Quel color che viltà di fuor mi pinse
veggendo il duca mio tornare in volta,
più tosto dentro il suo novo ristrinse.
Attento si fermò com' uom ch'ascolta;
ché l'occhio nol potea menare a lunga
per l'aere nero e per la nebbia folta.
“Pur a noi converrà vincer la punga,”
cominciò el, “se non... Tal ne s'offerse.
Oh quanto tarda a me ch'altri qui giunga!”
I' vidi ben sì com' ei ricoperse
lo cominciar con l'altro che poi venne,
che fur parole a le prime diverse;
ma nondimen paura il suo dir dienne,
perch' io traeva la parola tronca
forse a peggior sentenzia che non tenne.
“In questo fondo de la trista conca
discende mai alcun del primo grado,
che sol per pena ha la speranza cionca?”
Questa question fec' io; e quei “Di rado
incontra,” mi rispuose, “che di noi
faccia il cammino alcun per qual io vado.
Ver è ch'altra fiata qua giù fui,
congiurato da quella Eritón cruda
che richiamava l'ombre a' corpi sui.
Di poco era di me la carne nuda,
ch'ella mi fece intrar dentr' a quel muro,
per trarne un spirto del cerchio di Giuda.
Quell' è 'l più basso loco e 'l più oscuro,
e 'l più lontan dal ciel che tutto gira:
ben so 'l cammin; però ti fa sicuro.
Questa palude che 'l gran puzzo spira
cigne dintorno la città dolente,
u' non potemo intrare omai sanz' ira.”
E altro disse, ma non l'ho a mente;
però che l'occhio m'avea tutto tratto
ver' l'alta torre a la cima rovente,
dove in un punto furon dritte ratto
tre furïe infernal di sangue tinte,
che membra feminine avieno e atto,
e con idre verdissime eran cinte;
serpentelli e ceraste avien per crine,
onde le fiere tempie erano avvinte.
E quei, che ben conobbe le meschine
de la regina de l'etterno pianto,
“Guarda,” mi disse, “le feroci Erine.
Quest' è Megera dal sinistro canto;
quella che piange dal destro è Aletto;
Tesifón è nel mezzo”; e tacque a tanto.
Con l'unghie si fendea ciascuna il petto;
battiensi a palme e gridavan sì alto,
ch'i' mi strinsi al poeta per sospetto.
“Vegna Medusa: sì 'l farem di smalto,”
dicevan tutte riguardando in giuso;
“mal non vengiammo in Tesëo l'assalto.”
“Volgiti 'n dietro e tien lo viso chiuso;
ché se 'l Gorgón si mostra e tu 'l vedessi,
nulla sarebbe di tornar mai suso.”
Così disse 'l maestro; ed elli stessi
mi volse, e non si tenne a le mie mani,
che con le sue ancor non mi chiudessi.
O voi ch'avete li 'ntelletti sani,
mirate la dottrina che s'asconde
sotto 'l velame de li versi strani.
E già venìa su per le torbide onde
un fracasso d'un suon, pien di spavento,
per cui tremavano amendue le sponde
non altrimenti fatto che d'un vento
impetüoso per li avversi ardori,
che fier la selva e sanz' alcun rattento
li rami schianta, abbatte e porta fori;
dinanzi polveroso va superbo,
e fa fuggir le fiere e li pastori.
Li occhi mi sciolse e disse: “Or drizza il nerbo
del viso su per quella schiuma antica
per indi ove quel fummo è più acerbo.”
Come le rane innanzi a la nimica
biscia per l'acqua si dileguan tutte,
fin ch'a la terra ciascuna s'abbica,
vid' io più di mille anime distrutte
fuggir così dinanzi ad un ch'al passo
passava Stige con le piante asciutte.
Dal volto rimovea quell' aere grasso,
menando la sinistra innanzi spesso;
e sol di quell' angoscia parea lasso.
Ben m'accorsi ch'elli era da ciel messo,
e volsimi al maestro; e quei fé segno
ch'i' stessi queto ed inchinassi ad esso.
Ahi quanto mi parea pien di disdegno!
Venne a la porta e con una verghetta
l'aperse, che non v'ebbe alcun ritegno.
“O cacciati del ciel, gente dispetta,”
cominciò elli in su l'orribil soglia,
“ond' esta oltracotanza in voi s'alletta?
Perché recalcitrate a quella voglia
a cui non puote il fin mai esser mozzo,
e che più volte v'ha cresciuta doglia?
Che giova ne le fata dar di cozzo?
Cerbero vostro, se ben vi ricorda,
ne porta ancor pelato il mento e 'l gozzo.”
Poi si rivolse per la strada lorda,
e non fé motto a noi, ma fé sembiante
d'omo cui altra cura stringa e morda
che quella di colui che li è davante;
e noi movemmo i piedi inver' la terra,
sicuri appresso le parole sante.
Dentro li 'ntrammo sanz' alcuna guerra;
e io, ch'avea di riguardar disio
la condizion che tal fortezza serra,
com' io fui dentro, l'occhio intorno invio:
e veggio ad ogne man grande campagna,
piena di duolo e di tormento rio.
Sì come ad Arli, ove Rodano stagna,
sì com' a Pola, presso del Carnaro
ch'Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna,
fanno i sepulcri tutt'il loco varo,
così facevan quivi d'ogne parte,
salvo che 'l modo v'era più amaro;
ché tra li avelli fiamme erano sparte,
per le quali eran sì del tutto accesi,
che ferro più non chiede verun' arte.
Tutti li lor coperchi eran sospesi,
e fuor n'uscivan sì duri lamenti,
che ben parean di miseri e d'offesi.
E io: “Maestro, quai son quelle genti
che, seppellite dentro da quell' arche,
si fan sentir coi sospiri dolenti?”
E quelli a me: “Qui son li eresïarche
con lor seguaci, d'ogne setta, e molto
più che non credi son le tombe carche.
Simile qui con simile è sepolto,
e i monimenti son più e men caldi.”
E poi ch'a la man destra si fu vòlto,
passammo tra i martìri e li alti spaldi.
That hue which cowardice brought out on me,
Beholding my Conductor backward turn,
Sooner repressed within him his new colour.
He stopped attentive, like a man who listens,
Because the eye could not conduct him far
Through the black air, and through the heavy fog.
"Still it behoveth us to win the fight,"
Began he; "Else. . .Such offered us herself. . .
O how I long that some one here arrive!"
Well I perceived, as soon as the beginning
He covered up with what came afterward,
That they were words quite different from the first;
But none the less his saying gave me fear,
Because I carried out the broken phrase,
Perhaps to a worse meaning than he had.
"Into this bottom of the doleful conch
Doth any e'er descend from the first grade,
Which for its pain has only hope cut off?"
This question put I; and he answered me:
"Seldom it comes to pass that one of us
Maketh the journey upon which I go.
True is it, once before I here below
Was conjured by that pitiless Erictho,
Who summoned back the shades unto their bodies.
Naked of me short while the flesh had been,
Before within that wall she made me enter,
To bring a spirit from the circle of Judas;
That is the lowest region and the darkest,
And farthest from the heaven which circles all.
Well know I the way; therefore be reassured.
This fen, which a prodigious stench exhales,
Encompasses about the city dolent,
Where now we cannot enter without anger."
And more he said, but not in mind I have it;
Because mine eye had altogether drawn me
Tow'rds the high tower with the red-flaming summit,
Where in a moment saw I swift uprisen
The three infernal Furies stained with blood,
Who had the limbs of women and their mien,
And with the greenest hydras were begirt;
Small serpents and cerastes were their tresses,
Wherewith their horrid temples were entwined.
And he who well the handmaids of the Queen
Of everlasting lamentation knew,
Said unto me: "Behold the fierce Erinnys.
This is Megaera, on the left-hand side;
She who is weeping on the right, Alecto;
Tisiphone is between;" and then was silent.
Each one her breast was rending with her nails;
They beat them with their palms, and cried so loud,
That I for dread pressed close unto the Poet.
"Medusa come, so we to stone will change him!"
All shouted looking down; "in evil hour
Avenged we not on Theseus his assault!"
"Turn thyself round, and keep thine eyes close shut,
For if the Gorgon appear, and thou shouldst see it,
No more returning upward would there be."
Thus said the Master; and he turned me round
Himself, and trusted not unto my hands
So far as not to blind me with his own.
O ye who have undistempered intellects,
Observe the doctrine that conceals itself
Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses!
And now there came across the turbid waves
The clangour of a sound with terror fraught,
Because of which both of the margins trembled;
Not otherwise it was than of a wind
Impetuous on account of adverse heats,
That smites the forest, and, without restraint,
The branches rends, beats down, and bears away;
Right onward, laden with dust, it goes superb,
And puts to flight the wild beasts and the shepherds.
Mine eyes he loosed, and said: "Direct the nerve
Of vision now along that ancient foam,
There yonder where that smoke is most intense."
Even as the frogs before the hostile serpent
Across the water scatter all abroad,
Until each one is huddled in the earth.
More than a thousand ruined souls I saw,
Thus fleeing from before one who on foot
Was passing o'er the Styx with soles unwet.
From off his face he fanned that unctuous air,
Waving his left hand oft in front of him,
And only with that anguish seemed he weary.
Well I perceived one sent from Heaven was he,
And to the Master turned; and he made sign
That I should quiet stand, and bow before him.
Ah! how disdainful he appeared to me!
He reached the gate, and with a little rod
He opened it, for there was no resistance.
"O banished out of Heaven, people despised!"
Thus he began upon the horrid threshold;
"Whence is this arrogance within you couched?
Wherefore recalcitrate against that will,
From which the end can never be cut off,
And which has many times increased your pain?
What helpeth it to butt against the fates?
Your Cerberus, if you remember well,
For that still bears his chin and gullet peeled."
Then he returned along the miry road,
And spake no word to us, but had the look
Of one whom other care constrains and goads
Than that of him who in his presence is;
And we our feet directed tow'rds the city,
After those holy words all confident.
Within we entered without any contest;
And I, who inclination had to see
What the condition such a fortress holds,
Soon as I was within, cast round mine eye,
And see on every hand an ample plain,
Full of distress and torment terrible.
Even as at Arles, where stagnant grows the Rhone,
Even as at Pola near to the Quarnaro,
That shuts in Italy and bathes its borders,
The sepulchres make all the place uneven;
So likewise did they there on every side,
Saving that there the manner was more bitter;
For flames between the sepulchres were scattered,
By which they so intensely heated were,
That iron more so asks not any art.
All of their coverings uplifted were,
And from them issued forth such dire laments,
Sooth seemed they of the wretched and tormented.
And I: "My Master, what are all those people
Who, having sepulture within those tombs,
Make themselves audible by doleful sighs?"
And he to me: "Here are the Heresiarchs,
With their disciples of all sects, and much
More than thou thinkest laden are the tombs.
Here like together with its like is buried;
And more and less the monuments are heated."
And when he to the right had turned, we passed
Between the torments and high parapets.
Dante has gone white with cowardice. Seeing this, Virgil tries to compose his own features. In canto VIII.121 (Inf. VIII.121) Virgil was angry, and this fact leads many commentators to believe that the color in his face now is still the red flush of anger. On the other hand, others believe (and over the centuries there are roughly as many of one opinion as of the other) that Virgil's new color just now is the pallor of frustration and shame. Either reading is possible. Guido da Pisa believed Virgil had gone pale, supporting this view with a citation of the Aeneid (I.209-210), where Aeneas, 'sick with care, feigns hope in his face while stifling the anguish deep in his heart.' If the poet had this passage in mind, it would seem likely that he imagined Virgil, like Aeneas feeling defeated but needing to raise the spirits of whoever depends on him, having turned from florid to pale in facial color and now trying to compose himself. However, Dante's verb, ristrinse, literally 'restrained' or 'clamped down on,' would be much more appropriate to controlling anger than ridding oneself of malaise. Either reading is supportable, but red is probably the better choice, especially since we then have the dramatic contrast between white-cheeked Dante and red-faced Virgil.
For the 'improper' or 'false' simile, a comparison in which the tenor and vehicle would seem to refer to the same entity ('he was struggling as does a man trying to explain a difficult concept'), see Eric S. Mallin, “The False Simile in Dante's Commedia,” Dante Studies 102 (1984): 15-36. See also Richard Lansing, From Image to Idea: A Study of the Simile in Dante's “Commedia” (Ravenna: Longo, 1977) for a previous and somewhat different discussion of this phenomenon, as Mallin reports.
Virgil's doubt and ensuing confirmation has caused considerable difficulty, in particular the clause 'tal ne s'offerse' (v. 8). There has been debate over the validity of this reading in the Italian text, and over the meaning of this particular choice, accepted by most as being the most likely. Most commentators are certain that the tal ('such' or 'such a one') refers to Beatrice, whether specifically or in general (e.g., such aid was offered to us [by Beatrice]). Virgil's general thought in the tercet is, however, probably clear enough: 'We must win this fight unless (I did not understand what Beatrice told me).... No, what she said must be true; but I wish the promised help from heaven would get here.' Musa's remark on the passage bears repeating (Advent at the Gates [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1974]), p. 73: 'because during his lifetime [Virgil] could not believe in the coming of Christ, so now he can not believe in the coming of the angel – in spite of his having learned from Beatrice that the Pilgrim's journey is willed in Heaven.' In other words, Virgil, condemned to hell for not having had faith, repeats that error even now.
A fairly rare example of an interpretive exercise embedded in the poetic text itself, Dante as glossator of Virgil's words and presenter of his own understanding as he heard them. What he thought, then, was perhaps that Virgil was afraid that they would be left in hell, in which case Dante would have perished.
The 'first circle' is Limbo, where Virgil and the other virtuous heathens have their eternal resting place, and where, in his own words, 'without hope we live in longing' (Inf. IV.42).
