Array Dante Alighieri - Harvard Classics Volume 20

Of Jubilee, with better speed to rid

The thronging multitudes, their means devise

For such as pass the bridge; that on one side

All front toward the castle, and approach

Saint Peter’s fane, on the other toward the mount.

Each diverse way, along the grisly rock,

Horn’d demons I beheld, with lashes huge,

That on their back unmercifully smote.

Ah! how they made them bound at the first stripe!

None for the second waited, nor the third.

Meantime, as on I pass’d, one met my sight,

Whom soon as view’d, “Of him,” cried I, “not yet

Mine eye hath had his fill.” I therefore stay’d

My feet to scan him, and the teacher kind

Paused with me, and consented I should walk

Backward a space; and the tormented spirit,

Who thought to hide him, bent his visage down.

But it avail’d him naught; for I exclaim’d:

“Thou who dost cast thine eye upon the ground,

Unless thy features do belie thee much,

Venedico [123]art thou. But what brings thee

Into this bitter seasoning?” He replied:

“Unwillingly I answer to thy words.

But thy clear speech, that to my mind recalls

The world I once inhabited, constrains me.

Know then ’t was I who led fair Ghisola

To do the Marquis’ will, however fame

The shameful tale have bruited. Nor alone

Bologna hither sendeth me to mourn.

Rather with us the place is so o’er throng’d,

That not so many tongues this day are taught,

Betwixt the Reno and Savena’s stream,

To answer Sipa [124]in their country’s phrase.

And if of that securer proof thou need,

Remember but our craving thirst for gold.”

Him speaking thus, a demon with his throng

Struck and exclaim’d, “Away, corrupter! here

Women are none for sale.” Forthwith I join’d

My escort, and few paces thence we came

To where a rock forth issued from the bank.

That easily ascended, to the right

Upon its splinter turning, we depart

From those eternal barriers. When arrived

Where, underneath, the gaping arch lets pass

The scourged souls: “Pause here,” the teacher said,

“And let these others miserable now

Strike on thy ken; faces not yet beheld,

For that together they with us have walk’d.”

From the old bridge we eyed the pack, who came

From the other side toward us, like the rest,

Excoriate from the lash. My gentle guide,

By me unquestion’d, thus his speech resumed:

“Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends,

And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear.

How yet the regal aspect he retains!

Jason is he, whose skill and prowess won

The ram from Colchis. To the Lemnian isle

His passage thither led him, when those bold

And pitiless women had slain all their males.

There he with tokens and fair witching words

Hypsipyle [125]beguiled, a virgin young,

Who first had all the rest herself beguiled.

Impregnated, he left her there forlorn.

Such is the guilt condemns him to this pain.

Here too Medea’s injuries are avenged.

All bear him company, who like deceit

To his have practised. And thus much to know

Of the first vale suffice thee, and of those

Whom its keen torments urge.” Now had we come

Where, crossing the next pier, the straiten’d path

Bestrides its shoulders to another arch.

Hence, in the second chasm we heard the ghosts,

Who gibber in low melancholy sounds,

With wide-stretch’d nostrils snort, and on themselves

Smite with their palms. Upon the banks a scurf,

From the foul steam condensed, encrusting hung,

That held sharp combat with the sight and smell.

So hollow is the depth, that from no part,

Save on the summit of the rocky span,

Could I distinguish aught. Thus far we came;

And thence I saw, within the foss below,

A crowd immersed in ordure, that appear’d

Draff of the human body. There beneath

Searching with eye inquisitive, I mark’d

One with his head so grimed, ’t were hard to deem

If he were clerk or layman. Loud he cried:

“Why greedily thus bendest more on me,

Than on these other filthy ones, thy ken?”

“Because, if true my memory,” I replied,

“I heretofore have seen thee with dry locks;

And thou Alessio [126]art, of Lucca sprung.

Therefore than all the rest I scan thee more.”

Then beating on his brain, these words he spake:

“Me thus low down my flatteries have sunk,

Wherewith I ne’er enough could glut my tongue.”

My leader thus: “A little further stretch

Thy face, that thou the visage well mayst note

Of that besotted, sluttish courtesan,

Who there doth rend her with defiled nails,

Now crouching down, now risen on her feet.

Thaïs [127]is this, the harlot, whose false lip

Answer’d her doting paramour that ask’d,

‘Thankest me much!’—‘Say rather, wondrously,’

And, seeing this, here satiate be our view.”

Argument.—They come to the third gulf, wherein are punished those who have been guilty of simony. These are fixed with the head downward in certain apertures, so that no more of them than the legs appears without, and on the soles of their feet are seen burning flames. Dante is taken down by his guide into the bottom of the gulf; and there finds Pope Nicholas V, whose evil deeds, together with those of other pontiffs, are bitterly reprehended. Virgil then carries him up again to the arch, which affords them a passage over the following gulf.

Woe to thee, Simon Magus! woe to you,

His wretched followers! who the things of God,

Which should be wedded unto goodness, them,

Rapacious as ye are, do prostitute

For gold and silver in adultery.

Now must the trumpet sound for you, since yours

Is the third chasm. Upon the following vault

We now had mounted, where the rock impends

Directly o’er the centre of the foss.

Wisdom Supreme! how wonderful the art,

Which Thou dost manifest in Heaven, in earth,

And in the evil world, how just a meed

Allotting by Thy virtue unto all.

I saw the livid stone, throughout the sides

And in its bottom full of apertures,

All equal in their width, and circular each.

Nor ample less nor larger they appear’d

Than, in Saint John’s fair dome [128]of me beloved,

Those framed to hold the pure baptismal streams,

One of the which I brake, some few years past,

To save a whelming infant: and be this

A seal to undeceive whoever doubts

The motive of my deed. From out the mouth

Of every one emerged a sinner’s feet,

And of the legs high upward as the calf.

The rest beneath was hid. On either foot

The soles were burning; whence the flexile joints

Glanced with such violent motion, as had snapt

Asunder cords or twisted withes. As flame,

Feeding on unctuous matter, glides along

The surface, scarcely touching where it moves;

So here, from heel to point, glided the flames.

“Master! say who is he, than all the rest

Glancing in fiercer agony, on whom

A ruddier flame doth prey?” I thus inquired.

“If thou be willing,” he replied. “that I

Carry thee down, where least the slope bank falls,

He of himself shall tell thee, and his wrongs.”

I then: “As pleases thee, to me is best.

Thou art my lord; and know’st that ne’er I quit

Thy will: what silence hides, that knowest thou.”

Thereat on the fourth pier we came, we turn’d

And on our left descended to the depth,

A narrow strait, and perforated close.