His consciousness returned after his swoon, Dante begins to investigate his new surroundings. Once again we are not told how he moved (or was moved) from one Circle to the next, from Lust to Gluttony. However, unlike the situation that pertained in the commentaries in response to the questions raised about the means of his crossing Acheron, the undescribed transport here has not caused debate, nor even any particular interest.

For the Ovidian source of the phrase 'Al tornar de la mente' (With my returning senses) see Francesco Mazzoni, Il canto VI dell'“Inferno” in Nuove letture dantesche (Florence: Le Monnier, 1967), p. 19: Metam. VI.531, 'Ubi mens rediit,' cited along with Brunetto Latini, Tesoretto, verse 191, 'Ma tornando a la mente....'

As many commentators now point out, the technical word for 'in-laws' (cognati) used here reminds the reader who has become caught up in Francesca's words (as was the protagonist) that her adultery was particularly sinful, since she was engaged in it with her brother-in-law. Mazzoni, Il canto VI dell'“Inferno” in Nuove letture dantesche (Florence: Le Monnier, 1967), p. 19, points out that in the third book of Andreas Cappellanus' De amore love between in-laws was considered incestuous. See also André Pézard, ed., Dante Alighieri, Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), ad loc., who cites a passage in Ovid for the resonance of a similar thought: 'cognato poterit nomine culpa tegi' (by the name of kinsman the fault may be hidden – Ovid, Heroides IV.138 [Phaedra's words to Hippolytus]).

On the word trestizia see the gloss of Bosco/Reggio (comm. vv. 1-3): 'si ricordi la definizione di trestizia per S. Tommaso: “cognitio et recusatio mali” (Summa theol. I-IIae, q. XXXIX, a. 2) ricordata da V. Russo, “Tristitia” e “misericordia” nel canto V dell'“Inferno”, in his Sussidi e esegesi dantesca (Naples: Liguori, 1966), pp. 33-51, per “liberare l'interpretazione del termine da ogni residua e falsa coloritura sentimentale.” But for Dante it represented a sorrow brought on by strong emotions, such as we find recorded several times in Vita Nuova (XXXI 1; XXXVI 2, etc.).' Combined, however, with the 'cognati' in the preceding verse, the word has here predominantly a sense that would seem more analytic than sentimental.

Here, for the first time, one experiences the fluidity between the lines of demarcation between zones of the poem. These are less rigid than a casual reader may notice. In the words of A.M. Chiavacci Leonardi (comm. v. 4): 'The first tercet, in a position that is syntactically dependent, serves as closure for the fifth canto; this one [...] marks the true beginning of the sixth.'

See Robert Dombrowski, “The Grain of Hell: A Note on Retribution in Inferno VI,” Dante Studies 88 (1970), pp. 103-8. for the notion that the hellish downpour takes its central and antithetic model from the manna promised by God to Moses in the Bible (Exodus 16:4): 'Ecce ego pluam vobis panes de caelo' (Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you).

The details that constitute the 'hellscape' for the gluttons are sodden and disgusting (and see the reinforcement of this impression at vv. 46-48). We might speculate that, in his own view at least, over-eating had had no appeal for Dante, while lust was a much more serious threat to his soul's well-being.

For Virgil's description of Cerberus see Aeneid VI.417-418. Dante's version of the mythological creature is unique in its inclusion of human attributes. For the possible influence of the Roman d'Enéas, vv. 2561-89, on Dante's conception of Cerberus, see Barbara Spaggiari, “Antecedenti e modelli tipologici nella letteratura in lingua d'oïl,” in I “monstra” nell'“Inferno” dantesco: tradizione e simbologie (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, 1997), pp. 119-20.

For a strong argument that would replace in this verse barba (beard) with bocca (mouth) see Federico Sanguineti, “Per Inf. VI 16,” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 59 (l999), pp. 43-46. And for his presentation of arguments for a new stemma codicum of the manuscripts of the Comedy, see his earlier article, “Prolegomeni all'edizione critica della Comedìa,” in Leonella Coglievina and Domenico De Robertis, eds., Sotto il segno di Dante: scritti in onore di Francesco Mazzoni (Florence: Le Lettere, 1998), pp. 261-82. Now, of course, see the result of that investigation, Sanguineti's edition of the poem, Dantis Alagherii Comedia (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001).

