[858] Vexilla, etc.: ‘The banners of the King of Hell advance.’ The words are adapted from a hymn of the Cross used in Holy Week; and they prepare us to find in Lucifer the opponent of ‘the Emperor who reigns on high’ (Inf. i. 124). It is somewhat odd that Dante should have put a Christian hymn into Virgil’s mouth.

[859] Now was I where: In the fourth and inner division or ring of the Ninth Circle. Here are punished those guilty of treachery to their lawful lords or to their benefactors. From Judas Iscariot, the arch-traitor, it takes the name of Judecca.

[860] Some stood, etc.: It has been sought to distinguish the degrees of treachery of the shades by means of the various attitudes assigned to them. But it is difficult to make more out of it than that some are suffering more than others. All of them are the worst of traitors, hard-hearted and cold-hearted, and now they are quite frozen in the ice, sealed up even from the poor relief of intercourse with their fellow-sinners.

[861] The creature once, etc.: Lucifer, guilty of treachery against the Highest, at Purg. xii. 25 described as ‘created noble beyond all other creatures.’ Virgil calls him Dis, the name used by him for Pluto in the Æneid, and the name from which that of the City of Unbelief is taken (Inf. viii. 68).

[862] Judge then what bulk: The arm of Lucifer was as much longer than the stature of one of the giants as a giant was taller than Dante. We have seen (Inf. xxxi. 58) that the giants were more than fifty feet in height—nine times the stature of a man. If a man’s arm be taken as a third of his stature, then Satan is twenty-seven times as tall as a giant, that is, he is fourteen hundred feet or so. For a fourth of this, or nearly so—from the middle of the breast upwards—he stands out of the ice, that is, some three hundred and fifty feet. It seems almost too great a height for Dante’s purpose; and yet on the calculations of some commentators his stature is immensely greater—from three to five thousand feet.

[863] Three faces: By the three faces are represented the three quarters of the world from which the subjects of Lucifer are drawn: vermilion or carnation standing for Europe, yellow for Asia, and black for Africa. Or the faces may symbolise attributes opposed to the Wisdom, Power, and Love of the Trinity (Inf. iii. 5). See also note on line 1.

[864] A bat’s wing: Which flutters and flaps in dark and noisome places. The simile helps to bring more clearly before us the dim light and half-seen horrors of the Judecca.

[865] A heckle: Or brake; the instrument used to clear the fibre of flax from the woody substance mixed with it.

[866] Sometimes nude: We are to imagine that the frame of Judas is being for ever renewed and for ever mangled and torn.

[867] Cassius: It has been surmised that Dante here confounds the pale and lean Cassius who was the friend of Brutus with the L. Cassius described as corpulent by Cicero in the Third Catiline Oration. Brutus and Cassius are set with Judas in this, the deepest room of Hell, because, as he was guilty of high treason against his Divine Master, so they were guilty of it against Julius CÆsar, who, according to Dante, was chosen and ordained by God to found the Roman Empire. As the great rebel against the spiritual authority Judas has allotted to him the fiercer pain. To understand the significance of this harsh treatment of the great Republicans it is necessary to bear in mind that Dante’s devotion to the idea of the Empire was part of his religion, and far surpassed in intensity all we can now well imagine. In the absence of a just and strong Emperor the Divine government of the world seemed to him almost at a stand.

[868] Night is rising: It is Saturday evening, and twenty-four hours since they entered by the gate of Inferno.

[869] I thought to Hell, etc.: Virgil, holding on to Lucifer’s hairy sides, descends the dark and narrow space between him and the ice as far as to his middle, which marks the centre of the earth. Here he swings himself round so as to have his feet to the centre as he emerges from the pit to the southern hemisphere. Dante now feels that he is being carried up, and, able to see nothing in the darkness, deems they are climbing back to the Inferno. Virgil’s difficulty in turning himself round and climbing up the legs of Lucifer arises from his being then at the ‘centre to which all weights tend from every part.’ Dante shared the erroneous belief of the time, that things grew heavier the nearer they were to the centre of the earth.

[870] His upturned legs: Lucifer’s feet are as far above where Virgil and Dante are as was his head above the level of the Judecca.

[871] What point, etc.: The centre of the earth. Dante here feigns to have been himself confused—a fiction which helps to fasten attention on the wonderful fact that if we could make our way through the earth we should require at the centre to reverse our posture. This was more of a wonder in Dante’s time than now.

[872] Mid tierce: The canonical day was divided into four parts, of which Tierce was the first and began at sunrise. It is now about half-past seven in the morning. The night was beginning when they took their departure from the Judecca: the day is now as far advanced in the southern hemisphere as they have spent time on the passage. The journey before them is long indeed, for they have to ascend to the surface of the earth.

[873] To morn from night: Dante’s knowledge of the time of day is wholly derived from what Virgil tells him. Since he began his descent into the Inferno he has not seen the sun.

[874] ’Neath whose summit: Jerusalem is in the centre of the northern hemisphere—an opinion founded perhaps on Ezekiel v. 5: ‘Jerusalem I have set in the midst of the nations and countries round about her.’ In the Convito, iii. 5, we find Dante’s belief regarding the distribution of land and sea clearly given: ‘For those I write for it is enough to know that the Earth is fixed and does not move, and that, with the ocean, it is the centre of the heavens. The heavens, as we see, are for ever revolving around it as a centre; and in these revolutions they must of necessity have two fixed poles.... Of these one is visible to almost all the dry land of the Earth; and that is our north pole [star]. The other, that is, the south, is out of sight of almost all the dry land.’

[875] The Man: The name of Christ is not mentioned in the Inferno.

[876] Land, as of yore, etc.: On the fall of Lucifer from the southern sky all the dry land of that hemisphere fled before him under the ocean and took refuge in the other; that is, as much land emerged in the northern hemisphere as sank in the southern. But the ground in the direct line of his descent to the centre of the earth heaped itself up into the Mount of Purgatory—the only dry land left in the southern hemisphere. The Inferno was then also hollowed out; and, as Mount Calvary is exactly antipodal to Purgatory, we may understand that on the fall of the first rebels the Mount of Reconciliation for the human race, which is also that of Purification, rose out of the very realms of darkness and sin.—But, as Todeschini points out, the question here arises of whether the Inferno was not created before the earth. At Parad. vii. 124, the earth, with the air and fire and water, is described as ‘corruptible and lasting short while;’ but the Inferno is to endure for aye, and was made before all that is not eternal (Inf. iii. 8).

[877] Belzebub: Called in the Gospel the prince of the devils. It may be worth mentioning here that Dante sees in Purgatory (Purg. viii. 99) a serpent which he says may be that which tempted Eve. The identification of the great tempter with Satan is a Miltonic, or at any rate a comparatively modern idea.

[878] The sepulchre: The Inferno, tomb of Satan and all the wicked.

[879] A brook: Some make this to be the same as Lethe, one of the rivers of the Earthly Paradise. It certainly descends from the Mount of Purgatory.

[880] The stars: Each of the three divisions of the Comedy closes with ‘the stars.’ These, as appears from Purg. i. are the stars of dawn. It was after sunrise when they began their ascent to the surface of the earth, and so nearly twenty-four hours have been spent on the journey—the time it took them to descend through Inferno. It is now the morning of Easter Sunday—that is, of the true anniversary of the Resurrection although not of the day observed that year by the Church. See Inf. xxi. 112.