Canto XIX

 1-30 The Third Ditch: The Sellers of Holy Things

Simon Magus! and you fellow whores of his, who sell the things of God for pieces of gold or silver! The trumpets sound for all of you, your burning beds await you in the third ditch.

Highest Wisdom, your art appears in the heavens, on the earth, and in the underworld!  Your power is manifested in justice! 

Already we had climbed to the center of the archway that bridges the third ditch. On the sides and floor of this pit, the livid stone was full of large holes, all of the same size. Each one was rounded, as big as those fonts in the Baptistery of St John where the baptizing takes place. I broke one of those fonts not many years ago to rescue a child who was drowning in it: I swear that's the truth! 

A body was stuffed inside each one of these holes, with only the naked feet and legs up to the knee sticking out of the ground. The soles were all on fire, and the legs twitched so violently that no rope or chain could have held them.  As a flame will burn only along the surface of a greasy object, so here the fires slid back and forth between the heels and the toes.

 Canto XIX: 31-87 Pope Nicholas III

‘Master,’ I said, ‘Do you see the one that kicks more than all of the others--the one writhing with the reddest flames? Who is that?’

He answered: ‘If you let me take you down, you can ask him who he is and why he is here.’

I agreed: ‘I'm with you. You are the leader, and I will obey your wishes, as you know already since you understand every thought of mine, even the unspoken ones!’

We went down to the bank and then descended it, always keeping to the left, until we reached the bottom of that holey ditch. When we reached the burrow in question, I addressed the wild twitcher: ‘You unhappy spirit, whoever you are, you with your upper body planted like a stake in the ground, speak to me if you can.’ I stood there like a friar beside a treacherous assassin who is fixed in the ground but delays his burial by making a very full confession.

He cried out: ‘Is that you, Boniface? Are you here already? The prophecies then are wrong by a few years. Have you tired of all the treasure that you plundered from our lady, the church? Are you finished deceiving and abusing her?’

For a moment I could not think how to reply without mocking him, but Virgil understood and advised: ‘Just tell him that you are not the person he believes.’  That's what I did, at which the legs convulsed.

After a moment, he sighed and said, in a tearful voice: ‘Then what do you want of me? If it means so much to you to understand who I am, then know that I wore the great mantle and was son of the she-bear, so eager to protect my cubs that pocketing wealth was my only goal.

Other simonists who came before me lie cowering in cracks in the rock down below my head. I too will be injected somewhere down there, when Boniface is shoved into my hole. (I'm sorry, I thought you were that crook.)  But I have toasted my soles here much longer than he will. He will quickly lose his outstanding place here to one from the west, a lawless shepherd whose fouler deeds will surpass all that Boniface and I have done. He will be a new Jason, the high priest that we read about in the Book of Maccabees. As Jason bought his office from by King Antiochus, so this successor of mine will be an installation of the King of France.’

 

 Canto XIX:88-133 Dante speaks against Simony

I do not know if I was too bold in replying to him, but I said: ‘Tell me, how much cash did the Lord demand of Peter in exchange for the keys of the church? He demanded none. He said only: Follow me. And how much gold and silver did Peter and the other apostles demand  from Matthias, to fill the place that Judas had lost through his guilt?  None! You belong right here. Your punishment is well deserved.  

‘You extorted pay-off money when you joined the conspiracy against Charles of Anjou. If I did not respect the great keys that you held in your hand while you lived, I would say worse things about you, too, because your greed grieves the whole world, tramples the good, and supports the wicked. John the Evangelist spoke of your kind, when he saw the kings of the earth screwing the great whore who sits on the waters. She was born with seven heads, and her ten big horns shine as long as a consort makes love to her. 

‘Your god is made of gold and silver. You are worse than an idolater that adores one image, for you treasure all of them! Ah, Constantine, how much evil you began, after your conversion, when that donation of yours made Sylvester the first wealthy pope!’

While I sang these notes to him, his feet thrashed violently from rage--or maybe from conscience gnawing him. I think that my speech greatly pleased my guide, for while I lectured he smiled and listened closely to truth of my ringing words. He took hold of me with both of his arms, and when he had gripped me close to him, he carried me back up the trail we had descended. He did not tire under my weight until he had reached the top of the ridge above the fourth bank. There he set down his load, carefully, for the way at this point was so steep and rugged that it would have been hard going for a goat. From that elevation, I could see into the new ditch below.

 

Canto XX

 1-30 The Fourth Ditch: The Prophets

Now I must sing of new torments, for the twentieth Canto of my Canticle which tells of those who are confined underground.

I had a clear view down into the depths of the ditch, a desolate dale bathed with tears of anguish. A very slow procession wound silent and sobbing around and around the circling valley. They were all horribly disfigured. Their chins were not in the normal position over their chests; instead, their heads faced backward. They had to walk butt first, since that's the direction they see. At first I thought that they might be suffering from some terrible palsy, but I changed my mind because I had never seen such extreme deformity before.

Reader, as God may give you joy from reading this poem, ask yourself how I could have kept from crying when I saw those poor souls with their tears streaming down into the clefts of their buttocks. Yes, I wailed, and steadied myself by leaning against the stony cliff, but my guide rebuked me: ‘Are you still a fool, then? Will you feel pity instead of piety? Who is more impious than one who feels sorrow at God’s judgments?’

 Canto XX:31-51 The Ancient Seers

 ‘Lift up your eyes! Look at that one, who was swallowed up by the earth right in front of all the Theban troops, at which they cried out: “Where did you go, Amphiaräus? Why do you disappear from the battle?” He did not notice the gaping hole before him but tumbled headlong into it and landed down below at the feet of all-seizing Minos. Note how his front is now his backside! In life he pretended to see far ahead, so now he looks backward and stumbles in reverse.

‘There's another, Teiresias, who turned himself into a woman, each and every part entirely feminized, a trick that was nearly irreversible. He did not recover his manhood until finally he found the pair of entwined snakes again, and he struck them once more with his staff.

‘And there's Aruns, the one backing up into Teiresias' belly. He worked up in the Tuscan hills of Luni, above the flats where the Carrarese farm. He lived in a cave of solid white marble, in which he claimed to have unobstructed vision of the stars and the sea.

 Canto XX:52-99 Manto and the founding of Mantua

‘Next, she who hides her breasts with her flowing tresses behind is Manto. She wandered in many lands before she settled where I was born. I would like you to hear the full  story.

‘Once her father was dead, and Bacchus' sacred Thebes had been enslaved, she escaped and wandered alone through the earth for many years. Where a wall of mountains rise to form fair Italy's border above Tirolo lies a lake, known in ancient times as Benacus, now known as Garda, Val Camonica, and Penninois. A thousand streams feed that lake, and right in the middle there is an island which the bishops of Trent, Brescia, and Verona all could bless, if they could find it. At the shoreline's lowest point stands strong and beautiful Fort Peschiera which challenges the Brescians and Bergamese.

‘All of the overflow of this lake descends as a river through the green fields below. It's called Mincio down to Governolo where it joins the Po. Then it spreads into a marsh, which becomes stagnant in summertime. There the wild virgin found a stretch of dry land, untilled and uninhabited, and there she lived and practiced her arts alone, tended only by her ministers.

‘When she left her corpse, there was none to bury her, but neighbors soon moved in, since the place was well defended by the marshes on every side, and over her white bones they built a city which (without further divination) they called Mantua, because she was its foundation. Many more people used to live there once--before the foolish Casalodi was deceived by Pinamonte. That's the whole truth. So I charge you, if you ever hear a different story about the founding of my hometown, do not believe it!’

 Canto XX:100-130 The Magicians and Witches

I answered him: ‘Teacher, your story seems so entirely   true, so completely believable, that all other tales would be like burned out ashes. But tell me about the others who are passing by, if you see any that are worthy to mention, since my thoughts dwell on them.’

Then he said to me: ‘That one whose beard stretches down over his brown shoulders was an augur, when Greece was nearly emptied of males, except infants in the cradle, for they all had sailed off to Troy. Together with Kalkhas at Aulis, he divined the proper moment for cutting loose the first cable. Eurypylus is his name, and my tragic poem sings of him, as you understand--for you know the whole thing.

‘The next one, so small about the flanks, is Michael Scot, who knew all of the illusions of magic. There's Guido Bonatti, also Asdente, who wishes now he had attended more to his shoemaker’s leather and cord, but repents too late. The others are poor women who abandoned the needle, shuttle and spindle to work with oracles. They practiced witchcraft, using herbs and images.

‘But come now, for Cain, the Man in the Moon with his bundle of thorns, already sets in the west and touches the waves south of Seville. Last night, the Moon was full: you must remember it since it lit your way in the deep wood.’ So he concluded, and we moved on.

 

Canto XXI

 1-30 The Fifth Ditch: The Corrupt Politicians

From bridge to bridge we went, talking of things that my comedy does not sing . . .

Up on the summit arch of the fifth bridge of Malebolge, we were staring down and listening for more griefs. It was really pitch dark! As in winter, in the arsenal at Venice, where they boil a sticky tar to caulk the leaking boats that can't be sailed in that stormy season; and some hands build new boats, while others repair the seams of vessels that have made many voyages; one hammers at the prow, another at the stern, some make oars, and some twist rope, one mends a jib, the other a mainsail: even so, down in the ditch far below the arch where we stood, there bubbled a dense black ooze, heated not by any manmade fire, but by divine craft.  I saw it, but nothing in it, except a few bubbles that arose and burst, the occasional heavings of the thick jell and subsequent contractions when relieved of its gas. 

My guide shouted: ‘Look out! Look out!’ and suddenly yanked me to him, from where I had been standing. As he pulled me away, I looked back round, like one who runs in terror and yet turns wanting to view the dread that pursues him. It was swooping down the cliff, a darting terror, a great black gargoyle.

 Canto XXI:31-58 The bribe takers

How fierce he looked! How cruel, with his outspread wings and lightning speed! Over one of his high pointed shoulders, he had slung a senator's haunches, a load he secured with a crushing clasp of claws on both ankles.