Barbi (Problemi di critica dantesca [Florence: Sansoni, 1934]), pp. 264-65, made a strong case for iscoia (and not ingoia, a reading found in most of the MSS, and most recently embraced by Lanza [La Commedìa: Testo critico secondo i più antichi manoscritti fiorentini, Nuova edizione (Anzio: De Rubeis, 1996)], p. 52, the last element in the preceding verse points specifically to the 'taloned hands' of Cerberus, and this verse then describes what he does with these extremities: graffia (claws), iscoia (flays), and isquatra (quarters). That seems entirely sensible. Further, against the surprising (to say the least) reading ingoia (swallows), which, despite its unreasonableness, has always found some believers, Barbi points out that (1) the sequence 'claws... swallows... quarters' would verge on the ridiculous, (2) Cerberus has already been described (v. 14) as barking with his three gullets, a sound that we are led to believe is continual and that would need to be interrupted by any such 'swallowing,' (3) the text makes no mention of his eating or otherwise mouthing the damned, an action that would clearly then have been meant to be part of their punishment, and Dante tends to be precise in such details. Petrocchi (La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, Introduzione, pp. 172-73; La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, Inferno, p. 97) follows Barbi, also pointing out that the somewhat unusual word iscoia would have easily been transformed by an early copyist into ingoia, with sc being written as ng. Mazzoni (Il canto VI dell'“Inferno” in Nuove letture dantesche [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967]), p. 25, is also in this camp. The debate over this word offers a good illustration of the importance (and justness) of the view of the minority, at least on frequent occasion.

See Padoan (comm. to Inf. VI.21) for the association of the word profanus (used here for the only time in the poem) specifically with gluttony, as found in the Bible (Hebrews 12:16 [the 'profanity' of Esau in selling his birthright for food]) and in Ovid (Metam. VIII.840 [Erysichthon's 'profane' self-directed hunger, referred to by Dante in Purg. XXIII.25-27]).

See Torraca (comm. to Inf. VI.23-24) for what seems to be the first reference to a probable source for this verse in Arnaut Daniel's sestina Il ferm voler, v. 10: 'Non ho membro, che non mi frema' (not a limb of mine is not a-tremble). The context is of course very different: love, not rage, is causing Arnaut's trembling.

The 'sop' to Cerberus, in Virgil a honeyed cake (Aen. VI.419-422), here becomes mere earth (terra). Christopher Kleinhenz (“Infernal Guardians Revisited: 'Cerbero, il gran vermo' [Inferno VI, 22],” Dante Studies 93 [1975]), p. 190, has pointed out that Dante's strategic redoing of Virgil has its biblical resonance, as God's malediction of the serpent (Genesis 3:14) concludes '... terram comedes cunctis diebus vitae tuae' (and dust shall you eat all the days of your life). The serpent's punishment for having urged Eve to eat the fruit of the tree is himself to eat the dead earth; his punishment is shared now by Cerberus.

This is the only simile found in this, the shortest canto we have yet read (only Inferno XI will have so few verses – 115). The distribution of canto lengths throughout the poem would seem to indicate that Dante originally was limiting himself to composing in shorter units than he would generally employ later in his text. If we examine the first twenty cantos we find that fourteen, or 70% of them, are 136 lines long or fewer (115 to 136), while 9 (or 11%) of the final eighty are in this group (and all of these between 130 and 136 lines). Confining ourselves to the very shortest cantos (those from 115 to 130 verses), we find that these occur six times in the first twenty cantos, with only one (of 130 lines) in this shorter group occurring after Inferno XX. Of the eighty final cantos, 88.75% (71 of them) are between 139 and 160 lines long; only 11.25% (9 cantos) of the final eighty are 136 lines or fewer. See Joan Ferrante (“A Poetics of Chaos and Harmony,” in The Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. R. Jacoff [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993]), pp. 154-55, for the distribution of Dante's canto lengths. Such data surely make it seem that Dante was experimenting with this distribution as he progressed, a tentative conclusion that would cast some doubt on the position of Thomas Hart, who has argued, carefully and well, that it seems plausible that Dante may have planned even these details from the very beginning. For a summary of his copious and interesting work, affording an overview of it, see Hart, “'Per misurar lo cerchio' (Par. XXXIII 134) and Archimedes' De mensura circuli: Some Thoughts on Approximations to the Value of Pi,” in Dante e la scienza, ed. P. Boyde and V. Russo (Ravenna: Longo, 1995), pp. 265-335.

