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CANTO XXV I.

Argument.

Remounting by the steps, down which they had descended to the seventh gulf, they go forward to the arch that stretches over the eighth, and from thence behold numberless flames wherein are punished the evil counsellors, each flame containing a sinner, save one, in which were Diomede and Ulysses, the latter of whom relates the manner of his death.

FLORENCE, exult! for thou so mightily

Hast thriven, that o'er land and sea 1 thy wings
Thou beatest, and thy name spreads over hell.
Among the plunderers, such the three I found
Thy citizens; whence shame to me thy son,
And no proud honour to thyself redounds.

But if our minds, when dreaming near the dawn,
Are of the truth presageful, thou ere long
Shalt feel what Prato (not to say the rest)

Would fain might come upon thee; and that chance
Were in good time, if it befel thee now.
Would so it were, since it must needs befal!
For as time wears me, I shall grieve the more.
We from the depth departed; and my guide
Remounting scaled the flinty steps, which late
We downward traced, and drew ine up the steep.
Pursuing thus our solitary way

1 O'er land and sea.]

For he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas. Milton, Son. viii.

2 But if our minds.]

Namque sub Auroram, jam dormitante lucernâ,
Soninia quo cerni tempore vera solent.

Ovid, Epist. xix. The same poetical superstition is alluded to in the Purgatory, Cantos ix. and xxvii.

Shalt feel what Prato.] The Poet prognosticates the calamities which were soon to befal his native city, and which, he says, even her nearest neighbour, Prato, would wish her. The calamities more particularly pointed at are said to be the fall of a wooden bridge over the Arno, in May, 1304, where a large multitude were assembled to witness a representation of hell and the infernal torments, in consequence of which accident many lives were lost; and a conflagration, that in the following month destroyed more than seventeen hundred houses, many of them sumptuous buildings. See G. Villani, Ilist. lib. 8. cap. Ixx. and Ixxi.

4 As time.] "I shall feel all calamities more sensibly as I am further advanced in life."

5 The flinty steps.] Ventura, after Daniello and Volpi, explains the word in the original, "borni," to mean the stones that project from a wall, for other buildings to be joined to, which the workmen call" toothings."

Among the crags and splinters of the rock,
Sped not our feet without the help of hands.
Then sorrow seized me, which e'en now revives,
As my thought turns again to what I saw,
And, more than I am wont,1 I reign and curb
The powers of nature in me, lest they run
Where Virtue guides not; that, if aught of good
My gentle star or something better gave me,
I envy not myself the precious boon.

As in that season, when the sun least veils
His face that lightens all, what time the fly
Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then,
Upon some cliff reclined, beneath him sees
Fire-flies innumerous spangling o'er the vale,
Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies;
With flames so numberless throughout its space
Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth
Was to my view exposed. As he, whose wrongs 2
The bears avenged, at its departure saw

Elijah's chariot, when the steeds erect

Raised their steep flight for heaven; his eyes, meanwhile,
Straining pursued them, till the flame alone,

Upsoaring like a misty speck, he kenn'd:

Een thus along the gulf moves every flame,
A sinner so enfolded close in each,

That none exhibits token of the theft.

Upon the bridge I forward bent to look,

And grasp'd a flinty mass, or else had fallen,

Though push'd not from the height. The guide, who mark'd
How I did gaze attentive, thus began:

"Within these ardours are the spirits, each

Swath'd in confining fire."-" Master! thy word,"

I answer'd, "hath assured me; yet I deem'd

Already of the truth, already wish'd

To ask thee who is in yon fire, that comes
So parted at the summit, as it seem'd

Ascending from that funeral pile 3 where lay

1 More than I am wont.] "When I reflect on the punishment allotted to those who do not give sincere and upright advice to others, I am more anxious than ever not to abuse to so bad a purpose those talents, whatever they may be, which Nature, or rather Providence, has conferred on me." It is probable that this declaration was the result of real feeling in the mind of Dante, whose political character would have given great weight to any opinion or party he had espoused, and to whom indigence and exile might have offered strong temptations to deviate from that line of conduct which a strict sense of duty prescribed.

2 As he, whose wrongs.] 2 Kings, ii.

3

Ascending from that funeral pile.] The flame is said to have divided on the funeral pile which consumed the bodies of Eteocles and Polynices, as if conscious of the enmity that actuated them while living.

The Theban brothers." He replied: "Within,
Ulysses there and Diomede endure

Their penal tortures, thus to vengeance now
Together hasting, as erewhile to wrath.

These in the flame with ceaseless groans deplore
The ambush of the horse,1 that open'd wide
A portal for that goodly seed to pass,

Which sow'd imperial Rome; nor less the guile
Lament they, whence, of her Achilles 'reft,
Deïdamia yet in death complains.

And there is rued the stratagem that Troy
Of her Palladium spoil'd."-"If they have power
Of utterance from within these sparks," said I,
"O master! think my prayer a thousand-fold
In repetition urged, that thou vouchsafe
fo pause till here the horned flame arrive.
See, how toward it with desire I bend."

He thus: "Thy prayer is worthy of much praise,
And I accept it therefore; but do thou

Thy tongue refrain: to question them be mine;
For I divine thy wish; and they perchance,

For they were Greeks,2 might shun discourse with thee."

When there the flame had come, where time and place
Seem'd fitting to my guide, he thus began:

"O ye, who dwell two spirits in one fire!

