Inferno: Canto XVIII

Longfellow, 1867 · <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy_(Longfellow_1867)/Volume_1/Notes">source</a>

1. Stanza 1, line 1 Here begins the third division of the Inferno, embracing the Eighth and Ninth Circles, in which the Fraudulent are punished.
   
   "But because fraud is man's peculiar vice
   
   More it displeases God; and so stand lowest
   
   The fraudulent, and greater dole assails them."
   
   The Eighth Circle is called Malebolge, or Evil-budgets, and consists of ten concentric ditches, or Bolge of stone, with dikes between, and rough bridges running across them to the centre like the spokes of a wheel.
   
   In the First Bolgia are punished Seducers, and in the Second, Flatterers.
2. Stanza 1, line 2 Mr. Ruskin, Modern Painters, III. p. 237, says:—
   
   "Our slates and granites are often of very lovely colors; but the Apennine limestone is so gray and toneless, that I know not any mountain district so utterly melancholy as those which are composed of this rock, when unwooded. Now, as far as I can discover from the internal evidence in his poem, nearly all Dante's mountain wanderings had been upon this ground. He had journeyed once or twice among the Alps, indeed, but seems to have been impressed chiefly by the road from Garda to Trent, and that along the Cornice, both of which are either upon those limestones, or a dark serpentine, which shows hardly any color till it is polished. It is not ascertainable that he had ever seen rock scenery of the finely colored kind, aided by the Alpine mosses: I do not know the fall at Forlì (Inferno, XVI. 99), but every other scene to which he alludes is among these Apennine limestones; and when he wishes to give the idea of enormous mountain size, he names Tabernicch and Pietra-pana,—the one clearly chosen only for the sake of the last syllable of its name, in order to make a sound as of crackling ice, with the two sequent rhymes of the stanza,—and the other is an Apennine near Lucca.
   
   "His idea, therefore, of rock color, founded on these experiences, is that of a dull or ashen gray, more or less stained by the brown of iron ochre, precisely as the Apennine limestones nearly always are; the gray being peculiarly cold and disagreeable. As we go down the very hill which stretches out from Pietra-pana towards Lucca, the stones laid by the road-side to mend it are of this ashen gray, with efflorescences of manganese and iron in the fissures. The whole of Malebolge is made of this rock, 'All wrought in stone of iron-colored grain.'"
3. Stanza 10, line 29 The year of Jubilee 1300. Mr. Norton, in his Notes of Travel and Study in Italy, p. 255, thus describes it:—
   