It is as though Dante had begun paring his art, striving for succinctness more than he had before. Up to now, we have found similes an important structuring device in the first two cantos (see discussion in the note to Inf. II.127-130), in the third canto (see the note to Inf. III.112-120), and in the fifth (Inf. V.40-49; Inf. V.82-85). Only the fourth, given over nearly entirely to conversation about the nature of the Limbus and to a catalogue of the forty souls identified as being there, is without a simile (although it does contain a dramatic simple comparison [Inf. IV.96]).

Mirroring the low-mimetic tone of this canto, this its only simile for the first time turns to what we might refer to as 'scenes from daily life,' those wonderfully realistic touches that reveal what an intense and skilled observer Dante was of such scenes. Many later similes in Inferno will also reveal this trait.

Boccaccio (comm. to Inf. VI.7-12) sees the bellowing of Cerberus (verse 32) as antithetic to the music played at banquets, the setting in the world above for the gluttony that is punished here. Padoan (comm. to Inf. VI.32) points out that this description of the effect on the guilty souls of Cerberus's barking mirrors the verse in Virgil describing a similar effect: Aeneid VI.401: 'licet ingens ianitor antro / aeternum latrans exsanguis terreat umbras' (if, from his cave, the huge gatekeeper may indeed terrify the bloodless shades with his endless howling).

In hell, we are given to understand, matter and bodies can interact, but not matter and shades. Accordingly, we might expect Dante to be soaked and chilled by the awful rain, while the shades of the gluttons feel nothing. Instead, in a single terzina, the poet forces us to make two allowances: Dante, walking through the rain that strikes the sinners, apparently feels nothing of it. The sinners, of course, feel it all too well. We are reminded again that the physical laws of the afterworld are immutable – except when the writer chooses to break them in order to make the details of his poem work better.

For the Virgilian provenance of v. 36 see Padoan (comm. to Inf. VI.36): Aeneid VI.292-293; VI.700-702.

For the first (but not the last) time in the poem Dante is recognized by one of the dead souls. This moment introduces the Florentine 'subtext' of the Comedy. Ciacco (as we shall learn to call this figure at v. 52) is the first of some three dozen Florentine characters found in the poem, the vast majority of them in hell.

This damned soul is called back to thoughts of his past life on earth by the presence of the protagonist, whom he recognizes. We may extrapolate from this scene what Dante intends us to consider the experiential nature of a life of damnation: eternal fixation with one's punishment, now interrupted by the coming of someone remembered from the 'dolce mondo' (v. 88). This is a vivid and pleasing interruption, but then recedes into continued and unending torment.

As Padoan points out (comm. to Inf. VI.43), even those on their way to salvation, purging their former gluttony, are so changed in their facial expressions that Dante cannot recognize an old friend: Forese Donati in Purgatorio XXIII.43.

The vast majority of the MSS read lei. Petrocchi (La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata: Inf., p. 100, objects, arguing that they should have read lui, the reading supplied in his text, because the ombra (the understood antecedent accounting for the feminine forms elle, una, and ella a few lines above – at vv. 37-39) has revealed itself as masculine in v. 42. This may be an example of hypercorrect editing on Petrocchi's part.

The metaphor of a sack out of which the contents spill introduces the main theme of the canto, not gluttony, but political rivalry (even if the image itself relates to the over-abundant storage of food). Many commentators try to find reasons to explain Dante's having related the two, but none has found a genuinely convincing link. Until now, each group of sinners, the neutrals, the virtuous pagans, the lustful, has been portrayed essentially and mainly as we might expect; that is, all sinners in each group seem to be expressing their sins on earth in everything that they do or say. Dante, however, chose not to keep to such a scheme on a regular basis and obviously decided to introduce 'sub-categories,' as it were, in certain Circles (e.g., politics [again] in the Circle of heresy). It is hard to see any necessary connection between gluttony and politics, if one can find certain justifications, if one looks hard enough. The fact is, Dante wants to address certain concerns and brings them to his text when he wants to. For a study of Dante's 'digressions,' especially in the Comedy, see Sergio Corsi, Il “modus digressivus” nella “Divina Commedia” (Potomac, Md.: Scripta humanistica, 1987).