Virgil's narrative of his having had his spirit conjured from the dead by the witch Erichtho may have reassured the protagonist; it has raised nothing but questions among Dante scholars. Boccaccio (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27), Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27), and Francesco da Buti (comm. to Inf. IX.16-30), in their respective commentaries, correctly understand that Dante is here inventing new material, unsanctioned by any classical source. In fact, this may be the single most outrageous example of the utter liberty Dante at times employs in his treatment of classical literature. No such tale exists in any other text before Dante's, nor anything like it. While many point to the similar statement made by the Sibyl, hoping to reassure Aeneas that she has been shown by Hecate (Proserpina) the places of the underworld (Aen. VI.562-565), no one has come close to finding a source for a Virgilian journey to the depths of hell under the spell of Erichtho. This Thessalian witch appears in a crucial role in Lucan's Pharsalia, the later poet's rather nasty version of Virgil's more benign Sibyl. In a lengthy episode in the sixth book (vv. 507-830) of Lucan's poem, a book with evident parallels to the descent to the underworld in the Aeneid, replete with Sibyl-like guide in the person of Erichtho, the witch holds center stage. Serving the curiosity of Sextus Pompeius, son of the great Pompey, one of the major republican opponents of Caesar in the civil war, she agrees to foretell the outcome of the war by practicing her necromantic art on the corpse of a recently slain soldier. What the soldier tells is hardly pleasant news, but is hardly complete, either. He does make plain to Sextus that the ghost of his father will come to him in Sicily (Lucan, Phars. VI.812-813) in order to reveal still more (but Lucan committed suicide by Nero's order before finishing the poem, and the scene was not written). It is out of these materials that Dante has concocted his idiosyncratic tale. To what end? Surely it besmirches Virgil, whom we first hear of, in Inferno II, as being given a much different posthumous treatment by Beatrice, who 'harrowed' him from Limbo for six days of duty in the Christian afterworld. Now it turns out that this was not the only time, that he had previously been used for nefarious purpose by Erichtho. And what is it that she wanted? In Lucan's poem (Phars. VI.586-587) we learn that her greatest desire is to be able to mangle the corpses of Julius Caesar (the poem is set before the murder of Caesar – 44 BC) and of Pompey. Virgil died in 19 BC. As he says in this narrative, Erichtho called him (like the young soldier in Lucan's poem, only recently dead) back into his body shortly after he died and sent him down to the ninth Circle, Judecca (apparently bearing that name even before Judas committed suicide in 34 AD – or else Virgil is merely using the current form of it). Why? Those who have written on this problem have not developed any hypothesis to account for her motive. Yet Dante surely would have given her one in the myth that he was constructing. Or Virgil is simply making up a tall story in order to give himself authority – a dubious hypothesis embraced by some. But for the view that his account rather undermines than girds that authority see Stefano Prandi, “I gesti di Virgilio,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 172 (1995), pp. 56-57. And for more on this problem see Sonia Gentili (“La necromanzia di Eritone da Lucano a Dante,” in Dante e il “locus inferni”: Creazione letteraria e tradizione interpretativa, ed. Simona Foà e Sonia Gentili (Rome: Bulzoni, 2000 [= Studi (e testi) italiani 4 (1999)], pp. 13-43).
We know from Lucan that Erichtho had an unfulfilled ambition, to ravage the corpses of Caesar and Pompey. Where are these located in Dante? Caesar is in Limbo; of Pompey we hear little (Dante is as spare in his mention of him as is Virgil), and nothing about his station in the afterlife. Since saved pagans always seem to merit Dante's notice (Ripheus, Cato, Statius, and Trajan) we can probably safely assume that Pompey is not one of these. If he is then to be considered one of the damned, where would he be found? Of the four great republican figures in the civil wars, Cato is in purgatory and on his way to heaven, Brutus and Cassius are in hell, precisely in the ninth Circle. Is Pompey there as well? It seems a likely possibility. Lucan has him translated to the heavens after his murder and deified (Phars. IX.1-18); Dante surely admired his youthful achievements (Par. VI.53) and apparently avoided making him noticeable among the damned. However, it is at least possible that he is playing a game with his reader here. As a co-conspirator of Brutus and Cassius, would Pompey not naturally have been punished along with them, since he is not, like Cato, miraculously saved? With this subtlest of hints, in other words, Dante invites us to imagine that his version of Erichtho sent Virgil to accomplish the Pompey part of her unfulfilled purpose. (A student, Sara Van Rheenan, Princeton '90, has gone so far as to suggest that Pompey was the third sinner in Satan's jaws before Judas replaced him in 34 AD.)
Virgil does not tell us whether he actually brought back a spirit from the depths or not. Dante's invention is probably outrageous enough as it stands. But we can perhaps glimpse the justification of Erichtho's wish, her delayed victory over dead Pompey, as well as the strange fulfillment of Erichtho's and Lucan's promise of a return to the earth of Pompey's ghost. It seems a notion worth considering. And if that hypothesis seems overbold, we can retreat to a simpler but even less likely one, leaving the soul of Pompey in relative obscurity and peace: Virgil is sent down to bring back either Brutus or Cassius. In fact some sixty years ago Ernesto Trucchi attempted exactly such an explanation, arguing, with no further justification, that Virgil was sent down to bring back Brutus (comm. to Inf. IX.22-30). Gregorio Di Siena had already suggested that Virgil had been sent down to move Dido, at first placed in Judecca for betraying Sichaeus [!], from there to the Circle of lust (comm. to Inf. IX.23). Whatever justification we seek for this strange tale of Virgil's first visit to the realm of the damned, we probably should try to find it in the pages of Lucan.
Boccaccio was the first and perhaps lone discussant (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27) to think of the only biblical tale that contains similar elements (and was surely familiar to Dante), the story of Saul's visit to the witch of Endor, who calls up the spirit of Samuel for Saul; the latter – in a scene more powerful than even anything in Lucan – foretells Saul's death and the defeat of the Israelites at the hands of the Philistines (I Samuel 28:3-25).
Judecca, the ninth Circle, named for Judas, betrayer, like all those punished there with him, of a rightful lord and master.
His tale told, Virgil's point is clear: 'I have been all the way down to the bottom of the pit; you can trust in my guidance.' The 'heaven that encircles all' is almost certainly the Crystalline Sphere, or primum mobile. If the verb girare here has the sense of 'makes turn,' and not 'surrounds,' as some believe, the reference then is surely to the Crystalline Sphere, for it sets all the rest of the spheres in motion, even though it is itself motionless. As for the choice between girare as 'cause to turn' or 'make a circle around,' all the early commentators who deal with the term think in terms of the latter. However, from the sixteenth century until halfway into the twentieth the large majority of commentators chose the former, citing Paradiso XXVIII.70, where the primum mobile is described as setting the other spheres in motion in somewhat similar terms to what might be expressed here. Currently, following the observation of Porena (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27) that, since the earth in not in motion in Dante's astronomy, the verb in this sense cannot apply to 'all,' most commentators have returned to the earlier understanding. It is probably of some import that the earliest commentators, probably with a closer sense of Dante's vocabulary than ours, choose as they do. Further, Dante only rarely uses girare in the second sense discussed here, more usually using the first. There are some four dozen uses of girare in the poem, and relatively rarely does the verb seem to have the sense of 'cause a thing to move in a circular path,' e.g., Inf. XXVI.139; Inf. XXXIV.6; Purg. XIX.62; Par. XXI.81; Par. XXII.119; Par. XXIV.14. Far more often (some 17 times) the verb is used as a synonym of ire, 'to go,' but it is not easy always to disambiguate this use from girare as 'to move in a circle,' which is by far the more usual usage in the poem (some 23 times).
There is debate among commentators as to what exactly this sentence means. It seems more likely that the ira ('wrath') referred to is the righteous anger of the forces of God (namely, the angel who is now approaching) rather than the wrath the travelers will encounter in the forces defending the City of Dis, as Boccaccio (comm. to Inf. IX.30-33) believes, or the 'wrath' they must employ in order to enter the city (the view of most of the early commentators). In the nineteenth century first Gregorio Di Siena (comm. to Inf. IX.33, haltingly, and then, in a cogent exposition, Andrea Scartazzini (comm. to Inf. IX.33), advanced the view that the 'wrath' in question is represented by the angel's assault upon the closed city. That seems the most convincing reading. Among modern discussants, see Casagrande's strong defense of this angelic hypothesis (“Dante e Filippo Argenti: riscontri patristici e note di critica testuale,” Studi Danteschi 51 [1978], pp. 233-35). And for textual confirmation of this view see v. 106, below, where Virgil and Dante, after the angel's intervention, enter the city of Dis without further struggle.
The swamp is the river Styx.
'The three Erinyes or Furies, Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, who dwelt in the depths of Hell and punished men both in this world and after death' (“Erine,” in Toynbee, Concise Dante Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1914 [1898]). See Aeneid VI.570-575. In Virgil, as in Greek myth, these three sisters are punishers of crimes of blood. Dante sees them as the handmaids of Proserpina (or Hecate), the queen of hell. What has not often been pointed out (but see the interesting gloss by Poletto [comm. vv. 46-48]) is that, while in the Aeneid each of the three Furies is named, their names never appear together (Megaera in XII.846, Alecto in VII.324, and Tisiphone in VI.555, VI.571, and X.761). Pietro di Dante (comm. vv. 34-48) cites an anonymous poem for the following passage, apparently as his father's source: Tres agitant mentes Furie, ratione carentes. / Tunc est Tesiphone cum res est pessima mente; / at cum mente fera dispumat in ore Megera; / re perpetrata tunc est Alecto vocata.
Does the protagonist's fear mark the beginning of his new cycle of fear, pity, and firmness, the second of five such cycles in Inferno? For that thesis, see Hollander, Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” (Princeton, 1969), esp. pp. 303-4, discussed in the note to Inf. II.4-5. For more on the vacillating presences of these two emotions in the main character, see also the notes to Inf. IV.19-21 and V.142.
'Gorgon Medusa; she alone of the three Gorgons was mortal, and was at first a beautiful maiden, but, in consequence of her having given birth to two children by Poseidon in one of Athena's temples, the latter changed her hair into serpents, which gave her head such a fearful appearance that every one who looked upon it was turned into stone' (Toynbee, Gorgòn). See Ovid, Metam. IV.769-803 but see the more detailed account in Lucan, Phars. IX.624-699. Dante may be thinking of the particular moment in Lucan (IX.681-684) at which Athena (her role played by Virgil in this infernal version of that drama) covers the face of Medusa with the reptilian strands of her own hair so that Perseus (in a role corresponding to the protagonist's, if far less violently) can, guided by Athena's steadier hand, cut off the Gorgon's head (IX.675-677). When Perseus rises up, escaping from the stony confines of Libya, carrying that fearsome and blood-dripping head, Lucan refers to him as aliger (wingèd), the Latin version of the poet's nom de famille. For Dante's awareness of this pun on his own family's name, Alighieri, see the notes to Inf. XXVI.1-3; Purg. IX.28-30, X.121-129; Par. XV.81. In this tamer version of that encounter, the hero survives, but cannot yet be said to triumph. The Furies' threat to bring out their biggest defensive weapon remains unfulfilled only, we may assume, because of the rapid deployment of God's own siege-breaker, the angelic intercessor.
The Furies lament that, when Theseus came to the nether regions with Perithous in order to rescue Proserpina (see Aen. VI.392-397), they only imprisoned him, rather than putting him to death, since that left him alive to be rescued by Hercules.
The Gorgon, or Medusa's decapitated head, was, merely looked upon, powerful enough to turn a human onlooker to stone. Cf. the note to v. 52.
Vv. 61-63 contain the second address to the reader in the poem (see note to Inf. VIII.94-96). This one has caused more difficulty than any other, and 'solutions' are so abundant that it is fair to say that none has won general consent, from the first commentators' exertions until today. (For a discussion see Amilcare Iannucci, “Dottrina e allegoria in Inferno VIII, 67 - IX, 105,” in Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi, ed. M. Picone [Ravenna: Longo, 1987], pp. 99-124.) Opinions are divided, first of all, on whether the passage points back in the text, either primarily to Medusa (seen as despair, heresy, the hardened will, etc.) or to the Furies (seen as sin itself, or the three main categories of sin punished in hell [incontinence, violence, fraud], or remorse, etc.), or to a combination of these. Those who believe that the passage invites the reader rather to look forward than back are in accord that it refers to the avenging intruder who is about to appear in order to open the locked gates of Dis; but there is great debate over exactly what the one 'sent from heaven' (Inf. IX.85) signifies (see discussion in the note to Inf. IX.85). Surely it seems more natural for the reference to point backwards to something already said. And indeed something noteworthy and perhaps puzzling has just occurred: Virgil has covered Dante's eye-covering hands with his own hands as well. If this passage (vv. 58-60) is the one that contains a hidden doctrine (and few commentators believe it is, but see Hollander [Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969)] pp. 239-46), perhaps what it suggests is that stoic restraint is not enough to keep a sinner safe from dangerous temptation (i.e., Dante, had she appeared, would have looked upon Medusa and been turned to stone, just as Ulysses would have listened to the Sirens and been destroyed by them had he not been restrained by other forces).
Why are these verses 'strange'? It seems possible that they are meant to indicate that we must abandon our habit of reading literally, 'historically,' as we have become used to doing once the travelers arrived in hell. That is, we must read these particular verses as though they were in a more usual fiction and thus allegorize them in order to grasp their point. Where many commentators think that this tercet offers the key to reading the entire work 'allegorically,' others, the present writer included, understand their reference as being local and limited, perhaps even to vv. 58-60.
This splendidly energetic simile is perhaps built out of elements found in two similes in the Aeneid (II.416-419 and XII.451-455). In the first of these the Trojan forces mount an impetuous counter-attack upon the Greek invaders of their city; in the second the forces of Aeneas begin the eventually victorious final attack upon the armies of Turnus. The celestial messenger, though only one in number, has the force of a great army; victory is seconds away.