He cried to another: ‘Malebranche Evil-Claw! Here's another senior official from the city of Santa Zita for you! Push him under while I grab another one. That town's  infested with them! They're all on the take, all except Boss Bonturo obviously. In Lucca, they vote Yes for No as often as it pays!’

He threw his catch down, then wheeled back up along the stony cliff, swifter than any bloodhound unleashed to take a thief. The grafter plunged into the black oil, then moments later rose to the surface again, face up with his arms straight out to his sides. The devils under the bridge hooted at him: ‘The Jesus float is NOT allowed here! No floats of any kind! Do you think you are swimming in the Serchio, mister? Don't come up for air around here unless you want to feel our hooks!’

Then they perforated him with more than a hundred jabs of their sharp pitchforks. ‘Down you go! Conceal your activities! Steal where nobody can see you!’ Each one thrust his fork like a cook who keep poking a piece of meat down into the boiling broth to stop it from floating.

 

 Canto XXI:59-96 Virgil confronts Bad Ass

My good teacher said to me: ‘Take cover behind a rock. Keep yourself hidden. Whatever insult they offer to me, don't worry. I know what I'm doing. I've been in these scrapes before.’

He crossed over to the further bank and presented himself with a confident pose, though the demons rushed up from below the bridge, and turned their weapons on him, with the fury of dogs that rush at a poor beggar as he seeks  alms. As they stormed toward him, Virgil shouted: ‘Put up your weapons! I've got news for you, boys! One of you come over here and listen to me, and then decide whether it's a good idea to slice me apart with your forks.’

Surprisingly, they stopped. Then they cried, ‘You go, Bad Ass!’ at which one proud brute stepped forward from the gang and came towards Virgil, muttering. ‘Talk? Talk does him a lot of good!’

My guide said: ‘Bad Ass, do you think I have come all of the way here on this wild road, safe and sound, without having God's help? I must pass, since it is the will of Heaven that I show this savage place to my companion.’

Those words so deflated that demon that his fork fell at his feet. I heard him advise his fellows: ‘We got to let him go!’ 

My guide then called in my direction: ‘You can come out now! Come out from crouching behind the crags. It's safe to come to me now!’

I stepped as quickly as possible to his side. All of the devils pressed forward in my face to make me imagine they would not obey their orders. I saw something similar once, when a yielding army marched out from Fort Caprona, under a treaty of surrender, but those soldiers were terrified to find themselves unarmed and surrounded by so many hostile enemies.

 

 

 Canto XXI: 97-139 The demon escort

I pressed my body as close to my guide as I could, and I never took my eyes away from those nasty demons. They had lowered their forks at me and kept squawking to one another  ‘Shall I stick him in the butt?’ and answering, ‘He sure deserves it!’

But Bad Ass silenced them: ‘Shut up, Scarmiglione. Shut up, all of you!’ Then he said to us: ‘You can't go any farther along this trail. It's not possible, you see, because, well, the sixth bridge here is destroyed, broken off at the base just a short way from here. Yes, it happened in the quake twelve hundred and sixty-six years and nineteen hours ago. So if you hope to go farther down in this circle, you will have to go back around our pool to the next ridge, and turn onto the causeway spoke there. 

‘It just so happens that I'm sending a squad to patrol that area now. Why don't you tag along with them? They are completely trustworthy.’ Then he gave them their orders: ‘Report, Alichino and Calcabrina, and you, Cagnazzo! Barbariccia, you lead the ten. Libicocco, you go, and Draghignazzo, tusked Ciratto, Grafficane, Farfarello, and mad Rubicante. Search the pitch and see these two gentlemen safe, as far as the cliff where they can find their own way down.’

I said: ‘Master, I don't like these escorts. Let's go alone, if you know the way. Look at them--I mean, I'm sure you notice how they grind their teeth and knit their brows. They must be plotting something!’

He replied: ‘Be not afraid: they're not interested in you. They can hardly wait to torture the wretches boiling in the oil.’

They turned by the left bank to march away, but first, each of them saluted the commander by sticking his tongue out between his teeth, and he sent them off by trumpeting with his ass!

 

Canto XXII

1-30 More of the Fifth Ditch

I have seen cavalry break camp, and I have seen them charge into battle, pass in review, and now and then retreat to save themselves. I have seen scouts setting out to explore the territory of the Aretines, and also foraging parties, tournaments, and jousts. I have seen all of these actions orchestrated, sometimes to the sound of trumpets, or to the ringing of bells, or to the beat of drums or to the flashes of flares. I have seen commands accompanied by every sort of sign, but I never saw infantry or cavalry or navy signaled to set off by farts!

We went with the ten Malebranche--a savage company, just as I had feared! You know the old saying: ‘when looking for saints don't go to the bar.’ I couldn't get my mind off of the boiling pitch. I noted each feature of that ditch, and those roiling in the lake. Like dolphins, arching their backs, telling the sailors to brace their ship for a gale, so now and then to ease their torment some showed their backs on the surface, and then sank out of sight again, all as quick as a flash.

And as frogs squat at the edge of a pond, with only their snouts showing, with their feet and the rest of them hidden below, so they in the dark pitch must have watched for our patrol, but as soon as we approached with Barbariccia, only a few ripples on the surface indicated where they had been.

 Canto XXII:31-75 Ciampolo

Only one lingered, just as a single frog sometimes remains after the others have scattered. What happened to him is especially disturbing for me to recall. Graffiacane, who was nearest, hooked him by the sticky hair and hauled him up dripping like an otter. (I already knew the names of every demon from when they were called, and when they shouted to each other.)

‘Rubicante, get your claws in him! Scratch him to shreds!’ they all cried together.

‘Teacher,’ I said, ‘I want to know the story of that poor bastard who's been nabbed by the fiends. Who is he?’

My guide marched right up to the wraith and asked where he came from. He answered: ‘I was born in Navarre. My old man was a bum who wasted himself and all his shit, so my mom gave me up to a nice lord, to be his lackey. I'm doing time here for selling jobs in the recruiting office of King Thibaut.’

Just then Ciriatto, with tusks like a boar's on both sides of his mouth, gouged the boy open. The mouse had come among evil cats, but Barbariccia grabbed him away, and told them off: ‘All of you stand back; he's mine to cut!’ To my teacher, he then added quietly: ‘Ask quickly, if you want to learn anything else from him. Ask before they butcher him.’

So my guide said: ‘Tell me now, who swims with you in the pitch? Do you hear any Latin spoken down there?’

Ciampolo answered: ‘Italians, you better believe it! I'm sorry I just left one. I mean, he's safe from these claws and forks down there!’

That's when Libicocco complained: ‘Too much talk!’ Suddenly with a prong, he grappled Ciampolo’s arm, mangling it and tearing off a piece of flesh. Draghignazzo also wanted a swipe at the legs, but the demon leader rounded on them with a dirty look.

 Canto XXII:76-96 Ciampolo names other crooks

With this short pause in the action, Ciampolo was examining the remains of his arm, but my guide seized the chance to continue the interview: ‘Who was that lucky Latin, you say, you left behind to come ashore?’

He replied: ‘Friar Gomita, from the part of Sardinia called Gallura. He played every con there is. His master's prisoners all sang his praises, for he took their coin and let them run. In every game, the friar was a big time star.

‘Another Sardine swims with him, Don Michel Zanche. He's from Logodoro, the pair of them always yakking about Sardinia. I'd tell you lots more, but look at that demon grinding his teeth. I must have an itch he wants to scratch!’

At that, their great captain turned on Farfarello, whose eyes gleamed in anticipation of a strike, and shouted: ‘Back off, you filthy hawk!’

 Canto XXII: 97-123 Ciampolo escapes

Ciampolo looked scared but resumed: ‘You guys want to see Tuscans or Lombards? I can dredge up lots of them for you right now! Of course, the gargoyles here will need to back away, so that they are out of sight. When they're hiding, I'll give the all clear sign with a whistle, as I always do. That will surface them. I'll show you at least seven of them!’

Cagnazzo raised his snout at these words and, shaking his head, objected: ‘Listen to the wicked lie this boy has invented to escape from us!’

Ciampolo indeed knew the tricks of his trade. He charmed them with his reply: ‘Why should I lie to you? I'll have the joy of getting my friends into more trouble than I'm in now.’

Alichino could contain himself no longer, because he loved a challenge, and so, without consulting the others, he blurted out: ‘Boy, if you try to jump, I've got wings that can beat you to the pitch. We will stand back from the ledge a little to hide ourselves on the bank, but I dare you, all by yourself, to try to outmatch all of us!’

O reader, here's a strange new sport! The Malabranche retreated from the cliff side a short way, led by the one who first had objected to the plan. The Navarrese chose his moment perfectly, planted his feet firmly, and in an instant leaped to freedom.

 Canto XXII: 124-151 The Malebranche quarrel

The whole demon squad was stung with shame, but Alichino most of all, so he was the first to dive in pursuit, screaming: ‘Now I've got you!’ But his wings, swift though they were, could not match the other's terror, and he had to pull out of his dive as the lad hit the pond. It looked like a falcon swooping down on a wild duck, when the duck dives safely beneath the waves, and the falcon comes up with both claws empty.

In the meantime, Calcabrina, in a fury, had pursued Alichino in hopes that the boy would escape, so that he  would have an excuse to brawl. When Ciampolo vanished from view, the two gargoyles soon were grappling with one another in mid-air above the ditch. They clawed each other and plummeted together into the center of the boiling tar.

The heat instantly separated them, but their wings were glued with pitch so that they could not rise. Barbariccia, no less upset than his troops, ordered four of them to fly over with grappling irons. They dropped their lines in pairs from both sides of the ditch and trolled for their trapped brethren, who already were scalded all over.

And there we left them, in that mess.

 

Canto XXIII

 1-57 The Sixth Ditch: The Hypocrites

We traveled on in silence without companions, one in front and one following after, like Franciscan friars on a journey. The recent battle turned my thoughts to Aesop's fable of the frog and mouse. ‘Si’ and ‘Yes’ are not more alike than the fable and the Malabranche fight, if you think about the beginning and ending of both.