If, living, I of you did merit aught,
Whate'er the measure were of that desert,
When in the world my lofty strain I pour'd,
Move ye not on, till one of you unfold

In what clime death o'ertook him self-destroy'd."
Of the old flame forthwith the greater horn

Began to roll, murmuring, as a fire

That labours with the wind, then to and fro
Wagging the top, as a tongue uttering sounds,

Threw out its voice, and spake: "When I escaped
From Circe, who beyond a circling year

Had held me near Caieta 3 by her charms,

Ecce iterum fratris primos ut contigit artus

Ignis edax, tremuere rogi, et novus advena busto
Pellitur, exundant diviso vertice flammæ,

Alternosque apices abruptâ luce coruscant. Statins, Theb. lib. 12.

Compare Lucan, Pharsal. lib. 1. 145.

1 The ambush of the horse.] "The ambush of the wooden horse, that caused Eneas to quit the city of Troy and seek his fortune in Italy, where his descendants founded the Roman empire."

For they were Greeks.] By this it is, perhaps, implied that they were haughty and arrogant. So, in our Poet's twenty-fourthi Sonnet, of which a translation is inserted in the Life prefixed, he says:

Ed ella mi rispose, come un Greco.

3 Caieta.] Virgil, Eneid, lib. 7. 1.

Ere thus Æneas yet had named the shore;
Nor fondness for my son,1 nor reverence
Of my old father, nor return of love,

That should have crown'd Penelope with joy,
Could overcome in me the zeal I had

To explore the world, and search the ways of life,
Man's evil and his virtue. Forth I sail'd

Into the deep illimitable main,

With but one bark, and the small faithful band
That yet cleaved to me. As Iberia far,
Far as Marocco, either shore I saw,

And the Sardinian and each isle beside

Which round that ocean bathes. Tardy with age
Were I and my companions, when we came
To the strait pass, where Hercules ordain'd
The boundaries not to be o'erstepp'd by man.
The walls of Seville to my right I left,

On the other hand already Ceuta past.

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'O brothers!' I began, who to the west

Through perils without number now have reach'd;
"To this the short remaining watch, that yet
'Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof
"Of the unpeopled world, following the track
'Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence ye sprang:
'Ye were not form'd to live the lives of brutes,
'But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.'
With these few words I sharpen'd for the voyage
The mind of my associates, that I then

Could scarcely have withheld them. To the dawn
Our poop we turn'd, and for the witless flight
Made our oars wings,3 still gaining on the left.
Each star of the other pole night now beheld,*

1 Nor fondness for my son.] Imitated by Tasso, G. L. c. viii. st. 7:
Ne timor di fatica ò di periglio,

Ne vaghezza del regno, ne pietade

Del vecchio genitor, si degno affetto
Intiepedir nel generoso petto.

This imagined voyage of Ulysses into the Atlantic is alluded to by Pulci:

E sopratutto commendava Ulisse,

Che per veder nell' altro mondo gisse. Morg. Magg. c. xxv.

And by Tasso, G. L. c. xv. 25.

2 The strait pass.] The straits of Gibraltar.

3 Made our oars wings.]

Οὐδ ̓ εὐήρε ἐρετμα, τά τε πτερὰ νηυσὶ πέλονται. Hom. Od. 11. 124.

So Chiabrera, Canz. Eroiche, xiii. :

And Tasso, ibid. 26.

Farò de' remi un volo.

Canz. xxxvii. 1.

4 Night now beheld.] Petrarch is here cited by Lombardi :
Ne là su sopra il cerchio della luna
Vide mai tante stelle alcuna notte.
Nor there above the circle of the moon
Did ever night behold so many stars.

And ours so low, that from the ocean floor
It rose not. Five times re-illumed, as oft
Vanish'd the light from underneath the moon,
Since the deep way we enter'd, when from far
Appear'd a mountain dim,1 loftiest methought
Of all I e'er beheld. Joy seized us straight;
But soon to mourning changed. From the new land
A whirlwind sprung, and at her foremost side
Did strike the vessel. Thrice 2 it whirl'd her round
With all the waves; the fourth time lifted up
The poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed:
And over us the booming billow closed." 3

CANTO XXVII.

Argument.

The Poet, treating of the same punishment as in the last Canto, relates that he turned towards a flame in which was the Count Guido da Montefeltro, whose inquiries respecting the state of Romagna he answers; and Guido is thereby induced to declare who he is, and why condemned to that torment.

Now upward rose the flame, and still'd its light
To speak no more, and now pass'd on with leave
From the mild poet gain'd; when following came
Another, from whose top a sound confused,
Forth issuing, drew our eyes that way to look.
As the Sicilian bull, that rightfully

1 A mountain dim.] The mountain of Purgatory. Amongst the various opinions of theologians respecting the situation of the terrestrial paradise, Pietro Lombardo relates, that "it was separated by a long space, either of sea or land, from the regions inhabited by men, and placed in the ocean, reaching as far as to the lunar circle, so that the waters of the deluge did not reach it.' Sent. lib. 2. dist. 17. Thus Lombardi.

2 Thrice.]

-Ast illum ter fluctus ibidem
Torquet agens circum, et rapidus vorat æquore vortex.
Virg. Æn. lib. 1. 116.

3 Closed.] Venturi refers to Pliny and Solinus for the opinion that Ulysses was the founder of Lisbon, from whence he thinks it was easy for the fancy of a poet to send him on yet further enterprises. Perhaps the story (which it is not unlikely that our author will be found to have borrowed from some legend of the Middle Ages) may have taken its rise partly from the obscure oracle returned by the ghost of Tiresias to Ulysses (see the eleventh book of the Odyssey), and partly from the fate which there was reason to suppose had befallen some adventurous explorers of the Atlantic ocean.

4 The Sicilian bull.] The engine of torture invented by Perillus, for the tyrant Phalaris.

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