Now Virgil can allow Dante to use his eyes once more: Medusa is apparently no longer a threat.
A number of commentators and translators have the frogs in this simile going to the bottom of the pond; they go to land (a la terra), as Dante says they do, and as any intelligent frog will do when a snake enters the water. This simile probably derives from Ovid, Metamorphoses VI.370-381.
The angel walks upon the water in imitation of Christ (Matthew 14:25).
The angel resembles Mercury, as he is described by Statius (Thebaid II.1-11), coming back up from the foul air of the underworld with his caduceus in hand. For a study of the various classical sources for this scene see David Quint's article (“Epic Tradition and Inferno IX,” Dante Studies 93 [1975], pp. 201-7).
That this agent of good is 'sent from heaven' indicates clearly enough that he is an angel, although debate over his identity still continues. See Silvio Pasquazi, 'Messo celeste' (ED.1971.3), pp. 919-21, making a strong case for his angelic status and giving a summary of the debate. Pasquazi also argues for one traditional further identification, making the messo specifically the archangel Michael, who led the forces of the good angels against the rebellious ones in the war in heaven (Apoc. 12:7-9) – see the note to Inf. VII.10-12 – exactly the forces he now must combat once more in the netherworld. (Pasquazi's final argument, that Michael dwells in Limbo, is probably simply unacceptable.) Over the centuries there has been a continuing argument between those who believe that the messo is Mercury and those who believe that he is an angel, and, in some cases, specifically Michael. It seems highly likely that Dante here gives us an archangel Michael 'dressed up' as Mercury, a fused identity that is not problematic in any way, given Dante's practice of combining pagan and Christian materials.
For a recent discussion that again confirms the most likely hypothesis, that this creature is indeed an angel from heaven, see Massimo Seriacopi (“Un riscontro testuale inedito per 'dal ciel messo' (Inferno IX 85),” Publications of the Carla Rossi Academy Press [http://www.cra.phoenixfound.it/epubbf.htm], 1999). For a return to the central hypothesis of Pasquazi (Michael as Mercury), see Susanna Barsella (“The Mercurial integumentum of the heavenly messenger [Inferno IX 79-103],” Letteratura italiana antica 4 [2003], pp. 371-95).
Virgil's command that Dante bow down before the angel removes just about any doubt about the messo's divine status.
The angel's opening of the barred gates with his verghetta ('wand') is almost surely, even if there is no sign of recognition in the commentary tradition, modeled on Mercury's similar opening of the gates of Herse's chamber with his verga, i.e., his caduceus (Ovid, Metam. II.819). See Hollander, “The Tragedy of Divination in Inferno XX,” in his Studies in Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1980), p. 181n., and Barsella, “The Mercurial integumentum of the heavenly messenger (Inferno IX 79-103),” Letteratura italiana antica 4 (2003), p. 386.
The 'outcasts of heaven' are undoubtedly the rebellious angels referred to in Inferno VIII.82-83, 'more than a thousand angels fallen from Heaven.' See also the reference, a few lines earlier in this canto (Inf. IX.79), to 'a thousand lost souls' who guard the city of Dis, that is, these very angels.
The angel makes clear, in his address to his fallen brethren, that resistance to the will of God is utterly useless. His reference to the chaining of Cerberus by Hercules reflects Aeneid VI.392-396. Dante has now been associated with two classical heroes, Theseus (Inf. IX.54) and Hercules. His powers, however, reside not in himself but in his heaven-ordained mission.
The angel's impassive attitude tells us something about the nature of the inhabitants of hell that we sometimes forget: from God's perspective there is nothing worthy of attention in their plight. The angel only wants to get out of this place as quickly as he can in order to return to eternal bliss, so much so that he has not even a word of greeting or support for the two travelers.
That Virgil and Dante now enter 'without further struggle' helps affirm that (Inf. IX.33, Virgil's remark that 'now we cannot enter without wrath,' does not refer to the warring disposition of the travelers, but to that of the angel. This whole passage, from the last verse of Inferno VII (Inf. VII.130) to now, the moment of successful entry of the walled city of Dis, narrates a military campaign: Virgil and Dante approach by sea in Phlegyas's military transport ship; the forces ranged against them signal their coming and prepare to do battle, closing the gates and assuming defensive positions on the battlements; they wheel up their main weapons, the Furies, who prepare to unleash their secret weapon, Medusa; the invading forces then deploy their secret weapon, the heavenly battering-ram that opens the gates and, in a trice, wins the battle.
The protagonist shows his usual touristic interest in seeing the new 'sights' within this 'fortezza.' The word the poet chooses reminds us that we here behold a different aspect of hell. Once we see the even more imposing structures awaiting the travelers (Malebolge and the walled city of Cocytus), we have some sense of the import of the first 'built environment' of hell that we experience after that imposing gate described in the third canto, a sign that the sins punished within it are more offensive to God than those above.
Dante's references to two famous ancient Roman cemeteries, at Arles in France and Pola in Istria, build the scene for us: these grave sites are not mounds in the ground but sarchophagi, raised monuments of stone that contain the remains of the dead.
We will eventually be apprised of the heretical nature of the beliefs of the inhabitants of these tombs, whom we can hear but cannot see. We will have a similar experience when we look upon the flames of the false counselors in cantos XXVI and XXVII, also unseen in their flames, yet entirely audible. And see the note to Inf. XIX.25, for discussion of the parodic inversion of Pentecostal fire in the punishment of sins that involve the perversion of the gift of the Holy Spirit. One thinks of these heretics, the sodomites (cantos XV and XVI), and the false counselors. All these three loci contain sinners who use their intelligence in such ways as to beguile others into believing what they should not believe.
Virgil explains to Dante that this sixth Circle of hell encloses many different heretical sects, each of which is punished in a separate sepulchre, and some of which are punished with more, others with less, severity.
Why is heresy punished within the walls of Dis, where all the sins punished are sins of will, not those of appetite? It is interesting to see how often early commentators associate heresy with obstinacy or obduracy; their word is the Latin pertinax. Some of them may be reflecting St. Thomas's definition (S.T. II-II, q. 5, a. 3): if a man 'is not pertinacious in his disbelief, he is in that case no heretic, but only a man in error.' See, among others, the commentaries of Boccaccio (comm. to Inf. IX.127 and to Inf. IX.110-133), Benvenuto (comm. to Inf. IX.112-116 and to Inf. IX.127-129), Francesco da Buti (comm. to Inf. IX.106-123 and to Inf. X.31-39), John of Serravalle (comm. to Inf. X.13-15); Daniello (comm. to Inf. IX.133 [citing Thomas]) and, among the moderns, Poletto (comm. to Inf. X.28-30), Carroll (comm. to Inf. IX.132).
The turnings to the right here and at Inferno XVII.32 have caused puzzlement and some ingenuity. In hell, whenever the direction of their movement is mentioned, Dante and Virgil elsewhere always head to the left. Only on these two occasions do they move rightward. These two rightward turnings occur just before the entrance to the sixth Circle, in which heresy is punished, and before the exit from the realm of Violence, the seventh Circle. Some have welcomed the Scartazzini/Vandelli hypothesis (see that commentary to this passage) that both heresy and fraud are alike in their deformations of truth. But this explanation fails to observe that treachery, punished in the ninth and last Circle, also deforms the truth, and that the second rightward turning takes place before the travelers enter the realm of fraud, in any case. Other less simple explanations have other difficulties associated with them. This is another instance in which the commentary tradition has not resolved Dante's plan, if indeed there was one. It is possible that the rightward movement at Inferno XVII.32 is only the necessary result of having to leave their circling movement in order to move toward Geryon, even if some maintain (e.g., Rossetti [comm. to Inf. XVII.31-33]) that there is an allegorical meaning both in turning to the right to face fraud from 'the right side,' as it were, and in walking ten steps that reflect the ten bolge of Fraud. In any case, either of these explanations reduces the likelihood that there is a 'program' linking Inferno IX.132 and XVII.32. And then the only 'program' would be one involving the sin of heresy. For some reason Dante decided that its specialness, or perhaps extraneousness to the Aristotelian/Ciceronian divisions of vice, called for the retrograde and special movement. But for a literal explanation of even this turning to the right, see Andreoli (comm. to Inf. IX.132): 'Di cosiffatta eccezione io credo non si possa dare altra ragione che questa, che avendo dovuto i Poeti fare una grande aggirata (c. VIII, 79) per isbarcare alla porta di Dite, nell'entrarvi poi si trovassero aver già percorso più della solita nona parte del cerchio; e che perciò questa volta, per trovare il punto prefisso alla loro traversata nel cerchio seguente, essi invece di procedere a sinistra avessero dovuto retrocedere a destra.' And see the note to Inf. XVII.28-33.
For the logistics of this little scene, see Chiavacci Leonardi (comm. ad loc.): 'li alti spaldi: le alte mura di difesa della città; spaldi erano propriamente i ballatoi che correvano in cima alle mura; qui per sineddoche indicano genericamente le mura. Dante e Virgilio camminano quindi, come si dirà in X 2, nello stretto spazio di terreno tra le mura e le tombe.'
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Quel color che viltà di fuor mi pinse
veggendo il duca mio tornare in volta,
più tosto dentro il suo novo ristrinse.
Attento si fermò com' uom ch'ascolta;
ché l'occhio nol potea menare a lunga
per l'aere nero e per la nebbia folta.
“Pur a noi converrà vincer la punga,”
cominciò el, “se non... Tal ne s'offerse.
Oh quanto tarda a me ch'altri qui giunga!”
I' vidi ben sì com' ei ricoperse
lo cominciar con l'altro che poi venne,
che fur parole a le prime diverse;
ma nondimen paura il suo dir dienne,
perch' io traeva la parola tronca
forse a peggior sentenzia che non tenne.
“In questo fondo de la trista conca
discende mai alcun del primo grado,
che sol per pena ha la speranza cionca?”
Questa question fec' io; e quei “Di rado
incontra,” mi rispuose, “che di noi
faccia il cammino alcun per qual io vado.
Ver è ch'altra fiata qua giù fui,
congiurato da quella Eritón cruda
che richiamava l'ombre a' corpi sui.
Di poco era di me la carne nuda,
ch'ella mi fece intrar dentr' a quel muro,
per trarne un spirto del cerchio di Giuda.
Quell' è 'l più basso loco e 'l più oscuro,
e 'l più lontan dal ciel che tutto gira:
ben so 'l cammin; però ti fa sicuro.
Questa palude che 'l gran puzzo spira
cigne dintorno la città dolente,
u' non potemo intrare omai sanz' ira.”
E altro disse, ma non l'ho a mente;
però che l'occhio m'avea tutto tratto
ver' l'alta torre a la cima rovente,
dove in un punto furon dritte ratto
tre furïe infernal di sangue tinte,
che membra feminine avieno e atto,
e con idre verdissime eran cinte;
serpentelli e ceraste avien per crine,
onde le fiere tempie erano avvinte.
E quei, che ben conobbe le meschine
de la regina de l'etterno pianto,
“Guarda,” mi disse, “le feroci Erine.
Quest' è Megera dal sinistro canto;
quella che piange dal destro è Aletto;
Tesifón è nel mezzo”; e tacque a tanto.
Con l'unghie si fendea ciascuna il petto;
battiensi a palme e gridavan sì alto,
ch'i' mi strinsi al poeta per sospetto.
“Vegna Medusa: sì 'l farem di smalto,”
dicevan tutte riguardando in giuso;
“mal non vengiammo in Tesëo l'assalto.”
“Volgiti 'n dietro e tien lo viso chiuso;
ché se 'l Gorgón si mostra e tu 'l vedessi,
nulla sarebbe di tornar mai suso.”
Così disse 'l maestro; ed elli stessi
mi volse, e non si tenne a le mie mani,
che con le sue ancor non mi chiudessi.
O voi ch'avete li 'ntelletti sani,
mirate la dottrina che s'asconde
sotto 'l velame de li versi strani.
E già venìa su per le torbide onde
un fracasso d'un suon, pien di spavento,
per cui tremavano amendue le sponde
non altrimenti fatto che d'un vento
impetüoso per li avversi ardori,
che fier la selva e sanz' alcun rattento
li rami schianta, abbatte e porta fori;
dinanzi polveroso va superbo,
e fa fuggir le fiere e li pastori.
Li occhi mi sciolse e disse: “Or drizza il nerbo
del viso su per quella schiuma antica
per indi ove quel fummo è più acerbo.”
Come le rane innanzi a la nimica
biscia per l'acqua si dileguan tutte,
fin ch'a la terra ciascuna s'abbica,
vid' io più di mille anime distrutte
fuggir così dinanzi ad un ch'al passo
passava Stige con le piante asciutte.
Dal volto rimovea quell' aere grasso,
menando la sinistra innanzi spesso;
e sol di quell' angoscia parea lasso.
Ben m'accorsi ch'elli era da ciel messo,
e volsimi al maestro; e quei fé segno
ch'i' stessi queto ed inchinassi ad esso.
Ahi quanto mi parea pien di disdegno!
Venne a la porta e con una verghetta
l'aperse, che non v'ebbe alcun ritegno.
“O cacciati del ciel, gente dispetta,”
cominciò elli in su l'orribil soglia,
“ond' esta oltracotanza in voi s'alletta?
Perché recalcitrate a quella voglia
a cui non puote il fin mai esser mozzo,
e che più volte v'ha cresciuta doglia?
Che giova ne le fata dar di cozzo?
Cerbero vostro, se ben vi ricorda,
ne porta ancor pelato il mento e 'l gozzo.”