One thought led to another, however, and soon my mind again was full of terror. I reasoned: ‘Because of us, these fiends were fooled, so now they must be choking with hurt and ridicule, and with this rage of resentment added to their malicious nature, they are sure to hunt us down, like a pack of snapping dogs ready to pounce on a rabbit.’ I felt my hair standing up in fright. I looked carefully around behind us. ‘Teacher, you must hide us immediately.’ I said. ‘The Malebranche must be following us. I think I hear them already.’

He replied: ‘If I were a mirror, I would not see your face more clearly than I now can read your mind.  Your thoughts now are so like mine that both lead me to the same conclusion. If the right bank has the right slope, we can skid down into the next ditch and slip our pursuers.’ He barely had finished announcing this plan, when I saw them, not far off, eager to seize us, quickly closing in with extended wings.

The next thing I knew, I had been seized by my guide, like a mother who is wakened by a noise, sees flames burning in front of her eyes, and grabs her child and runs, forgetting to put on a robe. Down from the ridge of the steep bank, he leaped and slid on the dam of barren rocks, down on his rump all of the way to the bottom. Water never raced through the course of a mill-wheel more nimbly than he slipped down that slope, the whole trip carrying me like a child in his belly.

His feet hardly had touched down on the valley plain  before the demons were on the heights above us, but we had little fear of them now. High Providence that gave them control over the fifth ditch apparently did not grant them power to leave it.

 Canto XXIII:58-81 The Hypocrites

In that depression we found mourners cloaked in gold, circling in slow motion and tears, weary and defeated. Their massive habits, in the French-cut style worn by the monks of Cluny, had deep hoods that hid their eyes and faces. On the outside the robes were gilded to dazzle the beholder, but inside they were lined with lead, so heavy that the shrouds designed by Frederick would seem light as straw. Weighty wear!

We turned left again, to walk beside them to hear their complaints, but they were so slow under their loads in that heavy procession that every step we took brought us along side a different group of them. ‘I wonder if there's anyone here whose name or doings we have heard?’  I asked my guide. ‘Can you take a close look at them as we pass?’

One of them recognized my Tuscan words and called out to us. ‘Wait, you quick one in the dark! Slow down and perhaps I'll tell you what you want to hear.’

My guide turned and advised: ‘Wait for him and creep along at his pace.’

 Canto XXIII:82-126 The Jolly Friars: Caiaphas

So I waited--and waited--and watched two of them, who seemed eager to join me, laboring in my direction, it seemed as if forever, under the crushing weight of their loads. Eventually, they caught up, but then for a long time they eyed me skeptically, without speaking. Finally they turned to one another and broke their silence.

‘That one seems alive, by the movement in his throat.’

‘Yes, if he was dead, he would be wearing a lead robe.’

Then they spoke to me.

‘Tuscan, welcome to the college of solemn hypocrites.’

‘Don't be afraid to tell us who you are.’

I replied: ‘I still wear the same body with which I was born and raised in the great city by Arno’s lovely streams. What glittering coats you wear! They almost mask the sadness streaming down your cheeks.’

One of them answered: ‘Our gold-painted mantles are in fact full of lead, so dense that weights made of it would break the scales. We are Bolognese brothers of the Military Order of the Blessed Mary: I am Catalano, and he is Loderino, the same Jolly Friars who were elected by your city, as usually only one is chosen, to keep the peace. The evidence of our good rule still appears around your district of Gardingo.’

‘O Friars, your corrupt . . . ’ I began, but stopped, because of what I saw right in front of us. One came in sight, crucified on the ground, transfixed with three stakes. When he saw my approach he writhed all over, puffed into his beard, and moaned deeply.

Friar Catalano explained: ‘That's Caiaphas, the high priest who advised the Pharisees to martyr one man for the sake of the people. Crosswise and naked as he lies here in the road, he suffers all of the weight of all of us who pass over. His father-in-law Annas is punished in our valley, too, along with the other members of the council that caused so much pain for Jews.’

 Canto XXIII:127-148 Virgil's anger

For a moment, Virgil wondered at him, stretched out on the cross so vilely before us, in eternal exile. Then he addressed the friars: ‘If it is allowed, and if you will excuse us, please tell us if there is any way that we can turn around and go back on the right. We must leave your  valley now without provoking the black angels to swoop down and take us.’

One of them replied: ‘One ridge runs from the great round wall toward the center of our circle. Along the way, its path bridges all of the punishing depressions, except this one. The path is above us, up there on the ridge, but our bridge collapsed. Perhaps you can climb up the rubble of its ruins, from the pile of stones there at the bottom, up that slope of blocks to the top. That's the only way out.’

Virgil stood with head bowed in thought for a while, then said: ‘Bad Ass! The demon who hooks grafters with his fork over in the next ditch, Bad Ass misled us!’

The friar answered: ‘I once heard somebody at Bologna talking about the devil. What was it that the guy said? If I remember now, I think he called the devil a liar. Yes, in fact, the father of lies!’

My guide was mad and went striding off. His energized footsteps summoned me to follow, and so I left the heavy ones.

 

Canto XXIV

 1-60 The Poets climb: Virgil preaches fame

In that season when the young sun slowly starts to warm under Aquarius, and the nights begin to lengthen, when frost mimics her sister snow’s white image on the ground, but her tracery soon melts, then the peasant, whose fodder has run out, rises early, hurries outdoors, and finds the fields still white, at which he slaps his thigh, returns to his hut, and paces back and forth, worried, not knowing what to do. Yet soon he goes outside once again, and his hopes are answered: he sees that the world has become a warmer place. He takes his shepherd's staff, and chases his lambs out to feed. Even so I worried, when I saw my teacher's troubled face, but things soon improved.

When we reached the heap of stones from the broken bridge, he examined the pile and made a plan. Then he turned to me with a kindly look, the same look that I saw when he first greeted me at the base of the mountain. He took hold of me with his arms and, like one who repeatedly deliberates and plans ahead, while he lifted me up to the top of one great stone, he already had singled out the next stone to climb, saying to me: ‘Now crawl up over that one, but first test it to be sure that it can bear you.’

This collapsed bridge was no exit for anybody robed in lead. We of much less weight (or no weight at all, in his case) could hardly make the climb. If that hill had been as high as the bank we slid down, I never would have reached the top. (I'm not sure about him.) All of Malebolge, however, drops from ditch to ditch toward the yawning well in the center, so the inner bank of each ditch is much lower than the outer bank. That's the only reason that I managed to make the peak.

At last at the summit, I was too breathless to go on, so I promptly took a seat on the ground, but my teacher roused me. ‘Get over this laziness!’ he said. ‘We do not win fame by lying under the covers. A life without fame is utterly consumed; its last trace vanishes from the earth as smoke does in the air, or as foam upon the sea. No more sitting around! Get up, overcome that tiredness of spirit that wants to lounge with the gross body. We've got many more stairs to climb later. Escape from these hypocrites has not brought us where we need to be. If you understand me, act now for your own benefit.’

I rose, finding more breath than I imagined, and I said to him: ‘Lead on! I'm ready, willing and able!’

 Canto XXIV: 61-96 The Seventh Ditch: The Thieves

We made our way along the ridge, and onto the seventh bridge, which was rugged, narrow, and much steeper than any before. I was making conversation, so that I might not appear to be exhausted, when a faint voice rose up from the ditch below. I could not hear the words, though I was directly overhead on the top of the arch which bridged that span, but the speaker seemed angry. I looked down, but no eyes living could have pierced through such darkness, so I said: ‘Master, when we reach the other side, let's climb down the bank. I hear something down there, but I can't see what it is.’

‘I'll do what you ask,’ he agreed. ‘A fair request should be followed by action, not words.’

On the far side of the bridge, the pit became all too visible. I saw a fearful mass of serpents, so strange looking that the memory of it even now freezes my blood. The sands of Libya do not breed such terrible reptiles, despite their chelydri, jaculi, pareae, and cenchres with amphisbaena. Neither Libya, nor Ethiopia, nor Arabia, nor any land that lies along the Red Sea breeds such pests. And among this cruel and bitter swarm, people were running, naked and terrified, without hope of protecting themselves by finding holes or heliotropes

Each one had his hands tied behind him with snakes that fixed their heads and tails in his crotch, and their knotted coils were like a loincloth.

 Canto XXIV: 97-129 Fucci and the serpent

Not far from us on the bank, a serpent quick as lightning struck one of these fugitives and transfixed him there. It sank its fangs into him where the neck is joined to the shoulders. The letters ‘o’ and ‘i’ were never written as quickly as he burst into flame and completely incinerated into a pile of ashes. But as soon as he was ash, the cinders began to gather themselves together and reassemble into the same human form as before. Even so, as sages say, the phoenix dies, and then renews herself every 500 years. In her life she eats neither herbs nor grains, but she feeds only on tears of frankincense and balm, and finally she shrouds herself to die in nard and myrrh.

When this soul rose he acted like one in a fit, who has fallen in a spasm but does not know why--perhaps some invisible demon is tripping him up? or some terrible disease is convulsing him? Struggling to his feet, he looks all around himself, confused by his suffering, and he moans out loud. How terrifying the power of God to inflict such vicious blows in vengeance!

My guide asked him who he was, and he answered. ‘I poured down from Tuscany into this ditch only a short time ago. Before that, I was a half-breed: a beast's life pleased me more than life among people. I am the animal Fucci Vanni, and Pistoia was my den.’

I said to my guide: ‘Tell him not to sneak away! Make him say what crime drives him down into this condition? I know for a fact that he's a bloody outlaw!’

 Canto XXIV: 130-151 Fucci’s prophecy

The convict heard me and did not try to hide. He looked me straight in the eyes, his face red with shame. ‘Look, it hurts more than death for you to catch me down here like this, snared in this trap of pain. You force me to tell you about myself. OK, I'll say it: I'm down here because I pinched silver and jewels from the church, and I let some fools take the fall for it.