The envy that Dante sees as the source of the terrible political rivalries in Florence in 1300 is traditionally understood as that felt by the nobler but poorer Donati faction of the Guelphs against the richer Cerchi faction. Yet, and given both the political situation and the main meaning of envy in Dante's understanding (e.g., the desire to see one's opponents suffer loss), it seems clear that all Florentines are marked by this sin in Dante's eyes. Envy, seen in Inferno I.111 as the motive force behind Satan's seduction of Eve, is the second worst (after pride) of the seven mortal sins. In our time we tend not to understand either its gravity nor its widespread hold on human hearts. An envious person does not want another's wealth or happiness so much as he wishes his neighbor to be deprived of wealth or happiness.

For the Virgilian source of Dante's happy life of those on earth (verse 51), as cited by Lombardi (comm. to Inf. VI.51), see the phrase in Aeneid VI.428, dulcis vitae. And, for a consideration of the way in which Ciacco's reference to Florence as being Dante's city may suggest his own distance from citizenship, both temporally and morally (i.e., Ciacco's Florence, in 'the good old days,' was a better place than it is now), see Romano Manescalchi, “'La tua città' (Inf. VI, 49),” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America (August 2002).

'Dice lo spirito Voi cittadini mi chiamaste, per dire: in vita, fra voi, ero conosciuto col nome di Ciacco. Ora che è fra gli altri ciechi, gli pare d'aver tutto perduto, anche il nome' (The spirit says, 'You my townsmen called me,' in order to say, 'in life, when I was among you, I was known by the name of Ciacco.' Now that he is among his 'blind companions' [v. 93] it seems to him that he has lost everything, including his name). This is the gloss of Barbi (Problemi di critica dantesca [Florence: Sansoni, 1934]), p. 205. One of the most debated questions of this canto has to do with the identity and the name of this character. Was his name actually 'Ciacco'? If it was, an enduring supposition is that of Isidoro Del Lungo (comm. to Inf. VI.52): he is the thirteenth-century Florentine poet Ciacco dell'Anguillara. While such a solution is attractive, there is as yet not a shred of evidence to support it. A more likely hypothesis is that his name was a nickname, granted him either because of his gluttonous habits ('ciacco' was a noun that in Tuscany meant 'pig,' or 'hog,' according to some fourteenth-century commentators, most notably Francesco da Buti [comm. to Inf. VI.52], but none of the earliest report that this was the case and there is no other confirming record) or because his physiognomy was such as to call for such a name (i.e., his nose was flattened on his face – André Pézard, ED.1970.1, p. 983b). And there is the further possibility that the nickname suggested no reference to offensive traits (Mazzoni points out that there are many examples in public documents of the time in which such names are used as Christian names [Il canto VI dell'“Inferno” in Nuove letture dantesche (Florence: Le Monnier, 1967), p. 36]). The Chiose selmiane (comm. to Inf. VI.52) have it that Ciacco was a Florentine banker who ate and drank so much that his eyesight went bad – as a result he could not count money and people made fun of him; he knew Dante, and died before Dante turned fourteen. That is the most detailed and specific account we find in any early commentator. What perhaps makes it most attractive is that Dante is perhaps referring to this poor eyesight in the detail about Ciacco's glance in Inf. VI.91 (but see the note to that passage): Boccaccio's reference to Ciacco (Decameron IX.viii.4), on the other hand, would suggest that he, too, read Dante's phrasing ('Voi cittadini mi chiamaste Ciacco') as indicating that this man had a different name but that the Florentines called him by his nickname: 'essendo in Firenze uno da tutti chiamato Ciacco' (there being in Florence a man who was called 'Ciacco' by everyone). For a recent review of the entire problem, opting for the porcine nickname on the basis of Isidore of Seville's discussion of Epicureans as pigs, see Simone Marchesi's article (“'Epicuri de grege porcus': Ciacco, Epicurus and Isidore of Seville,” Dante Studies 117 [1999], pp. 117-31).

Dante's response to Ciacco's laconic words is courteous. However, as was not the case when he spoke with Francesca, he now quickly moves on to other things, the condition of Florence: 'what shall be the fate / of the citizens within the riven city?'