Poi si rivolse per la strada lorda,
e non fé motto a noi, ma fé sembiante
d'omo cui altra cura stringa e morda
che quella di colui che li è davante;
e noi movemmo i piedi inver' la terra,
sicuri appresso le parole sante.
Dentro li 'ntrammo sanz' alcuna guerra;
e io, ch'avea di riguardar disio
la condizion che tal fortezza serra,
com' io fui dentro, l'occhio intorno invio:
e veggio ad ogne man grande campagna,
piena di duolo e di tormento rio.
Sì come ad Arli, ove Rodano stagna,
sì com' a Pola, presso del Carnaro
ch'Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna,
fanno i sepulcri tutt'il loco varo,
così facevan quivi d'ogne parte,
salvo che 'l modo v'era più amaro;
ché tra li avelli fiamme erano sparte,
per le quali eran sì del tutto accesi,
che ferro più non chiede verun' arte.
Tutti li lor coperchi eran sospesi,
e fuor n'uscivan sì duri lamenti,
che ben parean di miseri e d'offesi.
E io: “Maestro, quai son quelle genti
che, seppellite dentro da quell' arche,
si fan sentir coi sospiri dolenti?”
E quelli a me: “Qui son li eresïarche
con lor seguaci, d'ogne setta, e molto
più che non credi son le tombe carche.
Simile qui con simile è sepolto,
e i monimenti son più e men caldi.”
E poi ch'a la man destra si fu vòlto,
passammo tra i martìri e li alti spaldi.
That hue which cowardice brought out on me,
Beholding my Conductor backward turn,
Sooner repressed within him his new colour.
He stopped attentive, like a man who listens,
Because the eye could not conduct him far
Through the black air, and through the heavy fog.
"Still it behoveth us to win the fight,"
Began he; "Else. . .Such offered us herself. . .
O how I long that some one here arrive!"
Well I perceived, as soon as the beginning
He covered up with what came afterward,
That they were words quite different from the first;
But none the less his saying gave me fear,
Because I carried out the broken phrase,
Perhaps to a worse meaning than he had.
"Into this bottom of the doleful conch
Doth any e'er descend from the first grade,
Which for its pain has only hope cut off?"
This question put I; and he answered me:
"Seldom it comes to pass that one of us
Maketh the journey upon which I go.
True is it, once before I here below
Was conjured by that pitiless Erictho,
Who summoned back the shades unto their bodies.
Naked of me short while the flesh had been,
Before within that wall she made me enter,
To bring a spirit from the circle of Judas;
That is the lowest region and the darkest,
And farthest from the heaven which circles all.
Well know I the way; therefore be reassured.
This fen, which a prodigious stench exhales,
Encompasses about the city dolent,
Where now we cannot enter without anger."
And more he said, but not in mind I have it;
Because mine eye had altogether drawn me
Tow'rds the high tower with the red-flaming summit,
Where in a moment saw I swift uprisen
The three infernal Furies stained with blood,
Who had the limbs of women and their mien,
And with the greenest hydras were begirt;
Small serpents and cerastes were their tresses,
Wherewith their horrid temples were entwined.
And he who well the handmaids of the Queen
Of everlasting lamentation knew,
Said unto me: "Behold the fierce Erinnys.
This is Megaera, on the left-hand side;
She who is weeping on the right, Alecto;
Tisiphone is between;" and then was silent.
Each one her breast was rending with her nails;
They beat them with their palms, and cried so loud,
That I for dread pressed close unto the Poet.
"Medusa come, so we to stone will change him!"
All shouted looking down; "in evil hour
Avenged we not on Theseus his assault!"
"Turn thyself round, and keep thine eyes close shut,
For if the Gorgon appear, and thou shouldst see it,
No more returning upward would there be."
Thus said the Master; and he turned me round
Himself, and trusted not unto my hands
So far as not to blind me with his own.
O ye who have undistempered intellects,
Observe the doctrine that conceals itself
Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses!
And now there came across the turbid waves
The clangour of a sound with terror fraught,
Because of which both of the margins trembled;
Not otherwise it was than of a wind
Impetuous on account of adverse heats,
That smites the forest, and, without restraint,
The branches rends, beats down, and bears away;
Right onward, laden with dust, it goes superb,
And puts to flight the wild beasts and the shepherds.
Mine eyes he loosed, and said: "Direct the nerve
Of vision now along that ancient foam,
There yonder where that smoke is most intense."
Even as the frogs before the hostile serpent
Across the water scatter all abroad,
Until each one is huddled in the earth.
More than a thousand ruined souls I saw,
Thus fleeing from before one who on foot
Was passing o'er the Styx with soles unwet.
From off his face he fanned that unctuous air,
Waving his left hand oft in front of him,
And only with that anguish seemed he weary.
Well I perceived one sent from Heaven was he,
And to the Master turned; and he made sign
That I should quiet stand, and bow before him.
Ah! how disdainful he appeared to me!
He reached the gate, and with a little rod
He opened it, for there was no resistance.
"O banished out of Heaven, people despised!"
Thus he began upon the horrid threshold;
"Whence is this arrogance within you couched?
Wherefore recalcitrate against that will,
From which the end can never be cut off,
And which has many times increased your pain?
What helpeth it to butt against the fates?
Your Cerberus, if you remember well,
For that still bears his chin and gullet peeled."
Then he returned along the miry road,
And spake no word to us, but had the look
Of one whom other care constrains and goads
Than that of him who in his presence is;
And we our feet directed tow'rds the city,
After those holy words all confident.
Within we entered without any contest;
And I, who inclination had to see
What the condition such a fortress holds,
Soon as I was within, cast round mine eye,
And see on every hand an ample plain,
Full of distress and torment terrible.
Even as at Arles, where stagnant grows the Rhone,
Even as at Pola near to the Quarnaro,
That shuts in Italy and bathes its borders,
The sepulchres make all the place uneven;
So likewise did they there on every side,
Saving that there the manner was more bitter;
For flames between the sepulchres were scattered,
By which they so intensely heated were,
That iron more so asks not any art.
All of their coverings uplifted were,
And from them issued forth such dire laments,
Sooth seemed they of the wretched and tormented.
And I: "My Master, what are all those people
Who, having sepulture within those tombs,
Make themselves audible by doleful sighs?"
And he to me: "Here are the Heresiarchs,
With their disciples of all sects, and much
More than thou thinkest laden are the tombs.
Here like together with its like is buried;
And more and less the monuments are heated."
And when he to the right had turned, we passed
Between the torments and high parapets.
Dante has gone white with cowardice. Seeing this, Virgil tries to compose his own features. In canto VIII.121 (Inf. VIII.121) Virgil was angry, and this fact leads many commentators to believe that the color in his face now is still the red flush of anger. On the other hand, others believe (and over the centuries there are roughly as many of one opinion as of the other) that Virgil's new color just now is the pallor of frustration and shame. Either reading is possible. Guido da Pisa believed Virgil had gone pale, supporting this view with a citation of the Aeneid (I.209-210), where Aeneas, 'sick with care, feigns hope in his face while stifling the anguish deep in his heart.' If the poet had this passage in mind, it would seem likely that he imagined Virgil, like Aeneas feeling defeated but needing to raise the spirits of whoever depends on him, having turned from florid to pale in facial color and now trying to compose himself. However, Dante's verb, ristrinse, literally 'restrained' or 'clamped down on,' would be much more appropriate to controlling anger than ridding oneself of malaise. Either reading is supportable, but red is probably the better choice, especially since we then have the dramatic contrast between white-cheeked Dante and red-faced Virgil.
For the 'improper' or 'false' simile, a comparison in which the tenor and vehicle would seem to refer to the same entity ('he was struggling as does a man trying to explain a difficult concept'), see Eric S. Mallin, “The False Simile in Dante's Commedia,” Dante Studies 102 (1984): 15-36. See also Richard Lansing, From Image to Idea: A Study of the Simile in Dante's “Commedia” (Ravenna: Longo, 1977) for a previous and somewhat different discussion of this phenomenon, as Mallin reports.
Virgil's doubt and ensuing confirmation has caused considerable difficulty, in particular the clause 'tal ne s'offerse' (v. 8). There has been debate over the validity of this reading in the Italian text, and over the meaning of this particular choice, accepted by most as being the most likely. Most commentators are certain that the tal ('such' or 'such a one') refers to Beatrice, whether specifically or in general (e.g., such aid was offered to us [by Beatrice]). Virgil's general thought in the tercet is, however, probably clear enough: 'We must win this fight unless (I did not understand what Beatrice told me).... No, what she said must be true; but I wish the promised help from heaven would get here.' Musa's remark on the passage bears repeating (Advent at the Gates [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1974]), p. 73: 'because during his lifetime [Virgil] could not believe in the coming of Christ, so now he can not believe in the coming of the angel – in spite of his having learned from Beatrice that the Pilgrim's journey is willed in Heaven.' In other words, Virgil, condemned to hell for not having had faith, repeats that error even now.
A fairly rare example of an interpretive exercise embedded in the poetic text itself, Dante as glossator of Virgil's words and presenter of his own understanding as he heard them. What he thought, then, was perhaps that Virgil was afraid that they would be left in hell, in which case Dante would have perished.
The 'first circle' is Limbo, where Virgil and the other virtuous heathens have their eternal resting place, and where, in his own words, 'without hope we live in longing' (Inf. IV.42).
Virgil's narrative of his having had his spirit conjured from the dead by the witch Erichtho may have reassured the protagonist; it has raised nothing but questions among Dante scholars. Boccaccio (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27), Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27), and Francesco da Buti (comm. to Inf. IX.16-30), in their respective commentaries, correctly understand that Dante is here inventing new material, unsanctioned by any classical source. In fact, this may be the single most outrageous example of the utter liberty Dante at times employs in his treatment of classical literature. No such tale exists in any other text before Dante's, nor anything like it. While many point to the similar statement made by the Sibyl, hoping to reassure Aeneas that she has been shown by Hecate (Proserpina) the places of the underworld (Aen. VI.562-565), no one has come close to finding a source for a Virgilian journey to the depths of hell under the spell of Erichtho. This Thessalian witch appears in a crucial role in Lucan's Pharsalia, the later poet's rather nasty version of Virgil's more benign Sibyl. In a lengthy episode in the sixth book (vv. 507-830) of Lucan's poem, a book with evident parallels to the descent to the underworld in the Aeneid, replete with Sibyl-like guide in the person of Erichtho, the witch holds center stage. Serving the curiosity of Sextus Pompeius, son of the great Pompey, one of the major republican opponents of Caesar in the civil war, she agrees to foretell the outcome of the war by practicing her necromantic art on the corpse of a recently slain soldier. What the soldier tells is hardly pleasant news, but is hardly complete, either. He does make plain to Sextus that the ghost of his father will come to him in Sicily (Lucan, Phars. VI.812-813) in order to reveal still more (but Lucan committed suicide by Nero's order before finishing the poem, and the scene was not written). It is out of these materials that Dante has concocted his idiosyncratic tale. To what end? Surely it besmirches Virgil, whom we first hear of, in Inferno II, as being given a much different posthumous treatment by Beatrice, who 'harrowed' him from Limbo for six days of duty in the Christian afterworld. Now it turns out that this was not the only time, that he had previously been used for nefarious purpose by Erichtho. And what is it that she wanted? In Lucan's poem (Phars. VI.586-587) we learn that her greatest desire is to be able to mangle the corpses of Julius Caesar (the poem is set before the murder of Caesar – 44 BC) and of Pompey. Virgil died in 19 BC. As he says in this narrative, Erichtho called him (like the young soldier in Lucan's poem, only recently dead) back into his body shortly after he died and sent him down to the ninth Circle, Judecca (apparently bearing that name even before Judas committed suicide in 34 AD – or else Virgil is merely using the current form of it). Why? Those who have written on this problem have not developed any hypothesis to account for her motive. Yet Dante surely would have given her one in the myth that he was constructing. Or Virgil is simply making up a tall story in order to give himself authority – a dubious hypothesis embraced by some. But for the view that his account rather undermines than girds that authority see Stefano Prandi, “I gesti di Virgilio,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 172 (1995), pp. 56-57. And for more on this problem see Sonia Gentili (“La necromanzia di Eritone da Lucano a Dante,” in Dante e il “locus inferni”: Creazione letteraria e tradizione interpretativa, ed. Simona Foà e Sonia Gentili (Rome: Bulzoni, 2000 [= Studi (e testi) italiani 4 (1999)], pp. 13-43).
We know from Lucan that Erichtho had an unfulfilled ambition, to ravage the corpses of Caesar and Pompey. Where are these located in Dante? Caesar is in Limbo; of Pompey we hear little (Dante is as spare in his mention of him as is Virgil), and nothing about his station in the afterlife. Since saved pagans always seem to merit Dante's notice (Ripheus, Cato, Statius, and Trajan) we can probably safely assume that Pompey is not one of these. If he is then to be considered one of the damned, where would he be found? Of the four great republican figures in the civil wars, Cato is in purgatory and on his way to heaven, Brutus and Cassius are in hell, precisely in the ninth Circle. Is Pompey there as well? It seems a likely possibility. Lucan has him translated to the heavens after his murder and deified (Phars. IX.1-18); Dante surely admired his youthful achievements (Par. VI.53) and apparently avoided making him noticeable among the damned. However, it is at least possible that he is playing a game with his reader here. As a co-conspirator of Brutus and Cassius, would Pompey not naturally have been punished along with them, since he is not, like Cato, miraculously saved? With this subtlest of hints, in other words, Dante invites us to imagine that his version of Erichtho sent Virgil to accomplish the Pompey part of her unfulfilled purpose. (A student, Sara Van Rheenan, Princeton '90, has gone so far as to suggest that Pompey was the third sinner in Satan's jaws before Judas replaced him in 34 AD.)