‘But don't you take any pleasure in my pain! You may break out of these dingy pits and gossip about me in the world above, but then it will be your turn for sorrow. Listen to the bad news I've got for you.

‘Pistoia will purge herself of Blacks, but a change of government will come to your town, too. Mars will launch a thunderbolt wrapped in a storm cloud from Valdimagra, and savage fighting will tear open the mist at the field of Piceno. There you will find your Whites lying red with running wounds. May this knowledge give you pain.’

       

Canto XXV

 1-33 Cacus

When he ended his speech, the thief raised his arms and gave the finger with both hands. He shouted: ‘Figs for you, God: these two are for you!’ At that moment the snakes became my friends. One of them coiled itself round his neck, as if hissing: ‘I'll shut you up for good.’ Another tied his arms behind his back again, jammed its head and tail back into his genitals, and tightened the knot until he could not lift a finger.

Pistoia! Pistoia! Why don't you burn to ashes and never rise again? You were sewn with bad seed! In all of the dark circles of the Inferno I saw none more arrogant toward God, not even Capaneus who was struck down from the wall at Thebes! 

Fucci fled without another word. Pursuing him was a Centaur, full of rage, shouting: ‘Where is that half-baked blasphemer?’ I do not think that Maremma has as many snakes as he had clinging to his butt and all along his back, up to the place where the human part begins. Riding on his shoulders, at the back of his head, was a flame-breathing dragon with wings outstretched wide.

My teacher said: ‘That is Cacus, who made lakes of blood with his slaughters in the plain below rocky Mount Aventine. He was a cunning thief, and that is why he is not with his fellow Centaurs that we met on the road before. He often rustled oxen from the herds of Hercules, who finally caught him and hammered him with a hundred mighty swings of his club, though Cacus could not have felt any more than the first ten.’

 Canto XXV: 34-78  Transformation of Agnello

While Cacus galloped off after Fucci, three other shadows approached on the bank below. We might not have noticed them at all, except that they shrieked at us: ‘Who are you?’ That got our attention.

I did not know who they were, but then one of them happened to mention a familiar name. ‘Where's  Cianfa?’ I placed my finger over my mouth, to signal to my guide to stay quiet and listen.

Reader, if you are slow to believe what I have to tell you now, I will not be surprised, since I who saw it in person scarcely believe it myself. While I was looking at them, a six-legged serpent darted in front of one of them, and fastened itself on him, completely. With its middle feet, it clung to his belly, the front feet seized his arms, and then it fixed its teeth in both his cheeks. The rear feet spread apart his  thighs. Then it curled its tail between his legs and thrust it straight up his behind! Ivy never twined on a tree so fast as the foul reptilian screwed into the other. Then, in that embrace, both figures began to blur, melt and run together. Their colors mixed until neither retained any distinction: both were one brownish shade, like a page that has just begun to burn, no longer white but not yet black.

The other two companions looked on and cried out.

‘Agnello, what the fuck. . . ?’ 

‘You're not one! You're not two!’

The two heads had now merged to share one face, different from its parent faces. Two limbs were made of the blended four forearms. The thighs, legs, belly and chest all fused into unique-looking body parts. The two were transformed into one new creature, a perverse combination that seemed to be both, and neither. In that strange shape it crept off with slow steps.

 

 Canto XXV: 79-151 Buoso, Puccio and Francesco

As a lizard, like heat lightning in the Dog days of summer, flashes across a hot walkway while speeding to a shady hedge, so a little reptile flew toward the bellies of the other two. Burning with rage, black and hot as a peppercorn, it pierced that spot, on one of them, where his mother first nourished him. Then it fell down, stretched out in front of him. The thief, motionless, transfixed, gazed at it and said nothing, but yawned, as if sleep or a fever had overcome him. He looked at it; it looked at him. The one belched clouds of smoke from his wound, the other from its mouth, and the clouds met and covered them.

Let Lucan say no more about Sabellus and Nasidius, and wait to hear what I have to tell. Let Ovid keep silent about Cadmus and Arethusa: although his poetry turns one into a snake, and the other into a fountain, I have no reason to envy him. He never exchanged two different natures, symmetrically face to face, with two-way transformation of their substance.

They merged together in such a way, that the reptile split its tail into a fork, while the wounded thief drew his two feet together, then the two legs and thighs, and they fused and soon became one seamless tail. The cleft tail took on the form lost in the thief, and its skin grew soft, the other’s scaly. I saw the arms enter the armpits, and the two front legs of the beast, that were short, grew longer by as much as the thief's arms shrank. The beast's two hind feet twisted together, and took the shape of a penis, while the dick of that thief split into two reptilian legs.

While the smoke covered them, it seemed to pluck the hair from one and grow it on the other. The one on the ground stood up man-like, and the other fell prostrate like a reptile, but both continued their fixed diabolical stares, eye locked to eye as they exchanged faces. The long snout of the erect one receded back toward the temples and forehead, with the excess matter that was left over popping out into ears, smooth cheeks, and lips of human size. The  small amount that did not recede remained in the shape of human nose.

Conversely, the one that lay prone made a very long face that sucked the ears into the head, in the same way that a snail withdraws its horns into its shell. Its tongue, formerly of one piece and capable of making the sounds of speech, split in two, while the forked tongue of the serpent became manlike.

The smoke lifted, and the newly formed beast sped away, hissing along the ground, leaving the neo-human behind, spluttering. It turned its new front toward the shadow that remained, and called to him: ‘ Now Buoso can run the valley on all fours, as I did.’

So I saw this strange cargo of the seventh hold shifting back and forth. Forgive my pen that it fails to describe all of these bizarre sights clearly. I was in shock! I was not so confused, however, that I failed to recognize Puccio Sciancato. He was the third shadow, the one that was not transformed. Another one that I saw there was Francesco, for whom you people of Gaville mourn.

 

Canto XXVI

 1-42 The Eighth Ditch: Valley of the Heroes

Rejoice, Florence: spreading your wings so grandly by land and by sea, you are famous throughout hell. In the thieves' den alone, I found five of your natives, which shames me as you ought to be ashamed. But if truth appears in our dreams that come toward morning, then soon you will feel what Prato and others wish upon you. And, if it were come already, it would not have come too soon. Let it happen right now, as in fact it must happen sometime, since I grow more troubled the older I am.

We left there, and my guide hauled me back up the stairway of stones on which we had descended. On our lonely way along the crags and splinters of the cliff, the foot needed a helping hand to make any progress at all.

I was depressed then, and I am depressed now to remember what I saw next, but I will control my art more than usual, to keep it from running off where it is not good to go. I must not abuse this skill, if any good star, or some truer power, has given it to me.

The eighth ditch gleamed with a multitude of flames, as many as the fireflies that the peasant sees when he rests on a hillside, after the sun has hidden his face from our world, and the fly gives way to the gnat down in the valley where the long daylight hours have been spent gathering grapes, perhaps, or plowing.

I saw those fires as soon as I came to a spot where the canyon showed itself below. As Elisha, whose mockery by children was avenged by bears, saw Elijah's fiery chariot soar, when the horses flew straight up into heaven, and his eyes could not follow them, except as flames ascending like a little cloud, so each of the fires that I saw moving along the bottom of the ditch concealed what burned within it.

 Canto XXVI: 43-84 Ulysses

I strained my body over the side of the bridge to have a better look, and if I had not grabbed hold of a rock I would have fallen in without any pushing. My guide saw what I was looking for, and he said: ‘There are heroes inside those fires. Each veils himself in the flame that burns him.’

I replied: ‘Teacher, I guessed as much, but I want to know more. Who is in that double fire? I mean, the one that flames up with a dual top, as if it arose from the pyre where Eteocles was cremated with his brother Polynices?’

He answered: ‘In that one, Ulysses and Diomede are burned, together now in spirit as formerly in war. They suffer for the deceit of the Trojan horse, that opened the gate of escape for Aeneas, the noble ancestor of the Romans. They sorrow for the trick by which Deidamia, even now in death, still weeps for Achilles. They pay for stealing the Palladium.’

I said: ‘Teacher, I beg you, I beg you a thousand times, let's wait here for them to come to us, if they can speak from that horn-tipped flame. Please, you see how I stretch myself over the edge toward them to learn all that I can!’

‘Your wish is admirable, and I accept it,’ he responded, ‘but keep back, and let me do the talking. I know what you want to know, and they are Greeks, so they will not listen to your words.’

When the flame drew near enough to us, in my guide's judgment, he spoke to it, and I listened. ‘Hail: you two spirits in one fire! If I was worthy to speak of you when I lived, if I earned from you any favor, great or small, when I wrote my tragic verses, do not pass by me now in silence, but let one of you tell how he lost his way and where he died.’

 Canto XXVI: 85-142 Ulysses at Mount Purgatory

The greater flame began to shudder, as if rippled by wind. At first the tongue only flickered and murmured, but then it began to roll, billowing in a full voice. ‘And after that year near Gaeta, before Aeneas renamed it, I left Circe. Not care for my son Telemachus, not reverence for my father Laertes, not even love pleasures owed to Penelope could hold me from roving the world and learning all of the good and evil in humanity.

‘I sailed out for the furthest deep, with only one small ship and those few crewmen who had not deserted. We passed coast after coast, the isle of Sardinia and many other islands washed by the sea, as far as Spain and Morocco. Yes, we were old and weary, my companions and I, when we came to the straits where Hercules set his pillars to warn adventurers against sailing too far, but then we left Seville on the starboard, and Ceuta on the port, far behind.

‘O my brothers,’ I said, ‘you have reached the western gate by passing through a hundred thousand dangers. Keep the watch only one short stretch longer now. In the little time that remains for us, let's visit the unexplored world beyond the Sun. Consider your creation: you were not born to live as animals, but to strive for knowledge and virtue.’ After my little pep talk, my companions were so game for the trip that I doubt I could have stopped them, if I had changed my mind. We held our stern in the sunrise, and made wings of our oars for that manic flight, always tacking to the port.