Our translation, 'Are any in it just?', is an interpretation, one shared by the overwhelming majority of commentators and translators. If Mazzoni is correct in his interpretation of v. 73, perhaps the translation should run, 'Is there any justice in it?' That would be consistent with his interpretation of the later line (if he himself treats the word giusto here as an adjective). See discussion in the note to Inf. VI.73.

This is the first prophecy about events that will have importance in Dante's own life (as opposed to the 'world-historical' prophecies that concern Dante as part of the human family [see the note to Inf. I.98-105]) in a poem that is studded with them. For the 'personal prophecies' in the poem see Emilio Pasquini, “Il Paradiso e una nuova idea di figuralismo,” Intersezioni 16 (1996), p. 419: Ciacco's, Farinata's (Inf. X.79-81); Brunetto's (Inf. XV.55-57); Vanni Fucci's (Inf. XXIV.143-150); Currado Malaspina's (Purg. VIII.133-139); Oderisi's (Purg. XI.139-141); Bonagiunta's (Purg. XXIV.37-38); Forese's (Purg. XXIV.82-90); and, ninth and last, Cacciaguida's (Par. XVII.46-93). Ciacco's is concerned with the events of May 1300, three or five weeks after the date of the journey, and thus events genuinely near at hand. The White faction, led by the Cerchi family, selvaggia in the sense that its members come from the wooded outskirts of the city, will drive out the Black faction in 1300.

Within three years (in fact in 1302) the White faction will fall as the Blacks return to the city through the treachery of Pope Boniface VIII, who currently takes no action to help the city. Mazzoni points out that all the three line-concluding verbs in this terzina are drawn from the action of scales: one tray goes down while another comes up, while Boniface hangs in the balance (Il canto VI dell'“Inferno” in Nuove letture dantesche [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967], p. 40).

Padoan (comm. v. 70): 'The Blacks will maintain their supremacy for lungo tempo, making it weigh heavy on the defeated with their pride, as exiled Dante knew only too well (and still he could not imagine just how 'long' that 'time' would be). For a fronte alta as signifying pride, see Inf. I.47; it is not by chance that this vice is punished by gravi pesi in Purg. XI.'

For a brief but strong reading of the due giusti as referring to Dante and another Florentine, identity not knowable, see Barbi, Problemi di critica dantesca (Florence: Sansoni, 1934), p. 266. Currently a great debate rages over this verse, fanned by the exertions of Mazzoni. His first findings (see Il canto VI dell'“Inferno” in Nuove letture dantesche [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967], pp. 40-46) have now been reiterated several times, most recently in “Tematiche politiche fra Guittone e Dante,” in Guittone d'Arezzo nel settimo centenario della morte: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Arezzo (22-24 aprile 1994), ed. M. Picone (Florence: Franco Cesati, 1995), pp. 351-83. (Mazzoni, as of his notice to this writer in August 1998, is preparing still another study of the question.) Following Pietro di Dante (Pietro1 to Inf. VI.73), who argues that the phrase refers not to two human beings, but to two laws, natural and posited, Mazzoni argues that the source for such an interpretation exists in St. Thomas's commentary on a passage in Aristotle's Ethics (VIII, c. xv, 1243): 'Duplex est iustum' (Justice is twofold), that is, natural and posited. Perhaps even more helpful to Mazzoni's case is Dante's own phrasing in his epistle against his fellow townsmen (Epistle VI.5), whom he accuses of transgressing laws both divine and man-made ('Vos autem divina iura et humana transgredientes'). The traditional reading of the verse, which has gathered massive support, is as we have translated it: 'Two men are just and are not heeded there.' Mazzoni's 'translation' would read, in English, 'the two kinds of justice are not followed there.' Mazzoni has also demonstrated that Dante uses the Latin intendere in the sense he claims it has here ('followed') in Monarchia (II.v.1). One can see both the force and the charm of his argument. It is a possible line of interpretation. But it eventually fails to convince for a fairly simple reason, namely, that both locutions are, to say the least, strange in Dante's vernacular, since each of them would be unique, unusual meanings of often used and common words (see Zygmunt Baranski, “Inferno VI.73: A Controversy Re-examined,” Italian Studies 36 [1981], p. 8). Baranski's article contains a frontal attack on Mazzoni's position, which had been supported by Pietro Caligaris (“Inferno VI, 73-75,” L'Alighieri 14 [1973], pp. 51-52) and then attacked by Steno Vazzana (“Ancora su Inferno VI,” L'Alighieri 15 [1974], pp. 41-44). It has been reprinted in an Italian translation: “'Giusti son due' (Inf., VI, 73): tra Sodoma e Firenze,” in Baranski's “Sole nuovo, luce nuova”: Saggi sul rinnovamento culturale in Dante (Turin: Scriptorium, 1996), pp. 183-219.