Virgil does not tell us whether he actually brought back a spirit from the depths or not. Dante's invention is probably outrageous enough as it stands. But we can perhaps glimpse the justification of Erichtho's wish, her delayed victory over dead Pompey, as well as the strange fulfillment of Erichtho's and Lucan's promise of a return to the earth of Pompey's ghost. It seems a notion worth considering. And if that hypothesis seems overbold, we can retreat to a simpler but even less likely one, leaving the soul of Pompey in relative obscurity and peace: Virgil is sent down to bring back either Brutus or Cassius. In fact some sixty years ago Ernesto Trucchi attempted exactly such an explanation, arguing, with no further justification, that Virgil was sent down to bring back Brutus (comm. to Inf. IX.22-30). Gregorio Di Siena had already suggested that Virgil had been sent down to move Dido, at first placed in Judecca for betraying Sichaeus [!], from there to the Circle of lust (comm. to Inf. IX.23). Whatever justification we seek for this strange tale of Virgil's first visit to the realm of the damned, we probably should try to find it in the pages of Lucan.
Boccaccio was the first and perhaps lone discussant (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27) to think of the only biblical tale that contains similar elements (and was surely familiar to Dante), the story of Saul's visit to the witch of Endor, who calls up the spirit of Samuel for Saul; the latter – in a scene more powerful than even anything in Lucan – foretells Saul's death and the defeat of the Israelites at the hands of the Philistines (I Samuel 28:3-25).
Judecca, the ninth Circle, named for Judas, betrayer, like all those punished there with him, of a rightful lord and master.
His tale told, Virgil's point is clear: 'I have been all the way down to the bottom of the pit; you can trust in my guidance.' The 'heaven that encircles all' is almost certainly the Crystalline Sphere, or primum mobile. If the verb girare here has the sense of 'makes turn,' and not 'surrounds,' as some believe, the reference then is surely to the Crystalline Sphere, for it sets all the rest of the spheres in motion, even though it is itself motionless. As for the choice between girare as 'cause to turn' or 'make a circle around,' all the early commentators who deal with the term think in terms of the latter. However, from the sixteenth century until halfway into the twentieth the large majority of commentators chose the former, citing Paradiso XXVIII.70, where the primum mobile is described as setting the other spheres in motion in somewhat similar terms to what might be expressed here. Currently, following the observation of Porena (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27) that, since the earth in not in motion in Dante's astronomy, the verb in this sense cannot apply to 'all,' most commentators have returned to the earlier understanding. It is probably of some import that the earliest commentators, probably with a closer sense of Dante's vocabulary than ours, choose as they do. Further, Dante only rarely uses girare in the second sense discussed here, more usually using the first. There are some four dozen uses of girare in the poem, and relatively rarely does the verb seem to have the sense of 'cause a thing to move in a circular path,' e.g., Inf. XXVI.139; Inf. XXXIV.6; Purg. XIX.62; Par. XXI.81; Par. XXII.119; Par. XXIV.14. Far more often (some 17 times) the verb is used as a synonym of ire, 'to go,' but it is not easy always to disambiguate this use from girare as 'to move in a circle,' which is by far the more usual usage in the poem (some 23 times).
There is debate among commentators as to what exactly this sentence means. It seems more likely that the ira ('wrath') referred to is the righteous anger of the forces of God (namely, the angel who is now approaching) rather than the wrath the travelers will encounter in the forces defending the City of Dis, as Boccaccio (comm. to Inf. IX.30-33) believes, or the 'wrath' they must employ in order to enter the city (the view of most of the early commentators). In the nineteenth century first Gregorio Di Siena (comm. to Inf. IX.33, haltingly, and then, in a cogent exposition, Andrea Scartazzini (comm. to Inf. IX.33), advanced the view that the 'wrath' in question is represented by the angel's assault upon the closed city. That seems the most convincing reading. Among modern discussants, see Casagrande's strong defense of this angelic hypothesis (“Dante e Filippo Argenti: riscontri patristici e note di critica testuale,” Studi Danteschi 51 [1978], pp. 233-35). And for textual confirmation of this view see v. 106, below, where Virgil and Dante, after the angel's intervention, enter the city of Dis without further struggle.
The swamp is the river Styx.
'The three Erinyes or Furies, Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, who dwelt in the depths of Hell and punished men both in this world and after death' (“Erine,” in Toynbee, Concise Dante Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1914 [1898]). See Aeneid VI.570-575. In Virgil, as in Greek myth, these three sisters are punishers of crimes of blood. Dante sees them as the handmaids of Proserpina (or Hecate), the queen of hell. What has not often been pointed out (but see the interesting gloss by Poletto [comm. vv. 46-48]) is that, while in the Aeneid each of the three Furies is named, their names never appear together (Megaera in XII.846, Alecto in VII.324, and Tisiphone in VI.555, VI.571, and X.761). Pietro di Dante (comm. vv. 34-48) cites an anonymous poem for the following passage, apparently as his father's source: Tres agitant mentes Furie, ratione carentes. / Tunc est Tesiphone cum res est pessima mente; / at cum mente fera dispumat in ore Megera; / re perpetrata tunc est Alecto vocata.
Does the protagonist's fear mark the beginning of his new cycle of fear, pity, and firmness, the second of five such cycles in Inferno? For that thesis, see Hollander, Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” (Princeton, 1969), esp. pp. 303-4, discussed in the note to Inf. II.4-5. For more on the vacillating presences of these two emotions in the main character, see also the notes to Inf. IV.19-21 and V.142.
'Gorgon Medusa; she alone of the three Gorgons was mortal, and was at first a beautiful maiden, but, in consequence of her having given birth to two children by Poseidon in one of Athena's temples, the latter changed her hair into serpents, which gave her head such a fearful appearance that every one who looked upon it was turned into stone' (Toynbee, Gorgòn). See Ovid, Metam. IV.769-803 but see the more detailed account in Lucan, Phars. IX.624-699. Dante may be thinking of the particular moment in Lucan (IX.681-684) at which Athena (her role played by Virgil in this infernal version of that drama) covers the face of Medusa with the reptilian strands of her own hair so that Perseus (in a role corresponding to the protagonist's, if far less violently) can, guided by Athena's steadier hand, cut off the Gorgon's head (IX.675-677). When Perseus rises up, escaping from the stony confines of Libya, carrying that fearsome and blood-dripping head, Lucan refers to him as aliger (wingèd), the Latin version of the poet's nom de famille. For Dante's awareness of this pun on his own family's name, Alighieri, see the notes to Inf. XXVI.1-3; Purg. IX.28-30, X.121-129; Par. XV.81. In this tamer version of that encounter, the hero survives, but cannot yet be said to triumph. The Furies' threat to bring out their biggest defensive weapon remains unfulfilled only, we may assume, because of the rapid deployment of God's own siege-breaker, the angelic intercessor.
The Furies lament that, when Theseus came to the nether regions with Perithous in order to rescue Proserpina (see Aen. VI.392-397), they only imprisoned him, rather than putting him to death, since that left him alive to be rescued by Hercules.
The Gorgon, or Medusa's decapitated head, was, merely looked upon, powerful enough to turn a human onlooker to stone. Cf. the note to v. 52.
Vv. 61-63 contain the second address to the reader in the poem (see note to Inf. VIII.94-96). This one has caused more difficulty than any other, and 'solutions' are so abundant that it is fair to say that none has won general consent, from the first commentators' exertions until today. (For a discussion see Amilcare Iannucci, “Dottrina e allegoria in Inferno VIII, 67 - IX, 105,” in Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi, ed. M. Picone [Ravenna: Longo, 1987], pp. 99-124.) Opinions are divided, first of all, on whether the passage points back in the text, either primarily to Medusa (seen as despair, heresy, the hardened will, etc.) or to the Furies (seen as sin itself, or the three main categories of sin punished in hell [incontinence, violence, fraud], or remorse, etc.), or to a combination of these. Those who believe that the passage invites the reader rather to look forward than back are in accord that it refers to the avenging intruder who is about to appear in order to open the locked gates of Dis; but there is great debate over exactly what the one 'sent from heaven' (Inf. IX.85) signifies (see discussion in the note to Inf. IX.85). Surely it seems more natural for the reference to point backwards to something already said. And indeed something noteworthy and perhaps puzzling has just occurred: Virgil has covered Dante's eye-covering hands with his own hands as well. If this passage (vv. 58-60) is the one that contains a hidden doctrine (and few commentators believe it is, but see Hollander [Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969)] pp. 239-46), perhaps what it suggests is that stoic restraint is not enough to keep a sinner safe from dangerous temptation (i.e., Dante, had she appeared, would have looked upon Medusa and been turned to stone, just as Ulysses would have listened to the Sirens and been destroyed by them had he not been restrained by other forces).
Why are these verses 'strange'? It seems possible that they are meant to indicate that we must abandon our habit of reading literally, 'historically,' as we have become used to doing once the travelers arrived in hell. That is, we must read these particular verses as though they were in a more usual fiction and thus allegorize them in order to grasp their point. Where many commentators think that this tercet offers the key to reading the entire work 'allegorically,' others, the present writer included, understand their reference as being local and limited, perhaps even to vv. 58-60.
This splendidly energetic simile is perhaps built out of elements found in two similes in the Aeneid (II.416-419 and XII.451-455). In the first of these the Trojan forces mount an impetuous counter-attack upon the Greek invaders of their city; in the second the forces of Aeneas begin the eventually victorious final attack upon the armies of Turnus. The celestial messenger, though only one in number, has the force of a great army; victory is seconds away.
Now Virgil can allow Dante to use his eyes once more: Medusa is apparently no longer a threat.
A number of commentators and translators have the frogs in this simile going to the bottom of the pond; they go to land (a la terra), as Dante says they do, and as any intelligent frog will do when a snake enters the water. This simile probably derives from Ovid, Metamorphoses VI.370-381.
The angel walks upon the water in imitation of Christ (Matthew 14:25).
The angel resembles Mercury, as he is described by Statius (Thebaid II.1-11), coming back up from the foul air of the underworld with his caduceus in hand. For a study of the various classical sources for this scene see David Quint's article (“Epic Tradition and Inferno IX,” Dante Studies 93 [1975], pp. 201-7).
That this agent of good is 'sent from heaven' indicates clearly enough that he is an angel, although debate over his identity still continues. See Silvio Pasquazi, 'Messo celeste' (ED.1971.3), pp. 919-21, making a strong case for his angelic status and giving a summary of the debate. Pasquazi also argues for one traditional further identification, making the messo specifically the archangel Michael, who led the forces of the good angels against the rebellious ones in the war in heaven (Apoc. 12:7-9) – see the note to Inf. VII.10-12 – exactly the forces he now must combat once more in the netherworld. (Pasquazi's final argument, that Michael dwells in Limbo, is probably simply unacceptable.) Over the centuries there has been a continuing argument between those who believe that the messo is Mercury and those who believe that he is an angel, and, in some cases, specifically Michael. It seems highly likely that Dante here gives us an archangel Michael 'dressed up' as Mercury, a fused identity that is not problematic in any way, given Dante's practice of combining pagan and Christian materials.
For a recent discussion that again confirms the most likely hypothesis, that this creature is indeed an angel from heaven, see Massimo Seriacopi (“Un riscontro testuale inedito per 'dal ciel messo' (Inferno IX 85),” Publications of the Carla Rossi Academy Press [http://www.cra.phoenixfound.it/epubbf.htm], 1999). For a return to the central hypothesis of Pasquazi (Michael as Mercury), see Susanna Barsella (“The Mercurial integumentum of the heavenly messenger [Inferno IX 79-103],” Letteratura italiana antica 4 [2003], pp. 371-95).
Virgil's command that Dante bow down before the angel removes just about any doubt about the messo's divine status.
The angel's opening of the barred gates with his verghetta ('wand') is almost surely, even if there is no sign of recognition in the commentary tradition, modeled on Mercury's similar opening of the gates of Herse's chamber with his verga, i.e., his caduceus (Ovid, Metam. II.819). See Hollander, “The Tragedy of Divination in Inferno XX,” in his Studies in Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1980), p. 181n., and Barsella, “The Mercurial integumentum of the heavenly messenger (Inferno IX 79-103),” Letteratura italiana antica 4 (2003), p. 386.
The 'outcasts of heaven' are undoubtedly the rebellious angels referred to in Inferno VIII.82-83, 'more than a thousand angels fallen from Heaven.' See also the reference, a few lines earlier in this canto (Inf. IX.79), to 'a thousand lost souls' who guard the city of Dis, that is, these very angels.
The angel makes clear, in his address to his fallen brethren, that resistance to the will of God is utterly useless. His reference to the chaining of Cerberus by Hercules reflects Aeneid VI.392-396. Dante has now been associated with two classical heroes, Theseus (Inf. IX.54) and Hercules. His powers, however, reside not in himself but in his heaven-ordained mission.
The angel's impassive attitude tells us something about the nature of the inhabitants of hell that we sometimes forget: from God's perspective there is nothing worthy of attention in their plight. The angel only wants to get out of this place as quickly as he can in order to return to eternal bliss, so much so that he has not even a word of greeting or support for the two travelers.
That Virgil and Dante now enter 'without further struggle' helps affirm that (Inf. IX.33, Virgil's remark that 'now we cannot enter without wrath,' does not refer to the warring disposition of the travelers, but to that of the angel. This whole passage, from the last verse of Inferno VII (Inf. VII.130) to now, the moment of successful entry of the walled city of Dis, narrates a military campaign: Virgil and Dante approach by sea in Phlegyas's military transport ship; the forces ranged against them signal their coming and prepare to do battle, closing the gates and assuming defensive positions on the battlements; they wheel up their main weapons, the Furies, who prepare to unleash their secret weapon, Medusa; the invading forces then deploy their secret weapon, the heavenly battering-ram that opens the gates and, in a trice, wins the battle.