‘Nights brought out the southern pole, with all its constellations, and the north star fell so low that it no longer rose from its ocean bed. Five times the new moon was lit and extinguished, since the time that we entered the deep water, when a mountain appeared to us, dim in the distance, and it seemed to me the highest that I had ever seen. We rejoiced, but our joy soon turned to grief. A tempest arose from that new world and beat against our prow. Three times it whirled us round, with all the ocean spinning. At the fourth twirl, the stern lifted out above the waves, and bow sank below, as it pleased some god, and the sea closed over us.’

Canto XXVII

 1-30 Guido Da Montefeltro

The tongue was now straight and still, no longer speaking, and the gentle poet allowed it to pass, but our attention was drawn to another one behind it that emitted strange sounds from its top. Like the Sicilian bull that first bellowed with the groans of its artist Perillus (as was fitting)--it seemed to be only a bronze image of a bull, but in fact it was a roasting pot to fill with death agonies of real victims--so here the flame confined one whose torture could find no outlet except through language of the fire.

When his words at last found their way out through the tip of the flame, giving it the movement of a tongue, we heard him say: ‘You, I aim my voice at you who spoke Lombard just now, saying: “You may go on your way: I have no further questions!” Please do not be so impatient with me. I'm not impatient, only burning. Stay and speak with me, even if maybe I've arrived a little late. Have you just fallen here from sweet Italia? I come from there, carrying my guilt. I lived in the mountains between Urbino and the Tober's source, Monte Coronaro. Tell me if Romagna is at peace or war. ’

 Canto XXVII: 31-57 Politics in Romagna

I was still eagerly leaning over the side of the bridge, when my teacher poked me in the ribs and said: ‘He's Italian. You can speak to him.’

I was ready, and my speech came instantly: ‘Hidden shadow, your Romagna is always at war, in the hearts of its tyrants, but open fighting is not so usual lately.

‘Ravenna stands as it has stood for years: Guido Vecchio da Polenta’s eagle broods over it, and it now clutches Cervia with its talons, too. Forlì, that withstood so long a siege, and made a bloody pile of Frenchmen, now finds itself again under the paws of Ordelaffi's green lion.

‘Verruchio's old hound, and the young one who kept Montagna so badly, still gnaw at the same old places. Lamone and Santerno are held by the little lion of white hair who changes sides from winter to summer, and the city whose walls the Savio bathes, just as it lies between the mountain and the plain, so also it lives between freedom and tyranny.

‘Now please tell us who you are. Do not be more critical of yourself than others criticize you, or your name may lose its shine.’

 Canto XXVII: 58-136 Guido’s history

After the flame had roared for a while as usual, its sharp point flickering back and forth, these words began to sputter out: ‘If I thought that you could return to the world above, this tongue would tell you nothing, but since no one ever returns from this blind world, I'll speak with confidence in the good name of Guido da Montefeltro.

‘I was a man of arms, but then I took the vows of a Franciscan. I believed that the cord might make a difference, and perhaps it would have, but the High Priest, damn him! pulled me back down into my old ways. I'll tell you how and why.

‘While I was in the flesh and bones that my mother gave me, I played not the lion but the fox. I knew covert operations, and I practiced those tricks so well that my fame spread to the ends of the earth. But I came to the point in life when men should furl their sails, and gather in the ropes, and what had pleased me before, now gave me pain. So with repentance and confession, I turned monk.

‘What went wrong? The New Prince of Pharisees had drawn his sword and was on the march--not against Saracens or Jews, but against Christians, and not those vile Christians who helped the Saracens at Acre, or who traded with them in the Sultan’s land!  This man had no regard for the highest office, for holy orders, or for Francis' robe, that used to make those who wore it leaner. As Constantine sought out Sylvester on Mount Soracte, to cure his leprosy, so this sick soul summoned me, as if I could doctor his feverish pride!

‘He demanded my advice, but at first I kept silent, since I thought he was drunk. Then he said to me: ‘Have no doubt about it! I absolve you of any sin beforehand! Just show me the way to destroy the Palestrina! As you must believe, I can unlock Heaven, or lock it, with the keys that Celestine threw away.’

‘I reconsidered my silence, because of his sober arguments, and I said: ‘Father, since you absolve me of that sin, into which I must now fall, I'll tell you all that you have asked of me. Promise your enemies everything, and then give nothing. I assure you, that's the way to sit with victory on your high throne.’

‘Afterwards, when I died, Saint Francis came for me, but one of the Black Cherubim opposed him: ‘Do not take him: do not wrong me. He is one of my servants, and I can prove it. He advised deceit, and ever since that time I've got him by the hair. He has never repented, so he cannot have been absolved. And how can anybody be forgiven in advance for a crime that he intends to commit? That's an absurd contradiction.’ Then he seized me by the scalp, saying: ‘I'll bet you never guessed that I am a logician?’

‘He carried me to Minos, who coiled his tail eight times around his horrid self, then bit into it in a rage, saying: ‘This one's for the fire of rogues!’ So this is where I am, as you see, and clothed like this, filled now with real grief.’

When he ended his speech, his sharp horn of flame was writhing as if in sorrow. We passed on, my guide and I, along the cliff, up to the next arch spanning the next ditch, in which they reap the reward of those who sowed discord.

 

Canto XXVIII

 1-21 The Ninth Ditch: The Sowers of Discord

Who could describe, even in free prose, and even in a thousand tries, the blood and wounds that were shown to me? No tongue can tell such suffering. Our vocabulary lacks words for such pain.

If all of those mutilated in war were collected in one place, their injuries would not match those in the ninth ditch: not all of the Apulians who were butchered at the hands of the sons of Troy in the Samnite War; not all of the Romans who were slaughtered in the Punic Wars, as unerring Livy writes that bushel basketfuls of their rings were collected from Cannae’s battlefield; not all of those pierced and slashed by Robert Guiscard; not all of those whose bones are piled in heaps at Ceperano, where the Pugliese betrayed them; not all those massacred at Tagliacozzo where cunning old Alardo conquered without weapons. If all of these together showed their hot, open gashes and bloody stumps of fresh severed limbs, the horror of it all would not begin to compare with the ninth chasm.

 Canto XXVIII: 22-54 Mohammed

Even a staved-in wine barrel, that has lost its cap on the bottom, does not gape so wide open as one I saw, sliced from the chin down to the farting hole. His entrails hung down between his legs--all of his organs, even the miserable gut that turns bread into shit.

While I stared at him in disbelief, he saw that I watching, and he pulled open his chest with both hands, saying: ‘Look how Mohammed rips apart his body! In front of me walks my son Ali, weeping, his face split from chin to scalp, and all the others you see there also taught heresy and schism in their lifetimes, so they are cleft open like this. A cruel devil waits with a sword back there to carve us fresh each time we have made a circuit around this road. He reopens all the wounds that have healed.

‘But who are you, all aloof up there? Are you trying to put off your reward for the lies you have spoken?’

My Teacher replied: ‘He isn't dead, yet. He's not here for punishment. He's here to learn. I'm dead, so I guide him down through all the circles of hell. That's the truth, as surely as I am speaking to you now.’ When they heard him, more than a hundred shadows in that ditch stopped, and came forward to stare at me.

As he lifted up one foot to leave, Mohammed said to me: ‘Well now, you who will soon see the sun, perhaps, tell Fra Dolcino of the Apostolic Brothers, if he does not wish to follow me down here soon, to store up supplies for the winter, or else the snow-falls will bring an easy victory for the Novarese.’ Then he went on his painful way.

 Canto XXVIII: 60-90 Pier della Medicina

Among the rest of them staring at me in wonder, one had his throat slit, his nose cut off to the eyebrows, and was missing one ear. He opened his bleeding wind-pipe and said: ‘You, that guilt does not yet condemn forever to remain here, I have seen you above on Italian soil, I think. Remember Pier della Medicina, if ever you return to that gentle plain I knew, that slopes down from Vercelli to Marcabò. And take a message to the two best men in Fano, Mr. Guido and Mr. Angiolello. If we know the future here in hell, then by a tyrant's treachery they will be dumped out of their boat and drowned off Cattolica. Neptune never saw a greater crime between Cyprus and Majorca, whether committed by pirates or Argives. Their betrayer is a cyclops, and he rules a land that was bitter to one who is here with me. When he is finished with them, they won't need to pray for safe winds by Focara again.’

 Canto XXVIII: 91-111 Curio and Mosca

I said to him: ‘If you want me to carry your news, then tell me who you mean is there with you. Who found the land bitter?’

Then he placed his hands on the mouth of one of his companions, and opened the jaws, saying: ‘This is he, but he does not speak any more. He advised Caesar to cross the Rubicon, saying that delay always harms men who are ready.’

It was Curio. His famous tongue had been cut off, leaving only a stub in the throat that once had made such bold  speech! And another with both hands cut off, lifted up his bleeding stumps so that blood splattered on his face, and he said: ‘Remember Mosca, too. I also invented a saying that urged bloodshed: “A thing done has an end.” These words sewed evil to the Tuscan people.’

‘And brought extinction to your family, too’ I added, at which he, accumulating pain on pain, went away like one insane with grief.

 Canto XXVIII: 112-142 Bertrand de Born

I stayed there to see more, and indeed I saw a thing so incredible that I would be afraid to describe it, as I would be accused of lying, but my conscience is clean in that regard, and it encourages me to tell about it.

I saw it clearly, and still seem to see it now: a headless trunk shuffling along in the procession with the rest of that miserable crew. It held by the hair its severed head, swinging like a lantern from its hand. It looked at us, and groaned. Ah, me! It was both itself and also a lamp that shone upon itself: two in one, and one in two. How that can be, only he knows who made it so.

When it was right at the base of our bridge, it lifted its arm high, with the head, to bring its words as near to us as it could. ‘You who come here, living and breathing, to view  the dead, see if you can find any punishment as hard as mine. Know me and carry my news! I am Bertrand de Born, who gave bad advice to the young king and made the Henries, father and the son, rebel against each other. Wicked  Ahitophel did no worse for Absalom and David.