   "The beginning of the new century brought many pilgrims to the Papal city, and the Pope, seeing to what account the treasury of indulgences possessed by the Church might now be turned, hit upon the plan of promising plenary indulgence to all who, during the year, should visit with fit dispositions the holy places of Rome. He accordingly, in the most solemn manner, proclaimed a year of Jubilee, to date from the Christmas of 1299, and appointed a similar celebration for each hundredth year thereafter. The report of the marvellous promise spread rapidly through Europe; and as the year advanced, pilgrims poured into Italy from remote as well as from neighboring lands. The roads leading to Rome were dusty with bands of travellers pressing forward to gain the unwonted indulgence. The Crusades had made travel familiar to men, and a journey to Rome seemed easy to those who had dreamed of the Farther East, of Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Giovanni Villani, who was among the pilgrims from Florence, declares that there were never less than two hundred thousand strangers at Rome during the year; and Guglielmo Ventura, the chronicler of Asti, reports the total number of pilgrims at not less than two millions. The picture which he draws of Rome during the Jubilee is a curious one. 'Mirandum est quod passim ibant viri et mulieres, qui anno illo Romæ fuerunt quo ego ibi fui et per dies XV. steti. De pane, vino, carnibus, piscibus, et avena, bonum mercatum ibi erat; fænum carissimum ibi fuit; hospitia carissima; taliter quod lectus meus et equi mei super fæno et avena constabat mihi tornesium unum grossum. Exiens de Roma in Vigilia Nativitatis Christi, vidi turbam magnam, quam dinumerare nemo poterat; et fama erat inter Romanos, quod ibi fuerant plusquam vigenti centum millia virorum et mulierum. Pluries ego vidi ibi tam viros quam mulieres conculcatos sub pedibus aliorum; et etiam egomet in eodem periculo plures vices evasi. Papa innumerabilem pecuniam ab eisdem recepit, quia die ac nocte duo clerici stabant ad altare Sancti Pauli tenentes in corum manibus rastellos, rastellantes pecuniam infinitam.' To accommodate the throng of pilgrims, and to protect them as far as possible from the danger which Ventura feelingly describes, a barrier was erected along the middle of the bridge under the castle of Sant' Angelo, so that those going to St. Peter's and those coming from the church, passing on opposite sides, might not interfere with each other. It seems not unlikely that Dante himself was one of the crowd who thus crossed the old bridge, over whose arches, during this year, a flood of men was flowing almost as constantly as the river's flood ran through below."
4. Stanza 11, line 31 The castle is the Castle of St. Angelo, and the mountain Monte Gianicolo. See Barlow, Study of Dante, p. 126. Others say Monte Giordano.
5. Stanza 17, line 50 "This Caccianimico," says Benvenuto da Imola, "was a Bolognese; a liberal, noble, pleasant, and very powerful man." Nevertheless he was so utterly corrupt as to sell his sister, the fair Ghisola, to the Marquis of Este.
6. Stanza 17, line 51 In the original the word is salse. "In Bologna," says Benvenuto da Imola, "the name of Salse is given to a certain valley outside the city, and near to Santa Maria in Monte, into which the mortal remains of desperadoes, usurers, and other infamous persons are wont to be thrown. Hence I have sometimes heard boys in Bologna say to each other, by way of insult, 'Your father was thrown into the Salse.'"
7. Stanza 21, line 61 The two rivers between which Bologna is situated. In the Bolognese dialect sipa is used for sì.
8. Stanza 24, line 72 They cease going round the circles as heretofore, and now go straight forward to the centre of the abyss.
9. Stanza 29, line 86 For the story of Jason, Medea, and the Golden Fleece, see Ovid, Metamorph. VII. Also Chaucer, Legende of Goode Women:—
   
   "Thou roote of fals loveres, duke Jason! Thou slye devourer and confusyon Of gentil wommen, gentil creatures!"
10. Stanza 31, line 92 When the women of Lemnos put to death all the male inhabitants of the island, Hypsipyle concealed her father Thoas, and spared his life. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautics, II., Fawkes's Tr.:—
    
    "Hypsipyle alone, illustrious maid, Spared her sire Thoas, who the sceptre swayed."
11. Stanza 41, line 122 "Allessio Interminelli," says Benvenuto da Imola, "a soldier, a nobleman, and of gentle manners, was of Lucca, and from him descended that tyrant Castruccio who filled all Tuscany with fear, and was lord of Pisa, Lucca, and Pistoja, of whom Dante makes no mention, because he became illustrious after the author's death. Alessio took such delight in flattery, that he could not open his mouth without flattering. He besmeared everybody, even the lowest menials."
    
    The Ottimo says, that in the dialect of Lucca the head "was facetiously called a pumpkin."
12. Stanza 45, line 133 Thaïs, the famous courtesan of Athens. Terence, The Eunuch, Act III. Sc. 1:—
    
    "Thraso. Did Thaïs really return me many thanks?
    
    "Gnatho. Exceeding thanks.
    
    "Thraso. Was she delighted, say you?'
    
    "Gnatho. Not so much, indeed, at the present itself, as because it was given by you; really, in right earnest, she does exult at that."
13. Stanza 46, line 136 "The filthiness of some passages," exclaims Landor, Pentameron, p. 15, "would disgrace the drunkenest horse-dealer; and the names of such criminals are recorded by the poet, as would be forgotten by the hangman in six months."