The protagonist shows his usual touristic interest in seeing the new 'sights' within this 'fortezza.' The word the poet chooses reminds us that we here behold a different aspect of hell. Once we see the even more imposing structures awaiting the travelers (Malebolge and the walled city of Cocytus), we have some sense of the import of the first 'built environment' of hell that we experience after that imposing gate described in the third canto, a sign that the sins punished within it are more offensive to God than those above.
Dante's references to two famous ancient Roman cemeteries, at Arles in France and Pola in Istria, build the scene for us: these grave sites are not mounds in the ground but sarchophagi, raised monuments of stone that contain the remains of the dead.
We will eventually be apprised of the heretical nature of the beliefs of the inhabitants of these tombs, whom we can hear but cannot see. We will have a similar experience when we look upon the flames of the false counselors in cantos XXVI and XXVII, also unseen in their flames, yet entirely audible. And see the note to Inf. XIX.25, for discussion of the parodic inversion of Pentecostal fire in the punishment of sins that involve the perversion of the gift of the Holy Spirit. One thinks of these heretics, the sodomites (cantos XV and XVI), and the false counselors. All these three loci contain sinners who use their intelligence in such ways as to beguile others into believing what they should not believe.
Virgil explains to Dante that this sixth Circle of hell encloses many different heretical sects, each of which is punished in a separate sepulchre, and some of which are punished with more, others with less, severity.
Why is heresy punished within the walls of Dis, where all the sins punished are sins of will, not those of appetite? It is interesting to see how often early commentators associate heresy with obstinacy or obduracy; their word is the Latin pertinax. Some of them may be reflecting St. Thomas's definition (S.T. II-II, q. 5, a. 3): if a man 'is not pertinacious in his disbelief, he is in that case no heretic, but only a man in error.' See, among others, the commentaries of Boccaccio (comm. to Inf. IX.127 and to Inf. IX.110-133), Benvenuto (comm. to Inf. IX.112-116 and to Inf. IX.127-129), Francesco da Buti (comm. to Inf. IX.106-123 and to Inf. X.31-39), John of Serravalle (comm. to Inf. X.13-15); Daniello (comm. to Inf. IX.133 [citing Thomas]) and, among the moderns, Poletto (comm. to Inf. X.28-30), Carroll (comm. to Inf. IX.132).
The turnings to the right here and at Inferno XVII.32 have caused puzzlement and some ingenuity. In hell, whenever the direction of their movement is mentioned, Dante and Virgil elsewhere always head to the left. Only on these two occasions do they move rightward. These two rightward turnings occur just before the entrance to the sixth Circle, in which heresy is punished, and before the exit from the realm of Violence, the seventh Circle. Some have welcomed the Scartazzini/Vandelli hypothesis (see that commentary to this passage) that both heresy and fraud are alike in their deformations of truth. But this explanation fails to observe that treachery, punished in the ninth and last Circle, also deforms the truth, and that the second rightward turning takes place before the travelers enter the realm of fraud, in any case. Other less simple explanations have other difficulties associated with them. This is another instance in which the commentary tradition has not resolved Dante's plan, if indeed there was one. It is possible that the rightward movement at Inferno XVII.32 is only the necessary result of having to leave their circling movement in order to move toward Geryon, even if some maintain (e.g., Rossetti [comm. to Inf. XVII.31-33]) that there is an allegorical meaning both in turning to the right to face fraud from 'the right side,' as it were, and in walking ten steps that reflect the ten bolge of Fraud. In any case, either of these explanations reduces the likelihood that there is a 'program' linking Inferno IX.132 and XVII.32. And then the only 'program' would be one involving the sin of heresy. For some reason Dante decided that its specialness, or perhaps extraneousness to the Aristotelian/Ciceronian divisions of vice, called for the retrograde and special movement. But for a literal explanation of even this turning to the right, see Andreoli (comm. to Inf. IX.132): 'Di cosiffatta eccezione io credo non si possa dare altra ragione che questa, che avendo dovuto i Poeti fare una grande aggirata (c. VIII, 79) per isbarcare alla porta di Dite, nell'entrarvi poi si trovassero aver già percorso più della solita nona parte del cerchio; e che perciò questa volta, per trovare il punto prefisso alla loro traversata nel cerchio seguente, essi invece di procedere a sinistra avessero dovuto retrocedere a destra.' And see the note to Inf. XVII.28-33.
For the logistics of this little scene, see Chiavacci Leonardi (comm. ad loc.): 'li alti spaldi: le alte mura di difesa della città; spaldi erano propriamente i ballatoi che correvano in cima alle mura; qui per sineddoche indicano genericamente le mura. Dante e Virgilio camminano quindi, come si dirà in X 2, nello stretto spazio di terreno tra le mura e le tombe.'
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Quel color che viltà di fuor mi pinse
veggendo il duca mio tornare in volta,
più tosto dentro il suo novo ristrinse.
Attento si fermò com' uom ch'ascolta;
ché l'occhio nol potea menare a lunga
per l'aere nero e per la nebbia folta.
“Pur a noi converrà vincer la punga,”
cominciò el, “se non... Tal ne s'offerse.
Oh quanto tarda a me ch'altri qui giunga!”
I' vidi ben sì com' ei ricoperse
lo cominciar con l'altro che poi venne,
che fur parole a le prime diverse;
ma nondimen paura il suo dir dienne,
perch' io traeva la parola tronca
forse a peggior sentenzia che non tenne.
“In questo fondo de la trista conca
discende mai alcun del primo grado,
che sol per pena ha la speranza cionca?”
Questa question fec' io; e quei “Di rado
incontra,” mi rispuose, “che di noi
faccia il cammino alcun per qual io vado.
Ver è ch'altra fiata qua giù fui,
congiurato da quella Eritón cruda
che richiamava l'ombre a' corpi sui.
Di poco era di me la carne nuda,
ch'ella mi fece intrar dentr' a quel muro,
per trarne un spirto del cerchio di Giuda.
Quell' è 'l più basso loco e 'l più oscuro,
e 'l più lontan dal ciel che tutto gira:
ben so 'l cammin; però ti fa sicuro.
Questa palude che 'l gran puzzo spira
cigne dintorno la città dolente,
u' non potemo intrare omai sanz' ira.”
E altro disse, ma non l'ho a mente;
però che l'occhio m'avea tutto tratto
ver' l'alta torre a la cima rovente,
dove in un punto furon dritte ratto
tre furïe infernal di sangue tinte,
che membra feminine avieno e atto,
e con idre verdissime eran cinte;
serpentelli e ceraste avien per crine,
onde le fiere tempie erano avvinte.
E quei, che ben conobbe le meschine
de la regina de l'etterno pianto,
“Guarda,” mi disse, “le feroci Erine.
Quest' è Megera dal sinistro canto;
quella che piange dal destro è Aletto;
Tesifón è nel mezzo”; e tacque a tanto.
Con l'unghie si fendea ciascuna il petto;
battiensi a palme e gridavan sì alto,
ch'i' mi strinsi al poeta per sospetto.
“Vegna Medusa: sì 'l farem di smalto,”
dicevan tutte riguardando in giuso;
“mal non vengiammo in Tesëo l'assalto.”
“Volgiti 'n dietro e tien lo viso chiuso;
ché se 'l Gorgón si mostra e tu 'l vedessi,
nulla sarebbe di tornar mai suso.”
Così disse 'l maestro; ed elli stessi
mi volse, e non si tenne a le mie mani,
che con le sue ancor non mi chiudessi.
O voi ch'avete li 'ntelletti sani,
mirate la dottrina che s'asconde
sotto 'l velame de li versi strani.
E già venìa su per le torbide onde
un fracasso d'un suon, pien di spavento,
per cui tremavano amendue le sponde
non altrimenti fatto che d'un vento
impetüoso per li avversi ardori,
che fier la selva e sanz' alcun rattento
li rami schianta, abbatte e porta fori;
dinanzi polveroso va superbo,
e fa fuggir le fiere e li pastori.
Li occhi mi sciolse e disse: “Or drizza il nerbo
del viso su per quella schiuma antica
per indi ove quel fummo è più acerbo.”
Come le rane innanzi a la nimica
biscia per l'acqua si dileguan tutte,
fin ch'a la terra ciascuna s'abbica,
vid' io più di mille anime distrutte
fuggir così dinanzi ad un ch'al passo
passava Stige con le piante asciutte.
Dal volto rimovea quell' aere grasso,
menando la sinistra innanzi spesso;
e sol di quell' angoscia parea lasso.
Ben m'accorsi ch'elli era da ciel messo,
e volsimi al maestro; e quei fé segno
ch'i' stessi queto ed inchinassi ad esso.
Ahi quanto mi parea pien di disdegno!
Venne a la porta e con una verghetta
l'aperse, che non v'ebbe alcun ritegno.
“O cacciati del ciel, gente dispetta,”
cominciò elli in su l'orribil soglia,
“ond' esta oltracotanza in voi s'alletta?
Perché recalcitrate a quella voglia
a cui non puote il fin mai esser mozzo,
e che più volte v'ha cresciuta doglia?
Che giova ne le fata dar di cozzo?
Cerbero vostro, se ben vi ricorda,
ne porta ancor pelato il mento e 'l gozzo.”
Poi si rivolse per la strada lorda,
e non fé motto a noi, ma fé sembiante
d'omo cui altra cura stringa e morda
che quella di colui che li è davante;
e noi movemmo i piedi inver' la terra,
sicuri appresso le parole sante.
Dentro li 'ntrammo sanz' alcuna guerra;
e io, ch'avea di riguardar disio
la condizion che tal fortezza serra,
com' io fui dentro, l'occhio intorno invio:
e veggio ad ogne man grande campagna,
piena di duolo e di tormento rio.
Sì come ad Arli, ove Rodano stagna,
sì com' a Pola, presso del Carnaro
ch'Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna,
fanno i sepulcri tutt'il loco varo,
così facevan quivi d'ogne parte,
salvo che 'l modo v'era più amaro;
ché tra li avelli fiamme erano sparte,
per le quali eran sì del tutto accesi,
che ferro più non chiede verun' arte.
Tutti li lor coperchi eran sospesi,
e fuor n'uscivan sì duri lamenti,
che ben parean di miseri e d'offesi.
E io: “Maestro, quai son quelle genti
che, seppellite dentro da quell' arche,
si fan sentir coi sospiri dolenti?”
E quelli a me: “Qui son li eresïarche
con lor seguaci, d'ogne setta, e molto
più che non credi son le tombe carche.
Simile qui con simile è sepolto,
e i monimenti son più e men caldi.”
E poi ch'a la man destra si fu vòlto,
passammo tra i martìri e li alti spaldi.
That hue which cowardice brought out on me,
Beholding my Conductor backward turn,
Sooner repressed within him his new colour.
He stopped attentive, like a man who listens,
Because the eye could not conduct him far
Through the black air, and through the heavy fog.
"Still it behoveth us to win the fight,"
Began he; "Else. . .Such offered us herself. . .
O how I long that some one here arrive!"
Well I perceived, as soon as the beginning
He covered up with what came afterward,
That they were words quite different from the first;
But none the less his saying gave me fear,
Because I carried out the broken phrase,
Perhaps to a worse meaning than he had.
"Into this bottom of the doleful conch
Doth any e'er descend from the first grade,
Which for its pain has only hope cut off?"
This question put I; and he answered me:
"Seldom it comes to pass that one of us
Maketh the journey upon which I go.
True is it, once before I here below
Was conjured by that pitiless Erictho,
Who summoned back the shades unto their bodies.
Naked of me short while the flesh had been,
Before within that wall she made me enter,
To bring a spirit from the circle of Judas;
That is the lowest region and the darkest,
And farthest from the heaven which circles all.
Well know I the way; therefore be reassured.
This fen, which a prodigious stench exhales,
Encompasses about the city dolent,
Where now we cannot enter without anger."
And more he said, but not in mind I have it;
Because mine eye had altogether drawn me
Tow'rds the high tower with the red-flaming summit,
Where in a moment saw I swift uprisen
The three infernal Furies stained with blood,
Who had the limbs of women and their mien,
And with the greenest hydras were begirt;
Small serpents and cerastes were their tresses,
Wherewith their horrid temples were entwined.
And he who well the handmaids of the Queen
Of everlasting lamentation knew,
Said unto me: "Behold the fierce Erinnys.
This is Megaera, on the left-hand side;
She who is weeping on the right, Alecto;
Tisiphone is between;" and then was silent.
Each one her breast was rending with her nails;
They beat them with their palms, and cried so loud,
That I for dread pressed close unto the Poet.
"Medusa come, so we to stone will change him!"
All shouted looking down; "in evil hour
Avenged we not on Theseus his assault!"
"Turn thyself round, and keep thine eyes close shut,
For if the Gorgon appear, and thou shouldst see it,
No more returning upward would there be."
Thus said the Master; and he turned me round
Himself, and trusted not unto my hands
So far as not to blind me with his own.
O ye who have undistempered intellects,
Observe the doctrine that conceals itself
Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses!
And now there came across the turbid waves
The clangour of a sound with terror fraught,
Because of which both of the margins trembled;
Not otherwise it was than of a wind
Impetuous on account of adverse heats,
That smites the forest, and, without restraint,
The branches rends, beats down, and bears away;
Right onward, laden with dust, it goes superb,
And puts to flight the wild beasts and the shepherds.
Mine eyes he loosed, and said: "Direct the nerve
Of vision now along that ancient foam,
There yonder where that smoke is most intense."
Even as the frogs before the hostile serpent
Across the water scatter all abroad,
Until each one is huddled in the earth.
More than a thousand ruined souls I saw,
Thus fleeing from before one who on foot
Was passing o'er the Styx with soles unwet.
From off his face he fanned that unctuous air,
Waving his left hand oft in front of him,
And only with that anguish seemed he weary.