‘Because I severed those who once were united, I carry my intellect split off from its former body. That's my just reward [contrapasso].’

       

Canto XXIX

 1-36 Geri del Bello

The crowds, and their multitude of shocking wounds, confused and overwhelmed me, that my eyes wished only to stay and weep, but Virgil said to me: ‘You did not dawdle like this at the other depressions. What are you staring at? Will your vision drown you down there, among those poor, mutilated shadows? You can't inspect them, one by one, for their pathway in this valley circles twenty-two miles around, and already the moon is underneath our feet. Our allotted time is nearly gone, and there is much more to be seen than you see here.’ 

I complained: ‘If you had known my reason for looking, maybe you would have let me stay.’ Meanwhile, my guide was moving on, and I followed after him as I answered, explaining: ‘I was watching the pit where, I think, a spirit of my own blood pays a heavy price for guilt.’

The Teacher said: ‘Don't allow yourself to be distracted by him. Think of something else, and leave him alone down there. I saw him at the base of the bridge. He pointed his finger at you and threatened you, angrily. I heard him called Geri del Bello, but you were so engrossed then with the former lord of Altaforte that you did not notice, and so he left.’

‘My guide,’ I said, ‘he died by violence, and his murder is not yet avenged by any of us who share his shame. He must be angry, and that's why, I suppose, he would walk away without speaking to me. Now I pity him even more.’

 Canto XXIX: 37-72 The Tenth Ditch: Falsifiers    

So we talked until we reached the first place on the bridge where some of the tenth valley could be seen below. We could have seen down to the bottom only if there had been more light, but there above that last cloister of Malebolge, we could make out some of its brethren lying below, and we heard their many groans, each one a piercing arrow barbed with pity. I had to cover my ears with my hands. Their pain was as if all of the diseased who suffer in the hospitals of Valdichiana, Maremma and Sardinia, between July and September, had been dumped into one pit. A stench of putrid limbs arose from it.

As we descended on the last bank of the long causeway, again on the left, I began to see down to the floor where infallible Justice, the minister of the Lord on high, rains punishment on those who falsify in one way or another, as she has recorded all of them on her scroll. I do not think it would have been a sadder sight to look upon the plague-ridden people of Aegina, when the air was so contagious that every animal, even the smallest worms, succumbed, and afterwards, as poets say is true, the ancient population was restored from the seed of ants: the spirits languished in heaps scattered throughout that dim valley. One lay on its belly, another strewn across the shoulders of its neighbor, and others on all fours trying to crawl along the wretched path.

We went step by step in silence, watching and listening to the sick who could not raise their bodies.

 Canto XXIX:73-99 Griffolino and Capocchio

I saw two sitting, propped up back to back against each other like two pans leaning over a warm grill to dry. They were covered with scabs from head to foot.  I never saw a stable groom whose master waits impatiently, or one who just can't wait to go to bed, use a curry brush so vigorously as those two clawed themselves all over with their nails, to relieve their itching, which found no other relief. Their nails peeled off the scabs, as a knife scrapes the big scales from a carp or larger fish.

My guide spoke to them: ‘You there, stripping your chain-mail with your pincers, tell us if there are any Italians here, and may your nails remain unbroken for eternity.’

One of them whined: ‘We are both Italians, mutilated here, as fate would have it, but who wants to know?’

My leader answered: ‘I am guiding this living man down through the rings to show him the inferno.’

That got their attention. They turned, trembling, toward me, along with others nearby who overheard what had been said. All of them drew near, and my good master directed me to speak to them, however I chose.

 Canto XXIX: 110-120 Griffolino’s story

I began: ‘So that you will not fade from human memory in the former world, but will live on there for many suns, tell me who you are, and of what people. Your punishment here is gross and revolting, but don't be discouraged from identifying yourselves to me.’

One replied: ‘I was Griffolino of Arezzo, and Albero of Siena had me burned, but that's not the whole story why I'm here. The truth is that I once joked with him that I knew how to fly.  His tiny brain was curious, so he ordered me to show him the art. When I failed to make him into Daedalus, he told his dad, the Bishop who promptly flung me on the flames. Then Minos, who never makes any mistakes at all, condemned me to this tenth depression, because he said I was an alchemist.’

   Canto XXIX: 121-139 Fools of Siena

I said to the poet: ‘Was there ever a people as dim as the Sienese? Even the French are far wise!’

The other leper heard me and replied sarcastically. ‘Yes, among the Sienese there was, for example, Stricca, who knew how to spend without limit. And Niccolo who discovered the use of cloves--a fine tradition for gardens where such seed takes root. Then there was Caccia of Aciano who wasted his vineyard and vast forest, and the one called Muddlehead [Abbagliato] who was named for his brain.

‘But permit me to introduce who seconds you like this against the Sienese: it's me. Look closely at my face, and you may see that I am the shadow of Capocchio--the counterfeiter of metals. Now I was an alchemist! You may remember, I think, that they called me the Great Ape of Nature!’  

 

Canto XXX

 1-48 Schicci and Myrrha

Once when Juno was angry (she was angry more than once), she was peeved with the Thebans over Jupiter's affair with Semele. Juno drove King Athamas so far out of his mind that one day, when he saw his queen Ino passing by with their two sons in her arms, he shouted: ‘Spread the hunting nets, so that I can take the lioness and her cubs.’ Then he snatched one of the boys, named Learchus, whirled him around in the air and dashed out his brains on the rock. Ino leaped into the sea and drowned herself with her other child, Melicertes.

Another time, after fortune had brought down the pride of the Trojans, and King Priam had been murdered, and his city had been destroyed, Queen Hecuba was driven out of her head by misery. A sad, wretched slave, having witnessed her youngest daughter Polyxena sacrificed and her youngest son Polydorus dead without burial, alone beside a strange sea, she barked and growled like a dog,

But neither Theban nor Trojan Furies ever struck at man or beast so cruelly as the two vampires I now saw in mad rage, pallid and naked, that ran snapping their teeth like famished pigs released from their sty. One of them sank its fangs into the neck of Capocchio, and dragged him away over the rocks, tearing his belly. The Aretine Griffolino, who was left trembling there, said to me: ‘That incubus is Gianni Schicci. He runs rabid here, mangling the other dead.’

‘And what is that other one?’  I asked. ‘Tell us before it runs away--and may its teeth not be embedded in your neck!’ 

He answered: ‘That's Myrrha, the lewd one who made love to her father, deceiving him by taking on a false appearance--just as that Schicci who is slinking away from us over there dared to disguise himself as Buoso Donati, so that he could rewrite the dead man's will as he pleased.’

When the furious pair of dogs had gone, I turned to look at the others there, born to evil.

 Canto XXX: 49-90 Adam of Brescia

I saw one who would have been the exact shape of a lute, if he had been cut off at the crotch, where a man is forked. His body was swollen with unabsorbed fluids, so that the bloated belly no longer matched the gaunt face. His parched lips were spread apart, thirsting like one whose torrid fever bends the lower lip down toward the chin, and curls the other upwards.

He addressed us: ‘Why are you exempt from punishment in this unhappy world? Look at me, Master Adam, and think of my misery. In life I had everything that I wished. Now, all I want is one drop of water. Constantly in my mind I see the little streams that fall from the green hills of Casentino down to the Arno, making cool moist channels. This image withers me, far more than the disease that shrivels up the skin on my face.

‘My punishment returns me to the scene of my crime, to multiply my sorrow. It was Romena where I counterfeited florins stamped with the Baptist’s image. For that felony, in life, my body burned. But now, if only I could find Guido here, or Alessandro, or their brother Aghinolfo! I would not ransom them for Branda’s fountain! Guido is down here someplace already, if the raving souls who circle the path speak the truth. But what is the use? I'm  never going to catch him.

‘If only I could move, even an inch every hundred years, I would have started on the road to find him among these  disfigured people. Even if it's eleven miles around the track, and half a mile across. It's because of them that I am stuck here among this crew. They ordered me to mint those florins with three carats of alloy.’

 Canto XXX: 91-129 Sinon: Potiphar’s wife

I asked him: ‘Who are those two, lying on your right side, giving off smoke like wet hands in winter? ’

He replied: ‘They were here when I fell into this pit, and they have not moved since then. They may never turn over in all eternity, I believe.

‘One is the woman who falsely accused Joseph. The other is that lying Greek from Troy, Sinon. They stink with a  burning fever.’

At that, perhaps insulted at being named so impolitely, one of them made a fist and struck Master Adam's rigid belly so that it resounded like a drum. Adam retaliated with his arm, striking his neighbor in the face just as rudely, saying: ‘I may be too heavy to move, but you can be sure that I keep an arm ready for occasions like these.’

The other answered: ‘You were not so ready to go to the fire, but always ready to counterfeit.’

And he retorted: ‘That's the truth, but it sounds false  coming from a liar like you. Your counterfeited at Troy.’

‘I made a false speech, but you minted lies,’ Sinon observed. ‘I'm here only for that one wrong, but you for more than any fiend!’

He of the swollen belly responded again: ‘Your only lie was the wooden horse? Then let it be your torment that all the world knows about it!’

The Greek rejoined: ‘And may your tongue crack with  thirst, and your guts swell up with foul water in front of your eyes!’

The coiner came back: ‘You would not need many words of invitation to lick Narcissus' mirror. Your mouth cracks open wide to show your sickness. If I thirst, and if dropsy swells me, you're on fire, and your head is splitting up.’

 Canto XXX: 130-148 Virgil reproves Dante

My teacher rebuked me for standing there, listening so closely to them. ‘Keep watching them much longer, and I will quarrel with you!’

He spoke with such contempt in his voice that a deep feeling of shame came over me, and it comes over me again now as I remember it. And like someone who dreams of something harmful, and wishes it were only a dream, longing for what is, as if it were not, I wished that I could find words to excuse myself, but my uncomfortable silence made its own excuse.

My teacher said: ‘Less shame than yours would wash away a larger fault than yours, so do not worry about it. Just remember that I am with you always, even when you happen to meet with rude clowns like these, engaged in stupid banter. A wish to hear petty talk like this is itself degrading.’