In the view of this writer, Mazzoni's position is most vulnerable because it has left intact the usual interpretation of v. 62, 's'alcun v'è giusto' (Are any in it just?) – see Il canto VI dell'“Inferno” in Nuove letture dantesche (Florence: Le Monnier, 1967), p. 40, where he admits that giusto is adjectival, and refers to the 'presenza di uomini giusti' (the presence of just men – p. 41) in Florence. If that is true, his adventurous reading of v. 73 seems doomed. For that verse, as many commentators in our century have pointed out, echoes biblical texts in which the salvation of a city may depend on the finding of a handful or fewer of just men in it, most prominently in Genesis 18:23-33. And if the first use of giusto in Dante's question is adjectival, then the second use, in Ciacco's answer, must almost certainly be so too.

It should be noted that, among the early commentators, not only that Pietro is alone in this interpretation, although Iacopo della Lana had previously offered a not dissimilar one (comm. to Inf. VI.73), but that he is adamantly opposed in it by John of Serravalle, who begins his remarks with this slighting flourish: 'filius Dantis, volens hic glossare patrem, dicit multa minus bene dicta et minus vera' (Dante's son, desiring to write a gloss on this passage of his father's, says many things less than well and less than true). He then goes on to point out two other errors in Pietro's gloss before insisting that the due giusti refer to Dante himself and Guido Cavalcanti (comm. to Inf. VI.64-69). This was the solution of many of the commentators until the nineteenth century, when Andreoli (comm. to Inf. VI.73) switched the second name, substituting that of Dino Compagni. Given Dante's troubled relationship with Guido at this time, that is probably a wise choice. On the other hand, it is probably best to avoid any attribution at all, if we cannot but think that, if Dante is thinking of two (or a few) just citizens, he certainly is referring to himself (Barbi's position, with which we began).

See the similar remark offered by Brunetto Latini (Inf. XV.68). For Florence to be afflicted by pride, envy, and avarice is to be afflicted by the worst of the seven mortal sins, at least as far as Dante's unofficial view would have it.

If there are only two just Florentines in the city in 1300, in 'the good old days' there seem to have been at least five, men who made great effort to offer sustenance to goodness. The meaning of the tercet is clear enough. The problem arises because one of the five, Arrigo, is never mentioned – or surely does not seem to be. The other four are seen in Hell, Farinata in canto X, among the heretics, Tegghiaio and Iacopo in XVI, among the Florentine homosexual politicians (the most positively presented sinners since those we met in Limbo), and Mosca, in a sense the only 'surprise' here, since he is punished in canto XXVIII for his treachery on the battlefield, but, in Dante's mind, is apparently considered, along with Farinata and the others named here, as among the powerful citizens of an earlier Florence, before the city became utterly dissolute, who maintained a proper civic concern. See the study of Pietro Santini (“Sui fiorentini 'che fur sì degni,'” Studi Danteschi 6 [1923], pp. 25-44) for this argument, which is espoused by Mazzoni (Il canto VI dell'“Inferno” in Nuove letture dantesche [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967]), pp. 46-48. Of course, it is the puzzle created by Arrigo's not being further referred to in hell that has drawn commentators like flies to rotten meat. For a review of the many competing 'Harrys' who began to populate the margins of Dante's poem in the fourteenth century and have continued to do so into our own, see Vincenzo Presta, 'Arrigo' (ED.1970.1), pp. 391-92. Presta prefers the candidacy, first advanced by Santini, of one Arrigo di Cascia, as does Mazzoni, p. 47. All one can say is that it is strange that Dante picked the names of five men, four of whom he goes on to include prominently in his poem, and one that he does not mention again – especially since he has Ciacco say explicitly that the protagonist will see all of them in his descent (Inf. VI.87). This is a mystery that will probably always remain a mystery.

