected of sympathy with him, that Dante, whose hatred of Boniface and the New Pharisees was equal to Dolcino’s, provides for him by anticipation a place with Mahomet.

[725] Pier da Medicin: Medicina is in the territory of Bologna. Piero is said to have stirred up dissensions between the Polentas of Ravenna and the Malatestas of Rimini.

[726] From Vercelli, etc.: From the district of Vercelli to where the castle of MarcabÒ once stood, at the mouth of the Po, is a distance of two hundred miles. The plain is Lombardy.

[727] Majolica, etc.: On all the Mediterranean, from Cyprus in the east to Majorca in the west.

[728] The traitor, etc.: The one-eyed traitor is Malatesta, lord of Rimini, the Young Mastiff of the preceding Canto. He invited the two chief citizens of Fano, named in the text, to hold a conference with him, and procured that on their way they should be pitched overboard opposite the castle of Cattolica, which stood between Fano and Rimini. This is said to have happened in 1304.

[729] Focara: The name of a promontory near Cattolica, subject to squalls. The victims were never to double the headland.

[730] Curio: The Roman Tribune who, according to Lucan—the incident is not historically correct—found CÆsar hesitating whether to cross the Rubicon, and advised him: Tolle moras: semper nocuit differre paratis. ‘No delay! when men are ready they always suffer by putting off.’ The passage of the Rubicon was counted as the beginning of the Civil War.—Curio gets scant justice, seeing that in Dante’s view CÆsar in all he did was only carrying out the Divine purpose regarding the Empire.

[731] Mosca: In 1215 one of the Florentine family of the Buondelmonti jilted a daughter of the Amidei. When these with their friends met to take counsel touching revenge for the insult, Mosca, one of the Uberti or of the Lamberti, gave his opinion in the proverb, Cosa fatta ha capo: ‘A thing once done is done with.’ The hint was approved of, and on the following Easter morning the young Buondelmonte, as, mounted on a white steed and dressed in white he rode across the Ponte Vecchio, was dragged to the ground and cruelly slain. All the great Florentine families took sides in the feud, and it soon widened into the civil war between Florentine Guelf and Ghibeline.

[732] Bertrand de Born: Is mentioned by Dante in his Treatise De Vulgari Eloquio, ii. 2, as specially the poet of warlike deeds. He was a Gascon noble who used his poetical gift very much to stir up strife. For patron he had the Prince Henry, son of Henry II. of England. Though Henry never came to the throne he was, during his father’s lifetime, crowned as his successor, and was known as the young King. After the death of the Prince, Bertrand was taken prisoner by the King, and, according to the legend, was loaded with favours because he had been so true a friend to his young master. That he had a turn for fomenting discord is shown by his having also led a revolt in Aquitaine against Richard I.—All the old MSS. and all the earlier commentators read Re Giovanni, King John; Re Giovane, the young King, being a comparatively modern emendation. In favour of adopting this it may be mentioned that in his poems Bertrand calls Prince Henry lo Reys joves, the young King; that it was Henry and not John that was his friend and patron; and that in the old Cento Novelle Henry is described as the young King: in favour of the older reading, that John as well as his brother was a rebel to Henry; and that the line is hurt by the change from Giovanni to Giovane. Considering that Dante almost certainly wrote Giovanni it seems most reasonable to suppose that he may have confounded the Re Giovane with King John.

[733] From what, etc.: The spinal cord, as we should now say, though Dante may have meant the heart.

[734] Pain for pain: In the City of Dis we found the heresiarchs, those who lead others to think falsely. The lower depth of the Malebolge is reserved for such as needlessly rend any Divinely-constituted order of society, civil or religious. Conduct counts more with Dante than opinion—in this case.

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