 

Canto XXXI

 1-45 The Giants that guard the central pit

The same tongue that wounded me, so that I blushed with shame, also provided the medicine to heal the wound. So I have heard the great spear of Achilles and his father Peleus could both injure and also heal the wounds it had made.

We turned our backs on the wretched valley, climbed the bank that surrounds it, and crossed over without a word. It was less dark than night but less light than day, so that I could see only a short distance. It was the sound of some huge horn, almost as loud as thunder, that drew my eyes to its apparent source in the path far ahead. Roland did not trumpet more ominously, after the disastrous defeat when Charlemagne lost so many holy companions at arms.

I kept staring in the direction of the horn blast, and after a while I seemed to make out several tall  towers. ‘Teacher,’ I said, ‘tell me what city lies in front of us?’ 

He answered: ‘Your eyes are too weak for so much darkness. You will see plainly enough, when you are closer, so let's keep going.’ Thoughtfully he took my hand, gently, and added: ‘So that the reality will not shock you, you should know that they are not towers. They're giants.  They're standing in the pit, ringing it around the perimeter. Their bodies will appear to you to be buried from the navel down.’

When a mist is rising, the eye gradually focuses on what the vapor had hidden. In this same way, the murky atmosphere and its uncertainties slowly lifted as we approached the end of the path. Fearful things were unveiled: as Montereggione crowns its round ramparts with towers, so the walls of the pit were turreted with the upper bodies of terrible giants, whom Jupiter still threatens from the heavens, when he thunders.

 Canto XXXI: 46-81 Nimrod

I now could see the face of one, the shoulders, chest, the greater part of the belly, the arms down both sides. When Nature stopped producing such huge creatures, she did our side a favor by taking them off the battlefield. Even if she continues to make elephants and whales, whoever looks carefully at those monsters will understand her wisdom and rightness. It is only when brute strength and ill will are joined by powerful intellect that men are defenseless.

The giant's face appeared to me to be as long and wide as the massive pine-cone at St Peter’s, and the rest of him was in proportion. The bank covered the lower half of him, but the part above ground arose so high that no three Frisians placed end-to-end could have stretched so high  (except by lying about it). There must have been thirty large spans of him that I could see up to the place where he would have buckled a cloak, if he had followed our  fashion. The cruel mouth, unfit for more civil songs, began to rave: ‘Raphel may amech sabi almi.’

My guide addressed him: ‘Mad soul, when you must vent in a storm, sound off with your horn! Try to think where it is. It's hanging from a belt around your fool's neck. What did you think was knocking on your chest?’

Then he said to me: ‘Nimrod speaks for himself. It's because of his evil intentions that no universal language is spoken throughout the world. It's useless to talk to him. All languages to him are like his language to us, unintelligible! Let us leave him. ’

 Canto XXXI: 82-96 Ephialtes

We continued on around to the left for the distance of a crossbow shot, where we found the next one, even bigger and less civilized. Who or what bound him, I could not imagine, but his right arm was pinned behind him, and the other arm in front, by a huge chain fastened tight. From his neck down, on the part of him that I could see, it wrapped around him five times.

My guide said: ‘This proud spirit tried his strength against high Jupiter, and this is the outcome. Ephialtes is his name. He was among the leaders when the titans assaulted the gods. The arms that he shook that day have never moved again.’

 Canto XXXI: 97-145 Antaeus

I wondered and said: ‘I wish that I could see the giant Briareus.’

He replied: ‘He is far from here. He's in bonds like this one, and he looks the same, except he's a bit more ugly. I'll show you Antaeus. He's nearby, he understands our language, and he's not chained, and so he can put us down on the floor in the deepest abyss.’

No huge earthquake ever shook a tower as violently as Ephialtes then shook himself. I feared for my life, and the fear alone would have killed me, if I had not seen that his chains were holding.

We reached Antaeus further on. His trunk, not counting his head, towered twenty feet over the pit. The teacher spoke: ‘Mighty hunter, of old you took a thousand lions for your prey in the fateful valley of Zama, where Scipio, heir to glory, made Hannibal retreat. The giant sons of earth might have overcome the Olympian gods, had you been present on that day with your brothers.  Antaeus, set us down in the Ninth Circle, where the River Cocytus is imprisoned in ice.

‘Do not deny us. Do not make us ask Tityus or Typhon. This man can give you what you long for. Don't sneer at him. If he likes you, he can renew your fame on earth, since he lives, and expects a long life, if grace does not call him to her prematurely.’

So the teacher spoke. Antaeus promptly stretched out both hands, by which Hercules once felt the squeeze, and he firmly gripped my guide. Virgil next beckoned to me: ‘Come on: I'll carry you.’ Then he made one bundle of himself and me.

Antaeus stooped like the leaning tower of Garisenda, when you look up the underside of its slant as a cloud is passing over it, against the direction of its tilt. I wished I had taken a different route! It was a bad moment, but the giant set us down gently in the deep that swallowed Lucifer and Judas. He did not linger there, bent over us, but quickly straightened up like the mast of a tall ship.

 

Canto XXXII

 1-39 The Ninth Circle: The frozen River Cocytus

I wish that I had words, harsh and crude enough to describe the dismal base on which all of rocks of the underworld rest. Then I could squeeze out the juices of my memory to the last bitter drop. How can I begin to tell about that hole at the bottom of the universe, as it really is? It's nothing to joke about. It's not like mama or dada, a subject for baby-talk. May those ladies who helped Amphion with his lyre to lay the massive stones for Thebes' foundation now help me, so that my verses will not be false!

Mob of souls, lower than all the rest, existing in this pit that is beyond words, better that you had been born and died as sheep or goats!

When we were down inside the dark well, walking still lower than the giants’ feet, I was looking back up at the towering cliffs above, when suddenly I heard a sharp voice. ‘Hey! Watch where you're going! Don't step on us poor brothers!’

I looked down and saw a lake, frozen like glass in front of me and underneath my feet. Neither the Danube nor the Don ever formed such thick ice in winter. It would not have cracked if Mount Tambernic or Mount Pietrapana  had fallen on it. Weeping shadows were encased in this glaze up to their necks, with their teeth chattering like storks. They looked like a multitude of squat frogs with their snouts sticking out above the water to croak at peasant women in the time of year when they dream of gleaning. Their faces were bowed down to the cold, but I could see their frosted breath and their tears streaming into the lake.

 Canto XXXII: 40-69 Alessandro and Napoleone

At my feet were two of them, stuck together so that the hair of their heads seemed all one patch. ‘Tell me who you are.’  I said. ‘How have your bodies grown together like that?’

Both twisted their necks and tried to lift their faces toward me. Their eyes continued to drip for a moment, but the bitter cold quickly froze the tears between the eyelids, and iced up the eyes. Wood was never clamped to wood so firmly by any vice as those brothers were locked together like head-butting he-goats.

A neighbor head, that had lost both ears to the cold, did not look up but said: ‘What's your fascination with that pair? If you must know their names, they are Alessandro and Napoleone. They owned the valley where the Bisenzio runs, as their dad Alberto owned it before them, and they both had the same mother, too. You can search all of Caïna, and not find anybody more properly rooted here in the ice: not Mordred, whose body and soul were pierced with sunlight at the blow of King Arthur's lance: not the one they call Focaccia: not even this one here, whose head obstructs my view of everything. His name was Sassol Mascheroni. If you are a Tuscan, you know what he was. And to save you the trouble of asking, I'll tell you that I was Camicion de’ Pazzi, and I can hardly wait for my kinsman Carlino to join me.’

 

 Canto XXXII: 70-123 Bocca degli Abbati

I noted a thousand other faces, doglike in the cold, that still make me tremble whenever I see ice.

Whether it was will, or fate or chance, I do not know, but as I was walking among the heads, my foot kicked one of the faces hard. It cried out at me: ‘What was that for? Montaperti? What's your problem?’

I said: ‘Teacher, wait here for me now. I have a question for this fellow, and when he has answered it we can finish our walk here as quickly as you please.’

The teacher waited, and I said to that shade, which still scolded me: ‘Who are you, blaming others in this way?’

‘No, who are you,’ he answered, ‘who go through the Antenora kicking heads in such a way that, if you were alive, it would be an insult?’

I replied: ‘I am alive, and if you want me to make you famous, I need your name, to put it down with the others.’

He responded: ‘I want fame? I want just the opposite! Bug off and leave me alone! Do you think that this slope of ice is a place for flattery?’

I grabbed him by the back of the scalp: ‘Name yourself or I'll tear out all of your hair!’

He answered: ‘Go ahead! Pull it out! Pull it out a thousand times, my name is none of your business!’

I had his hair coiled in my hand, and yanked out more than one tuft of it, while he barked and kept his eyes down. Then another shadow cried: ‘What the hell's wrong with you, Bocca? Isn't it bad enough that you chatter with your teeth, but you have to scream, too? What devil is bothering you?’

I said: ‘Now I have your name, accursed traitor, and I'll tell the whole world all of the latest news about you!’

He answered: ‘Go ahead! Sing all you like, if you get out of this place alive! And be sure to acclaim big mouth over there, who wagged his tongue just now. He's here for lifting French silver. You can eulogize him, "I saw Buoso de Duera there, where the sinners are frozen in the ice." And if you want to mention others here, you have Tesauro de’ Beccheria, whose throat was slit by the Florentines. Then there's Gianni de’ Soldanieri, further on, with Ganelon, and Tribaldello, the traitor who unlocked the gate of Faenza while it slept. . .’

 Canto XXXII: 124-139 Ugolino and Ruggieri

As he blabbed, we moved on, and I saw two shadows frozen together in a hole, one head stuck on the back of the other like a kind of cap. The hindmost, as if famished, gnawed into the other where the back of the skull joins the nape of the neck, as Tydeus in his rage once chewed the head of Menalippus.

‘What are you doing?’ I said. ‘What gross fury can make you eat this fellow? If there's some good reason for it, tell me who you are, and what he did to you! I'll  repay you in the world above by reporting your story, if my tongue does not wither.’ 