Well I perceived one sent from Heaven was he,
And to the Master turned; and he made sign
That I should quiet stand, and bow before him.
Ah! how disdainful he appeared to me!
He reached the gate, and with a little rod
He opened it, for there was no resistance.
"O banished out of Heaven, people despised!"
Thus he began upon the horrid threshold;
"Whence is this arrogance within you couched?
Wherefore recalcitrate against that will,
From which the end can never be cut off,
And which has many times increased your pain?
What helpeth it to butt against the fates?
Your Cerberus, if you remember well,
For that still bears his chin and gullet peeled."
Then he returned along the miry road,
And spake no word to us, but had the look
Of one whom other care constrains and goads
Than that of him who in his presence is;
And we our feet directed tow'rds the city,
After those holy words all confident.
Within we entered without any contest;
And I, who inclination had to see
What the condition such a fortress holds,
Soon as I was within, cast round mine eye,
And see on every hand an ample plain,
Full of distress and torment terrible.
Even as at Arles, where stagnant grows the Rhone,
Even as at Pola near to the Quarnaro,
That shuts in Italy and bathes its borders,
The sepulchres make all the place uneven;
So likewise did they there on every side,
Saving that there the manner was more bitter;
For flames between the sepulchres were scattered,
By which they so intensely heated were,
That iron more so asks not any art.
All of their coverings uplifted were,
And from them issued forth such dire laments,
Sooth seemed they of the wretched and tormented.
And I: "My Master, what are all those people
Who, having sepulture within those tombs,
Make themselves audible by doleful sighs?"
And he to me: "Here are the Heresiarchs,
With their disciples of all sects, and much
More than thou thinkest laden are the tombs.
Here like together with its like is buried;
And more and less the monuments are heated."
And when he to the right had turned, we passed
Between the torments and high parapets.
Dante has gone white with cowardice. Seeing this, Virgil tries to compose his own features. In canto VIII.121 (Inf. VIII.121) Virgil was angry, and this fact leads many commentators to believe that the color in his face now is still the red flush of anger. On the other hand, others believe (and over the centuries there are roughly as many of one opinion as of the other) that Virgil's new color just now is the pallor of frustration and shame. Either reading is possible. Guido da Pisa believed Virgil had gone pale, supporting this view with a citation of the Aeneid (I.209-210), where Aeneas, 'sick with care, feigns hope in his face while stifling the anguish deep in his heart.' If the poet had this passage in mind, it would seem likely that he imagined Virgil, like Aeneas feeling defeated but needing to raise the spirits of whoever depends on him, having turned from florid to pale in facial color and now trying to compose himself. However, Dante's verb, ristrinse, literally 'restrained' or 'clamped down on,' would be much more appropriate to controlling anger than ridding oneself of malaise. Either reading is supportable, but red is probably the better choice, especially since we then have the dramatic contrast between white-cheeked Dante and red-faced Virgil.
For the 'improper' or 'false' simile, a comparison in which the tenor and vehicle would seem to refer to the same entity ('he was struggling as does a man trying to explain a difficult concept'), see Eric S. Mallin, “The False Simile in Dante's Commedia,” Dante Studies 102 (1984): 15-36. See also Richard Lansing, From Image to Idea: A Study of the Simile in Dante's “Commedia” (Ravenna: Longo, 1977) for a previous and somewhat different discussion of this phenomenon, as Mallin reports.
Virgil's doubt and ensuing confirmation has caused considerable difficulty, in particular the clause 'tal ne s'offerse' (v. 8). There has been debate over the validity of this reading in the Italian text, and over the meaning of this particular choice, accepted by most as being the most likely. Most commentators are certain that the tal ('such' or 'such a one') refers to Beatrice, whether specifically or in general (e.g., such aid was offered to us [by Beatrice]). Virgil's general thought in the tercet is, however, probably clear enough: 'We must win this fight unless (I did not understand what Beatrice told me).... No, what she said must be true; but I wish the promised help from heaven would get here.' Musa's remark on the passage bears repeating (Advent at the Gates [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1974]), p. 73: 'because during his lifetime [Virgil] could not believe in the coming of Christ, so now he can not believe in the coming of the angel – in spite of his having learned from Beatrice that the Pilgrim's journey is willed in Heaven.' In other words, Virgil, condemned to hell for not having had faith, repeats that error even now.
A fairly rare example of an interpretive exercise embedded in the poetic text itself, Dante as glossator of Virgil's words and presenter of his own understanding as he heard them. What he thought, then, was perhaps that Virgil was afraid that they would be left in hell, in which case Dante would have perished.
The 'first circle' is Limbo, where Virgil and the other virtuous heathens have their eternal resting place, and where, in his own words, 'without hope we live in longing' (Inf. IV.42).
Virgil's narrative of his having had his spirit conjured from the dead by the witch Erichtho may have reassured the protagonist; it has raised nothing but questions among Dante scholars. Boccaccio (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27), Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27), and Francesco da Buti (comm. to Inf. IX.16-30), in their respective commentaries, correctly understand that Dante is here inventing new material, unsanctioned by any classical source. In fact, this may be the single most outrageous example of the utter liberty Dante at times employs in his treatment of classical literature. No such tale exists in any other text before Dante's, nor anything like it. While many point to the similar statement made by the Sibyl, hoping to reassure Aeneas that she has been shown by Hecate (Proserpina) the places of the underworld (Aen. VI.562-565), no one has come close to finding a source for a Virgilian journey to the depths of hell under the spell of Erichtho. This Thessalian witch appears in a crucial role in Lucan's Pharsalia, the later poet's rather nasty version of Virgil's more benign Sibyl. In a lengthy episode in the sixth book (vv. 507-830) of Lucan's poem, a book with evident parallels to the descent to the underworld in the Aeneid, replete with Sibyl-like guide in the person of Erichtho, the witch holds center stage. Serving the curiosity of Sextus Pompeius, son of the great Pompey, one of the major republican opponents of Caesar in the civil war, she agrees to foretell the outcome of the war by practicing her necromantic art on the corpse of a recently slain soldier. What the soldier tells is hardly pleasant news, but is hardly complete, either. He does make plain to Sextus that the ghost of his father will come to him in Sicily (Lucan, Phars. VI.812-813) in order to reveal still more (but Lucan committed suicide by Nero's order before finishing the poem, and the scene was not written). It is out of these materials that Dante has concocted his idiosyncratic tale. To what end? Surely it besmirches Virgil, whom we first hear of, in Inferno II, as being given a much different posthumous treatment by Beatrice, who 'harrowed' him from Limbo for six days of duty in the Christian afterworld. Now it turns out that this was not the only time, that he had previously been used for nefarious purpose by Erichtho. And what is it that she wanted? In Lucan's poem (Phars. VI.586-587) we learn that her greatest desire is to be able to mangle the corpses of Julius Caesar (the poem is set before the murder of Caesar – 44 BC) and of Pompey. Virgil died in 19 BC. As he says in this narrative, Erichtho called him (like the young soldier in Lucan's poem, only recently dead) back into his body shortly after he died and sent him down to the ninth Circle, Judecca (apparently bearing that name even before Judas committed suicide in 34 AD – or else Virgil is merely using the current form of it). Why? Those who have written on this problem have not developed any hypothesis to account for her motive. Yet Dante surely would have given her one in the myth that he was constructing. Or Virgil is simply making up a tall story in order to give himself authority – a dubious hypothesis embraced by some. But for the view that his account rather undermines than girds that authority see Stefano Prandi, “I gesti di Virgilio,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 172 (1995), pp. 56-57. And for more on this problem see Sonia Gentili (“La necromanzia di Eritone da Lucano a Dante,” in Dante e il “locus inferni”: Creazione letteraria e tradizione interpretativa, ed. Simona Foà e Sonia Gentili (Rome: Bulzoni, 2000 [= Studi (e testi) italiani 4 (1999)], pp. 13-43).
We know from Lucan that Erichtho had an unfulfilled ambition, to ravage the corpses of Caesar and Pompey. Where are these located in Dante? Caesar is in Limbo; of Pompey we hear little (Dante is as spare in his mention of him as is Virgil), and nothing about his station in the afterlife. Since saved pagans always seem to merit Dante's notice (Ripheus, Cato, Statius, and Trajan) we can probably safely assume that Pompey is not one of these. If he is then to be considered one of the damned, where would he be found? Of the four great republican figures in the civil wars, Cato is in purgatory and on his way to heaven, Brutus and Cassius are in hell, precisely in the ninth Circle. Is Pompey there as well? It seems a likely possibility. Lucan has him translated to the heavens after his murder and deified (Phars. IX.1-18); Dante surely admired his youthful achievements (Par. VI.53) and apparently avoided making him noticeable among the damned. However, it is at least possible that he is playing a game with his reader here. As a co-conspirator of Brutus and Cassius, would Pompey not naturally have been punished along with them, since he is not, like Cato, miraculously saved? With this subtlest of hints, in other words, Dante invites us to imagine that his version of Erichtho sent Virgil to accomplish the Pompey part of her unfulfilled purpose. (A student, Sara Van Rheenan, Princeton '90, has gone so far as to suggest that Pompey was the third sinner in Satan's jaws before Judas replaced him in 34 AD.)
Virgil does not tell us whether he actually brought back a spirit from the depths or not. Dante's invention is probably outrageous enough as it stands. But we can perhaps glimpse the justification of Erichtho's wish, her delayed victory over dead Pompey, as well as the strange fulfillment of Erichtho's and Lucan's promise of a return to the earth of Pompey's ghost. It seems a notion worth considering. And if that hypothesis seems overbold, we can retreat to a simpler but even less likely one, leaving the soul of Pompey in relative obscurity and peace: Virgil is sent down to bring back either Brutus or Cassius. In fact some sixty years ago Ernesto Trucchi attempted exactly such an explanation, arguing, with no further justification, that Virgil was sent down to bring back Brutus (comm. to Inf. IX.22-30). Gregorio Di Siena had already suggested that Virgil had been sent down to move Dido, at first placed in Judecca for betraying Sichaeus [!], from there to the Circle of lust (comm. to Inf. IX.23). Whatever justification we seek for this strange tale of Virgil's first visit to the realm of the damned, we probably should try to find it in the pages of Lucan.
Boccaccio was the first and perhaps lone discussant (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27) to think of the only biblical tale that contains similar elements (and was surely familiar to Dante), the story of Saul's visit to the witch of Endor, who calls up the spirit of Samuel for Saul; the latter – in a scene more powerful than even anything in Lucan – foretells Saul's death and the defeat of the Israelites at the hands of the Philistines (I Samuel 28:3-25).
Judecca, the ninth Circle, named for Judas, betrayer, like all those punished there with him, of a rightful lord and master.
His tale told, Virgil's point is clear: 'I have been all the way down to the bottom of the pit; you can trust in my guidance.' The 'heaven that encircles all' is almost certainly the Crystalline Sphere, or primum mobile. If the verb girare here has the sense of 'makes turn,' and not 'surrounds,' as some believe, the reference then is surely to the Crystalline Sphere, for it sets all the rest of the spheres in motion, even though it is itself motionless. As for the choice between girare as 'cause to turn' or 'make a circle around,' all the early commentators who deal with the term think in terms of the latter. However, from the sixteenth century until halfway into the twentieth the large majority of commentators chose the former, citing Paradiso XXVIII.70, where the primum mobile is described as setting the other spheres in motion in somewhat similar terms to what might be expressed here. Currently, following the observation of Porena (comm. to Inf. IX.25-27) that, since the earth in not in motion in Dante's astronomy, the verb in this sense cannot apply to 'all,' most commentators have returned to the earlier understanding. It is probably of some import that the earliest commentators, probably with a closer sense of Dante's vocabulary than ours, choose as they do. Further, Dante only rarely uses girare in the second sense discussed here, more usually using the first. There are some four dozen uses of girare in the poem, and relatively rarely does the verb seem to have the sense of 'cause a thing to move in a circular path,' e.g., Inf. XXVI.139; Inf. XXXIV.6; Purg. XIX.62; Par. XXI.81; Par. XXII.119; Par. XXIV.14. Far more often (some 17 times) the verb is used as a synonym of ire, 'to go,' but it is not easy always to disambiguate this use from girare as 'to move in a circle,' which is by far the more usual usage in the poem (some 23 times).
There is debate among commentators as to what exactly this sentence means. It seems more likely that the ira ('wrath') referred to is the righteous anger of the forces of God (namely, the angel who is now approaching) rather than the wrath the travelers will encounter in the forces defending the City of Dis, as Boccaccio (comm. to Inf. IX.30-33) believes, or the 'wrath' they must employ in order to enter the city (the view of most of the early commentators). In the nineteenth century first Gregorio Di Siena (comm. to Inf. IX.33, haltingly, and then, in a cogent exposition, Andrea Scartazzini (comm. to Inf. IX.33), advanced the view that the 'wrath' in question is represented by the angel's assault upon the closed city. That seems the most convincing reading. Among modern discussants, see Casagrande's strong defense of this angelic hypothesis (“Dante e Filippo Argenti: riscontri patristici e note di critica testuale,” Studi Danteschi 51 [1978], pp. 233-35). And for textual confirmation of this view see v. 106, below, where Virgil and Dante, after the angel's intervention, enter the city of Dis without further struggle.
The swamp is the river Styx.
'The three Erinyes or Furies, Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, who dwelt in the depths of Hell and punished men both in this world and after death' (“Erine,” in Toynbee, Concise Dante Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1914 [1898]). See Aeneid VI.570-575. In Virgil, as in Greek myth, these three sisters are punishers of crimes of blood. Dante sees them as the handmaids of Proserpina (or Hecate), the queen of hell. What has not often been pointed out (but see the interesting gloss by Poletto [comm. vv. 46-48]) is that, while in the Aeneid each of the three Furies is named, their names never appear together (Megaera in XII.846, Alecto in VII.324, and Tisiphone in VI.555, VI.571, and X.761). Pietro di Dante (comm. vv. 34-48) cites an anonymous poem for the following passage, apparently as his father's source: Tres agitant mentes Furie, ratione carentes. / Tunc est Tesiphone cum res est pessima mente; / at cum mente fera dispumat in ore Megera; / re perpetrata tunc est Alecto vocata.
