[782] From that sad valley: Leaving the Tenth and last Bolgia they climb the inner bank of it and approach the Ninth and last Circle, which consists of the pit of the Inferno.

[783] Roland: Charles the Great, on his march north after defeating the Saracens at Saragossa, left Roland to bring up his rear-guard. The enemy fell on this in superior strength, and slew the Christians almost to a man. Then Roland, mortally wounded, sat down under a tree in Roncesvalles and blew upon his famous horn a blast so loud that it was heard by Charles at a distance of several miles.—The Chansons de Geste were familiarly known to Italians of all classes.

[784] Then tenderly, etc.: The wound inflicted by his reproof has been already healed, but Virgil still behaves to Dante with more than his wonted gentleness. He will have him assured of his sympathy now that they are about to descend into the ‘lowest depth of all wickedness.’

[785] Montereggioni: A fortress about six miles from Siena, of which ample ruins still exist. It had no central keep, but twelve towers rose from its circular wall like spikes from the rim of a coronet. They had been added by the Sienese in 1260, and so were comparatively new in Dante’s time.—As the towers stood round Montereggioni so the giants at regular intervals stand round the central pit. They have their foothold within the enclosing mound; and thus, to one looking at them from without, they are hidden by it up to their middle. As the embodiment of superhuman impious strength and pride they stand for warders of the utmost reach of Hell.

[786] St. Peter’s cone: The great pine cone of bronze, supposed to have originally crowned the mausoleum of Hadrian, lay in Dante’s time in the forecourt of St Peter’s. When the new church was built it was removed to the gardens of the Vatican, where it still remains. Its size, it will be seen, is of importance as helping us to a notion of the stature of the giants; and, though the accounts of its height are strangely at variance with one another, I think the measurement made specially for Philalethes may be accepted as substantially correct. According to that, the cone is ten palms long—about six feet. Allowing something for the neck, down to ‘where a man clasps his cloak’ (line 66), and taking the thirty palms as eighteen feet, we get twenty-six feet or so for half his height. The giants vary in bulk; whether they do so in height is not clear. We cannot be far mistaken if we assume them to stand from fifty to sixty feet high. Virgil and Dante must throw their heads well back to look up into the giant’s face; and Virgil must raise his voice as he speaks.—With regard to the height of the cone it may be remarked that Murray’s Handbook for Rome makes it eleven feet high; Gsell-Fels two and a half metres, or eight feet and three inches. It is so placed as to be difficult of measurement.

[787] Three Frisians: Three very tall men, as Dante took Frisians to be, if standing one on the head of the other would not have reached his hair.

[788] Rafel, etc.: These words, like the opening line of the Seventh Canto, have, to no result, greatly exercised the ingenuity of scholars. From what follows it is clear that Dante meant them to be meaningless. Part of Nimrod’s punishment is that he who brought about the confusion of tongues is now left with a language all to himself. It seems strange that commentators should have exhausted themselves in searching for a sense in words specially invented to have none.—In his De Vulg. El., i. 7, Dante enlarges upon the confusion of tongues, and speaks of the tower of Babel as having been begun by men on the persuasion of a giant.

[789] Ephialtes: One of the giants who in the war with the gods piled Ossa on Pelion.

[790] AntÆus: Is to be asked to lift them over the wall, because, unlike Nimrod, he can understand what is said to him, and, unlike Ephialtes, is not bound. AntÆus is free-handed because he took no part in the war with the gods.

[791] The one thou’dst see: Briareus. Virgil here gives Dante to know what is the truth about Briareus (see line 97, etc.). He is not, as he was fabled, a monster with a hundred hands, but is like Ephialtes, only fiercer to see. Hearing himself thus made light of Ephialtes trembles with anger, like a tower rocking in an earthquake.

[792] Five ell: Five ells make about thirty palms, so that AntÆus is of the same stature as that assigned to Nimrod at line 65. This supports the view that the ‘huger’ of line 84 may apply to breadth rather than to height.

[793] The fortune-haunted dell: The valley of the Bagrada near Utica, where Scipio defeated Hannibal and won the surname of Africanus. The giant AntÆus had, according to the legend, lived in that neighbourhood, with the flesh of lions for his food and his dwelling in a cave. He was son of the Earth, and could not be vanquished so long as he was able to touch the ground; and thus ere Hercules could give him a mortal hug he needed to swing him aloft. In the Monarchia, ii. 10, Dante refers to the combat between Hercules and AntÆus as an instance of the wager of battle corresponding to that between David and Goliath. Lucan’s Pharsalia, a favourite authority with Dante, supplies him with these references to Scipio and AntÆus.

[794] Cocytus: The frozen lake fed by the waters of Phlegethon. See Canto xiv. at the end.

[795] Tityus, etc.: These were other giants, stated by Lucan to be less strong than AntÆus. This introduction of their names is therefore a piece of flattery to the monster. A light contemptuous turn is given by Virgil to his flattery when in the following sentence he bids AntÆus not curl his snout, but at once comply with the demand for aid. There is something genuinely Italian in the picture given of the giants in this Canto, as of creatures whose intellect bears no proportion to their bulk and brute strength. Mighty hunters like Nimrod, skilled in sounding the horn but feeble in reasoned speech, Frisians with great thews and long of limb, and German men-at-arms who traded in their rude valour, to the subtle Florentine in whom the ferment of the Renaissance was beginning to work were all specimens of Nature’s handicraft that had better have been left unmade, were it not that wiser people could use them as tools.

[796] Carisenda: A tower still standing in Bologna, built at the beginning of the twelfth century, and, like many others of its kind in the city, erected not for strength but merely in order to dignify the family to whom it belonged. By way of further distinction to their owners, some of these towers were so constructed as to lean from the perpendicular. Carisenda, like its taller neighbour the Asinelli, still supplies a striking feature to the near and distant views of Bologna. What is left of it hangs for more than two yards off the plumb. In the half-century after Dante’s time it had, according to Benvenuto, lost something of its height. It would therefore as the poet saw it seem to be bending down even more than it now does to any one standing under it on the side it slopes to, when a cloud is drifting over it in the other direction.