 

Canto XXXIII

 1-90 Count Ugolino’s story

The sinner paused and wiped his gory lips on the thinning hair of the cannibalized head. Then he began: ‘You ask me to repeat a desperate grief that wrings my heart at the thought of telling it. But let my words be the seeds that fruit in the disgrace of this villain that I eat! I'll tell you the tale, and weep.

‘Whoever you are, however you got here, you sound Florentine, so you must know that I am Count Ugolino. This head is Ruggieri, the Archbishop, and I'll tell you how I came to be his closest neighbor. The world knows how I trusted him, how he deceived me, and how he threw me in a dungeon where I died, but I'll tell you the part of the story that you cannot have heard. When you learn how evilly he murdered me, you can judge him for yourself.

‘The tower where he imprisoned me, and where others will suffer, is now named in my honor the Torre della Fama. Through a narrow chink in its wall I had counted a number of moons when, one night, I dreamed an evil dream that ripped open the veil of the future. I saw a hunt: this beast here, he seemed the lord and master, chasing a wolf and its whelps on Mount San Guiliano between Lucca and Pisa. The Gualandis, Sismondis and Lanfranchis ran with him as his blood hounds, lean and hungry.

‘After a short chase the wolf and his sons were weary, and I thought I saw their flanks being torn open by sharp teeth. That's when I awoke, before dawn, to hear my sons, who were with me, crying in their sleep and begging for bread.  The dread that then came over my heart must move you now, unless you are inhuman. If you do not weep at the thought of this, what do you weep at?

‘They awoke, and the time came for our food to be brought to us. Sickened by our dreams, I heard the door of the terrible tower below being sealed with nails. I gazed vacantly into the faces of my sons and said nothing. I did not weep but grew stony inside.

‘They wept, and my little Anselm said to me: ‘Father, you stare so: what is wrong?’ I shed no tears and did not answer all that day, or the next night, till another sun rose over the world. A small ray of light penetrated the mournful cell, and I saw in their four faces, reflections of my own. I bit my hands from grief. They thought that I bit them from hunger. They stood up, suddenly, and offered: "Father, it will give us less pain, if you feed on us: you gave us this miserable flesh, so now take it off again."

‘I calmed myself to ease their unhappiness. That day and the next we sat in silence. Hard earth, why did you not open then and swallow us? On the fourth day, Gaddo threw himself down at my feet, saying: ‘Father, father, why have you not helped me?’ There he died, and even as you see me, I watched the three others fall, one by one, on the fifth and sixth days. Already blind, I groped over their bodies, and called out to them for three more days. Then hunger overpowered my grief.’

When he finished speaking, he glared wildly at the wretched skull beneath him and then seized it again in his canines, strong as any dog’s for grinding bones.

Pisa, you are a blot of shame upon all who speak Italian.  Since your neighbors are slow to punish you, let the isles of Capraia and Gorgona come together to dam the Arno at its mouth and drown every Pisan in the flood! Even if Count Ugolino betrayed your castles, as rumored, you had no right to torture his innocent children. You Thebes of today! Uguccione and Brigata, and the other two boys I have named were too young for guilt!

 

 Canto XXXIII: 91-157  Friar Alberigo

We went further on, where the rugged ice burned another group of shadows, not bowed down but blindly staring up, fastened with frost flat on their backs. Because their tears had pooled and frozen solid in their eye sockets, they could no longer weep, so their grieves had to spread internally and metastasize through their bodies. I now seemed to feel a breeze, too, although my face already was numb as a callus with the cold.

‘Master, what makes this stir in the air?’ I asked. ‘Is there still something able to move around here?’

He replied: ‘Down the road you will see with your own eyes.’ 

One of the sorry shadows stuck in crust then cried out to us: ‘You souls, so cold that the last lot of all is reserved for you, lift this crystal mask from my eyes so that I can shed a few of the sorrows that are choking my heart. My relief will not take long; soon enough my tears will freeze again.’

I said to him: ‘If you want my help, tell me who you are. If I fail to keep my word, may I sink down to the bottom of the ice.’

He replied: ‘I am Friar Alberigo, the fruitman of the garden of evil. I called for figs but received these dates of ice.’

I said to him: ‘I didn't know that you died!’

‘How my body may stand in the world above is a mystery to me,’  he said. ‘Somehow souls often fall down here into Ptolomaea before Atropos has cut the life supports from their bodies up above. I tell you all I know because you have agreed to clear the frozen tears from my face. When a soul like me is treacherous to a dinner guest, its body is taken away by a demon, right then and there, no death required, and that devil controls the body ever after until its time expires.

‘Take for instance that shadow that winters out behind me here. It once controlled a body that is still seen in the world above. You must know it, if you have joined us down here only recently: it is Branca d’Oria, who has been frozen here for years.’

I said to him: ‘I believe you are lying to me: Branca d’Oria is not dead. He eats and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on his clothes.’

He said: ‘Michel Zanche had not yet arrived in the ditch of the Malebranche, to be tossed into the pitch that seethes and boils there, when his murderer's spirit also lost its body to a devil. That's Branca here. At the same moment another devil took over the body of his kinsman, his accomplice in the treachery. So now, as I asked, reach down and clear my eyes.’

I did not clear them. I had the good manners to be rude to him. You Genoese! Ignorant of all virtues, and familiar with all evils! Why have you not been cleared from the face of the earth, as you deserve? I saw one of you with the worst spirit in all of Romagna. For his cursed deeds, his soul already bathes in Cocytus, even while his body still thrives in your company!

 

Canto XXXIV

 1-54 Lucifer

My teacher said: ‘Vexilla Regis prodeunt inferni, the banners of the King of Inferno advance toward us. Look around to see if you can find him.’ 

In the distance I thought I saw a tall structure--perhaps a windmill in some heavy mist or after night has fallen. The frigid squalls it fanned made me shrink back behind my guide. I had no other shelter. The souls in that fearful place were completely enclosed in ice, like straws in clear glass. Some were lying down, some standing up, one on its head, another on its feet, another bent head over heels like a bow.

When we came within sight of Lucifer, the monster that once had been so beautiful, my guide stopped and stepped aside, revealing him to me. ‘This is Dis,’ he said. ‘Arm yourself with courage.’

Reader, do not ask how cold or terrified I was at that moment. I am not writing it here, since no words could tell it. I did not die, but I felt that I was no longer alive. Think, if you have any imagination, what I became, neither living nor dead.

The emperor of the kingdom of sorrow stood in ice up to his waist. I am nearer to a giant in size than the giants are to one of his arms. All of his parts were enormous in that proportion. If he was once as attractive, as he is now disgusting, still raising his brows against his Creator, his grief indeed may be the first of all woes.

The head towering above me had three faces! The front face was fire red. The others to the sides were joined to the body above the center of the shoulders, but all three converged at the top. The right hand one was whitish-yellow, while the left was dark, the color of those who come from the land beside the Nile. Under each face there were two wings more vast than any ship's sails, fit for such an immense bird's flight. They were not feathered but bat-like in shape and covering. Their constant flapping drove three bitter winds by which all of the Cocytus was frozen. Tears wept from all six eyes, and foaming blood slobbered down the three chins.

 Canto XXXIV: 55-69 Judas: Brutus: Cassius

The teeth of each mouth raked a sinner in torment. To the soul in front, the biting and chewing must have been nothing compared to the flaying, as his back repeatedly was stripped of skin.

The teacher explained: ‘That soul up there that suffers the greatest punishment, the one with his head inside the mouth while the legs flail outside, is Judas Iscariot. The one who hangs down from the black face is Brutus--note how he writhes but never utters one word of complaint. The pale, long-limbed one is Cassius. That's all there is to see. Night is falling, and it's time to go.’

 Canto XXXIV: 70-139 The return to the surface

As he instructed, I rode on his back with my arms around his neck. Just at the right moment, when the wings were wide open, he grabbed a hold on the shaggy flank and began to descend slowly down the hide, from tuft to tuft  between the matted fur and the ice chamber wall.

When we reached the thigh, at the point where the butt bulged most, my guide reversed the direction of his head and feet. He then began to climb up the tufts. Disoriented, I thought we were rising again into hell, but my guide  panted with strain: ‘Hold on tight--these stairs are the only exit.’

Finally, he reached a small opening in the rock. He backed me in, and managed to deposit me seated upon the ledge; then he squeezed in and joined me. I assumed that I now would see Lucifer upright, as he had looked before, but instead I saw him upside down, with his legs sticking up toward me. (If you can't figure out where I was, you can understand my confusion!)

‘Get on your feet,’  my teacher said. ‘The way is long and difficult, and the sun already rises at mid-tierce.’ 

I stood up. We had not come to any palace. We were in a kind of cave with a rough floor of rubble and hardly any light.

‘My sage,’  I said, ‘before we leave this hole, help me out of my muddle. What happened to the ice? Why does this monster now stand on his head? How can the sun have moved backward from evening to morning?’ 

He answered: ‘You imagine that you are still on the other side of the earth’s center, where I first took hold of the hairy hide of this evil world-piercer. You were on that side, as long as we climbed down, but when I reversed the direction of my body and began to pull us up, we passed the center of the earth, where gravity pulls down from all directions. You are now on the opposite side, opposite to that great land mass that is centered on the place where the sinless man was crucified. You now stand at the other pole of Judecca.

‘Here it is morning, when it is evening there. The serpent who was our ladder is still the same as he was before. When he fell head first from heaven, he hit this side of the earth, and the continent that used to be here sank beneath the ocean waves with him. He seems to have made very little splash. All the land that's now left in this hemisphere is only the small bubble where we now stand.’

Down in that bubble of Beelzebub, you can't see very much, but you hear the sound of a little stream trickling over the rocks. To mount back up to the shining world above the dark cave, my guide and I followed the eroded winding bed of that stream--he first, and I second. We never rested until we came to a round opening where the beautiful things of the heavens were visible above. There we climbed out and again saw the stars.