Does the protagonist's fear mark the beginning of his new cycle of fear, pity, and firmness, the second of five such cycles in Inferno? For that thesis, see Hollander, Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” (Princeton, 1969), esp. pp. 303-4, discussed in the note to Inf. II.4-5. For more on the vacillating presences of these two emotions in the main character, see also the notes to Inf. IV.19-21 and V.142.
'Gorgon Medusa; she alone of the three Gorgons was mortal, and was at first a beautiful maiden, but, in consequence of her having given birth to two children by Poseidon in one of Athena's temples, the latter changed her hair into serpents, which gave her head such a fearful appearance that every one who looked upon it was turned into stone' (Toynbee, Gorgòn). See Ovid, Metam. IV.769-803 but see the more detailed account in Lucan, Phars. IX.624-699. Dante may be thinking of the particular moment in Lucan (IX.681-684) at which Athena (her role played by Virgil in this infernal version of that drama) covers the face of Medusa with the reptilian strands of her own hair so that Perseus (in a role corresponding to the protagonist's, if far less violently) can, guided by Athena's steadier hand, cut off the Gorgon's head (IX.675-677). When Perseus rises up, escaping from the stony confines of Libya, carrying that fearsome and blood-dripping head, Lucan refers to him as aliger (wingèd), the Latin version of the poet's nom de famille. For Dante's awareness of this pun on his own family's name, Alighieri, see the notes to Inf. XXVI.1-3; Purg. IX.28-30, X.121-129; Par. XV.81. In this tamer version of that encounter, the hero survives, but cannot yet be said to triumph. The Furies' threat to bring out their biggest defensive weapon remains unfulfilled only, we may assume, because of the rapid deployment of God's own siege-breaker, the angelic intercessor.
The Furies lament that, when Theseus came to the nether regions with Perithous in order to rescue Proserpina (see Aen. VI.392-397), they only imprisoned him, rather than putting him to death, since that left him alive to be rescued by Hercules.
The Gorgon, or Medusa's decapitated head, was, merely looked upon, powerful enough to turn a human onlooker to stone. Cf. the note to v. 52.
Vv. 61-63 contain the second address to the reader in the poem (see note to Inf. VIII.94-96). This one has caused more difficulty than any other, and 'solutions' are so abundant that it is fair to say that none has won general consent, from the first commentators' exertions until today. (For a discussion see Amilcare Iannucci, “Dottrina e allegoria in Inferno VIII, 67 - IX, 105,” in Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi, ed. M. Picone [Ravenna: Longo, 1987], pp. 99-124.) Opinions are divided, first of all, on whether the passage points back in the text, either primarily to Medusa (seen as despair, heresy, the hardened will, etc.) or to the Furies (seen as sin itself, or the three main categories of sin punished in hell [incontinence, violence, fraud], or remorse, etc.), or to a combination of these. Those who believe that the passage invites the reader rather to look forward than back are in accord that it refers to the avenging intruder who is about to appear in order to open the locked gates of Dis; but there is great debate over exactly what the one 'sent from heaven' (Inf. IX.85) signifies (see discussion in the note to Inf. IX.85). Surely it seems more natural for the reference to point backwards to something already said. And indeed something noteworthy and perhaps puzzling has just occurred: Virgil has covered Dante's eye-covering hands with his own hands as well. If this passage (vv. 58-60) is the one that contains a hidden doctrine (and few commentators believe it is, but see Hollander [Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969)] pp. 239-46), perhaps what it suggests is that stoic restraint is not enough to keep a sinner safe from dangerous temptation (i.e., Dante, had she appeared, would have looked upon Medusa and been turned to stone, just as Ulysses would have listened to the Sirens and been destroyed by them had he not been restrained by other forces).
Why are these verses 'strange'? It seems possible that they are meant to indicate that we must abandon our habit of reading literally, 'historically,' as we have become used to doing once the travelers arrived in hell. That is, we must read these particular verses as though they were in a more usual fiction and thus allegorize them in order to grasp their point. Where many commentators think that this tercet offers the key to reading the entire work 'allegorically,' others, the present writer included, understand their reference as being local and limited, perhaps even to vv. 58-60.
This splendidly energetic simile is perhaps built out of elements found in two similes in the Aeneid (II.416-419 and XII.451-455). In the first of these the Trojan forces mount an impetuous counter-attack upon the Greek invaders of their city; in the second the forces of Aeneas begin the eventually victorious final attack upon the armies of Turnus. The celestial messenger, though only one in number, has the force of a great army; victory is seconds away.
Now Virgil can allow Dante to use his eyes once more: Medusa is apparently no longer a threat.
A number of commentators and translators have the frogs in this simile going to the bottom of the pond; they go to land (a la terra), as Dante says they do, and as any intelligent frog will do when a snake enters the water. This simile probably derives from Ovid, Metamorphoses VI.370-381.
The angel walks upon the water in imitation of Christ (Matthew 14:25).
The angel resembles Mercury, as he is described by Statius (Thebaid II.1-11), coming back up from the foul air of the underworld with his caduceus in hand. For a study of the various classical sources for this scene see David Quint's article (“Epic Tradition and Inferno IX,” Dante Studies 93 [1975], pp. 201-7).
That this agent of good is 'sent from heaven' indicates clearly enough that he is an angel, although debate over his identity still continues. See Silvio Pasquazi, 'Messo celeste' (ED.1971.3), pp. 919-21, making a strong case for his angelic status and giving a summary of the debate. Pasquazi also argues for one traditional further identification, making the messo specifically the archangel Michael, who led the forces of the good angels against the rebellious ones in the war in heaven (Apoc. 12:7-9) – see the note to Inf. VII.10-12 – exactly the forces he now must combat once more in the netherworld. (Pasquazi's final argument, that Michael dwells in Limbo, is probably simply unacceptable.) Over the centuries there has been a continuing argument between those who believe that the messo is Mercury and those who believe that he is an angel, and, in some cases, specifically Michael. It seems highly likely that Dante here gives us an archangel Michael 'dressed up' as Mercury, a fused identity that is not problematic in any way, given Dante's practice of combining pagan and Christian materials.
For a recent discussion that again confirms the most likely hypothesis, that this creature is indeed an angel from heaven, see Massimo Seriacopi (“Un riscontro testuale inedito per 'dal ciel messo' (Inferno IX 85),” Publications of the Carla Rossi Academy Press [http://www.cra.phoenixfound.it/epubbf.htm], 1999). For a return to the central hypothesis of Pasquazi (Michael as Mercury), see Susanna Barsella (“The Mercurial integumentum of the heavenly messenger [Inferno IX 79-103],” Letteratura italiana antica 4 [2003], pp. 371-95).
Virgil's command that Dante bow down before the angel removes just about any doubt about the messo's divine status.
The angel's opening of the barred gates with his verghetta ('wand') is almost surely, even if there is no sign of recognition in the commentary tradition, modeled on Mercury's similar opening of the gates of Herse's chamber with his verga, i.e., his caduceus (Ovid, Metam. II.819). See Hollander, “The Tragedy of Divination in Inferno XX,” in his Studies in Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1980), p. 181n., and Barsella, “The Mercurial integumentum of the heavenly messenger (Inferno IX 79-103),” Letteratura italiana antica 4 (2003), p. 386.
The 'outcasts of heaven' are undoubtedly the rebellious angels referred to in Inferno VIII.82-83, 'more than a thousand angels fallen from Heaven.' See also the reference, a few lines earlier in this canto (Inf. IX.79), to 'a thousand lost souls' who guard the city of Dis, that is, these very angels.
The angel makes clear, in his address to his fallen brethren, that resistance to the will of God is utterly useless. His reference to the chaining of Cerberus by Hercules reflects Aeneid VI.392-396. Dante has now been associated with two classical heroes, Theseus (Inf. IX.54) and Hercules. His powers, however, reside not in himself but in his heaven-ordained mission.
The angel's impassive attitude tells us something about the nature of the inhabitants of hell that we sometimes forget: from God's perspective there is nothing worthy of attention in their plight. The angel only wants to get out of this place as quickly as he can in order to return to eternal bliss, so much so that he has not even a word of greeting or support for the two travelers.
That Virgil and Dante now enter 'without further struggle' helps affirm that (Inf. IX.33, Virgil's remark that 'now we cannot enter without wrath,' does not refer to the warring disposition of the travelers, but to that of the angel. This whole passage, from the last verse of Inferno VII (Inf. VII.130) to now, the moment of successful entry of the walled city of Dis, narrates a military campaign: Virgil and Dante approach by sea in Phlegyas's military transport ship; the forces ranged against them signal their coming and prepare to do battle, closing the gates and assuming defensive positions on the battlements; they wheel up their main weapons, the Furies, who prepare to unleash their secret weapon, Medusa; the invading forces then deploy their secret weapon, the heavenly battering-ram that opens the gates and, in a trice, wins the battle.
The protagonist shows his usual touristic interest in seeing the new 'sights' within this 'fortezza.' The word the poet chooses reminds us that we here behold a different aspect of hell. Once we see the even more imposing structures awaiting the travelers (Malebolge and the walled city of Cocytus), we have some sense of the import of the first 'built environment' of hell that we experience after that imposing gate described in the third canto, a sign that the sins punished within it are more offensive to God than those above.
Dante's references to two famous ancient Roman cemeteries, at Arles in France and Pola in Istria, build the scene for us: these grave sites are not mounds in the ground but sarchophagi, raised monuments of stone that contain the remains of the dead.
We will eventually be apprised of the heretical nature of the beliefs of the inhabitants of these tombs, whom we can hear but cannot see. We will have a similar experience when we look upon the flames of the false counselors in cantos XXVI and XXVII, also unseen in their flames, yet entirely audible. And see the note to Inf. XIX.25, for discussion of the parodic inversion of Pentecostal fire in the punishment of sins that involve the perversion of the gift of the Holy Spirit. One thinks of these heretics, the sodomites (cantos XV and XVI), and the false counselors. All these three loci contain sinners who use their intelligence in such ways as to beguile others into believing what they should not believe.
Virgil explains to Dante that this sixth Circle of hell encloses many different heretical sects, each of which is punished in a separate sepulchre, and some of which are punished with more, others with less, severity.
Why is heresy punished within the walls of Dis, where all the sins punished are sins of will, not those of appetite? It is interesting to see how often early commentators associate heresy with obstinacy or obduracy; their word is the Latin pertinax. Some of them may be reflecting St. Thomas's definition (S.T. II-II, q. 5, a. 3): if a man 'is not pertinacious in his disbelief, he is in that case no heretic, but only a man in error.' See, among others, the commentaries of Boccaccio (comm. to Inf. IX.127 and to Inf. IX.110-133), Benvenuto (comm. to Inf. IX.112-116 and to Inf. IX.127-129), Francesco da Buti (comm. to Inf. IX.106-123 and to Inf. X.31-39), John of Serravalle (comm. to Inf. X.13-15); Daniello (comm. to Inf. IX.133 [citing Thomas]) and, among the moderns, Poletto (comm. to Inf. X.28-30), Carroll (comm. to Inf. IX.132).
The turnings to the right here and at Inferno XVII.32 have caused puzzlement and some ingenuity. In hell, whenever the direction of their movement is mentioned, Dante and Virgil elsewhere always head to the left. Only on these two occasions do they move rightward. These two rightward turnings occur just before the entrance to the sixth Circle, in which heresy is punished, and before the exit from the realm of Violence, the seventh Circle. Some have welcomed the Scartazzini/Vandelli hypothesis (see that commentary to this passage) that both heresy and fraud are alike in their deformations of truth. But this explanation fails to observe that treachery, punished in the ninth and last Circle, also deforms the truth, and that the second rightward turning takes place before the travelers enter the realm of fraud, in any case. Other less simple explanations have other difficulties associated with them. This is another instance in which the commentary tradition has not resolved Dante's plan, if indeed there was one. It is possible that the rightward movement at Inferno XVII.32 is only the necessary result of having to leave their circling movement in order to move toward Geryon, even if some maintain (e.g., Rossetti [comm. to Inf. XVII.31-33]) that there is an allegorical meaning both in turning to the right to face fraud from 'the right side,' as it were, and in walking ten steps that reflect the ten bolge of Fraud. In any case, either of these explanations reduces the likelihood that there is a 'program' linking Inferno IX.132 and XVII.32. And then the only 'program' would be one involving the sin of heresy. For some reason Dante decided that its specialness, or perhaps extraneousness to the Aristotelian/Ciceronian divisions of vice, called for the retrograde and special movement. But for a literal explanation of even this turning to the right, see Andreoli (comm. to Inf. IX.132): 'Di cosiffatta eccezione io credo non si possa dare altra ragione che questa, che avendo dovuto i Poeti fare una grande aggirata (c. VIII, 79) per isbarcare alla porta di Dite, nell'entrarvi poi si trovassero aver già percorso più della solita nona parte del cerchio; e che perciò questa volta, per trovare il punto prefisso alla loro traversata nel cerchio seguente, essi invece di procedere a sinistra avessero dovuto retrocedere a destra.' And see the note to Inf. XVII.28-33.
For the logistics of this little scene, see Chiavacci Leonardi (comm. ad loc.): 'li alti spaldi: le alte mura di difesa della città; spaldi erano propriamente i ballatoi che correvano in cima alle mura; qui per sineddoche indicano genericamente le mura. Dante e Virgilio camminano quindi, come si dirà in X 2, nello stretto spazio di terreno tra le mura e le tombe.'
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