The world of the living is almost always characterized as being filled with the light of the sun, as 'sweet,' when it is remembered by the damned in their bitter darkness.

A sixteenth-century commentator, Castelvetro (comm. to Inf. VI.90) paraphrases this line as follows: 'it has been conceded me by God to make clear to you what I have revealed, at your insistence, but, as for the future, I say no more either to you or to anyone else until the Day of Judgment.'

Ciacco's last 'gesture,' his glance moving from Dante's face and going vacant, has been a puzzle to many readers. The commentary of Bosco/Reggio is clear and to the point: 'Ciacco passes from his temporarily fully-human phase to one of nearly pure animality; first he looks askance; then he continues to fix Dante with a stunned gaze in which, bit by bit, any last trace of humanity is extinguished; then his head droops, deprived of any human vitality; finally he falls headfirst into the muck, unfeeling and inert' (comm. to Inf. VI.91-93).

For Ciacco's being in a state of 'hebetude,' the condition that theologians connect with gluttony, see Singleton (comm. to Inf. VI.91-93).

Padoan's gloss (comm. to Inf. VI.92) suggests that for Ciacco this experience is akin to that of a second death. Indeed, we see him arise from death, called back to his vital former self when he hears his native speech; now he 'dies' all over again.

Despite the argument of Pézard (“Ce qui gronde en l'éternel [Inf. VI, 94-115],” Studi Danteschi 42 [1965]), pp. 211-14, that the 'enemy' is not Christ (who is no one's 'enemy'), but damnation, almost all understand that the podesta does indeed refer to Christ when He shall come in Judgment. Padoan points out (Inf. VI.96) that at Inferno II.16 Dante refers to God as 'l'avversario d'ogne male' (the adversary of all evil). Pézard's theology is not reliable here: divinity, it is true, is not the enemy of the living, but loves them all; the unrepentant sinners in hell are another matter.

In the opinion of Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to Inf. VI.99), 'the judgment that eternally resounds' has a biblical source, the words of Christ, 'Discedite a me, maledicti, in ignem aeternum' (Depart from me, you cursed ones, into everlasting fire – Matthew 25:41). For the resonance here of the angelic trumpet blast that will herald the Last Judgment see Singleton (comm. to Inf. VI.94-99, citing I Corinthians 15:51-53).

For all the interest shown in the present situation of Florence in this canto, it is clear that the future of the damned is to be understood as having greater eventual importance. This, at least, is Dante's 'official' position.

Reviewing a certain confusion among recent commentators about the precise citation made here, Mazzoni (Il canto VI dell'“Inferno” in Nuove letture dantesche [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967]), p. 50, shows that this tercet derives from a passage in St. Thomas's commentary to Aristotle's De anima: 'quanto anima est perfectior, tanto exercet plures perfectas operationes et diversas' (as the soul becomes more perfect, so it is more perfect in its several operations). La tua scïenza is thus Aristotle's De anima, and not the Physics or the Ethics, as some have argued.

The notion of a greater 'perfection' for the damned suggests only that, since a soul united with its body is ipso facto better than a soul alone, the ontological nature of the damned will be improved by the restoration of their bodies that will follow the Last Judgment. (For St. Thomas on this doctrine see Singleton [comm. to Inf. VI.106-107].) However, and thoroughly in accord with the penal code of hell, this 'improvement' in their condition will only result in their ability to feel more pain.

Dante's self-conscious gesture as narrator seems to have no hidden reference, such as many believe is found in an earlier similar moment of narrative reticence (see the note to Inf. IV.104-105). This would rather seem to be a 'realistic detail,' the narrator insisting that his task is also that of editor, that he had gathered much more 'material' than he can report.

Where Christ is the nimica podesta (hostile Power) who will oppress the damned at the Last Judgment (Inf. VI.96), here the gran nemico (great foe) is Plutus, the classical god of wealth (and not Pluto, the classical god of the underworld). As we shall see, the hellish kingdom over which he presides contains the avaricious and the prodigal.

For the notion of the desire for riches as being a 'root sin' (along with Pride) in the Christian view of such things, see the frequently cited words of St. Paul, 'Radix malorum est cupiditas' (For the love of money is the root of all evil – [I Timothy 6:10]).