Inferno: Canto XXVI

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

1. Stanza 1, line 1 The Eighth Bolgia, in which Fraudulent Counsellors are punished.
2. Stanza 2, line 4 Of these five Florentine nobles, Cianfa Donati, Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, and Guercio Cavalcanti, nothing is known but what Dante tells us. Perhaps that is enough.
3. Stanza 3, line 7 See Purg. IX. 13:—
   
   "Just at the hour when her sad lay begins
   
   The little swallow, near unto the morning,
   
   Perchance in memory of her former woes,
   
   And when the mind of man, a wanderer
   
   More from the flesh, and less by thought imprisoned,
   
   Almost prophetic in its visions is."
4. Stanza 3, line 9 The disasters soon to befall Florence, and in which even the neighboring town of Prato would rejoice, to mention no others. These disasters were the fall of the wooden bridge of Carraia, with a crowd upon it, witnessing a Miracle Play on the Arno; the strife of the Bianchi and Neri; and the great fire of 1304. See Villani, VIII. 70, 71. Napier, Florentine History, I. 394, gives this account:—
   
   "Battles first began between the Cerchi and Giugni at their houses in the Via del Garbo; they fought day and night, and with the aid of the Cavalcanti and Antellesi the former subdued all that quarter: a thousand rural adherents strengthened their bands, and that day might have seen the Neri's destruction if an unforseen disaster had not turned the scale. A certain dissolute priest, called Neri Abati, prior of San Piero Scheraggio, false to his family and in concert with the Black chiefs, consented to set fire to the dwellings of his own kinsmen in Orto-san-Michele; the flames, assisted by faction, spread rapidly over the richest and most crowded part of Florence: shops, warehouses, towers, private dwellings and palaces, from the old to the new market-place, from Vacchereccia to Porta Santa Maria and the Ponte Vecchio, all was one broad sheet of fire: more than nineteen hundred houses were consumed; plunder and devastation revelled unchecked amongst the flames, whole races were reduced in one moment to beggary, and vast magazines of the richest merchandise were destroyed. The Cavalcanti, one of the most opulent families in Florence, beheld their whole property consumed, and lost all courage; they made no attempt to save it, and, after almost gaining possession of the city, were finally overcome by the opposite faction."
5. Stanza 4, line 10 Macbeth, I. 7:—
   
   "If it were done when 't is done, then 't were well
   
   It were done quickly."
6. Stanza 8, line 23 See Parad. XII. 112:—
   
   "O glorious stars! O light impregnated
   
   With mighty virtue, from which I acknowledge
   
   All of my genius, whatsoe'er it be."
7. Stanza 8, line 24 I may not balk or deprive myself of this good.
8. Stanza 12, line 34 The Prophet Elisha, 2 Kings ii. 23:—
   
   "And he went up from thence unto Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him. Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord: and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."
9. Stanza 12, line 35 2 Kings ii. 11:—
   
   "And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven."
10. Stanza 18, line 54 These two sons of Œdipus, Eteocles and Polynices, were so hostile to each other, that, when after death their bodies were burned on the same funeral pile, the flames swayed apart, and the ashes separated. Statius, Thebaid, XII. 430, Lewis's Tr.:—
    
    "Again behold the brothers! When the fire
    
    Pervades their limbs in many a curling spire,
    
    The vast hill trembles, and the intruder's corse
    
    Is driven from the pile with sudden force.
    
    The flames, dividing at the point, ascend,
    
    And at each other adverse rays extend.
    
    Thus when the ruler of the infernal state,
    
    Pale-visaged Dis, commits to stern debate
    
    The sister-fiends, their brands, held forth to fight,
    
    Now clash, then part, and shed a transient light."
11. Stanza 19, line 56 The most cunning of the Greeks at the siege of Troy, now united in their punishment, as before in warlike wrath.
12. Stanza 20, line 59 As Troy was overcome by the fraud of the wooden horse, it was in a poetic sense the gateway by which Æneas went forth to establish the Roman empire in Italy.
13. Stanza 21, line 62 Deidamia was a daughter of Lycomedes of Scyros, at whose court Ulysses found Achilles, disguised in woman's attire, and enticed him away to the siege of Troy, telling him that, according to the oracle, the city could not be taken without him, but not telling him that, according to the same oracle, he would lose his life there.
14. Stanza 21, line 63 Ulysses and Diomed together stole the Palladium, or statue of Pallas, at Troy, the safeguard and protection of the city.
15. Stanza 25, line 75 The Greeks scorned all other nations as "outside barbarians." Even Virgil, a Latian, has to plead with Ulysses the merit of having praised him in the Æneid.
16. Stanza 36, line 108 The Pillars of Hercules at the straits of Gibraltar; Abyla on the African shore, and Gibraltar on the Spanish; in which the popular mind has lost its faith, except as symbolized in the columns on the Spanish dollar, with the legend. Plus ultra.
    
    Brunetto Latini, Tesor. IX. 119:—
    
    "Appresso questo mare,
    
    Vidi diritto stare
    
    Gran colonne, le quali
    
    Vi mise per segnali Ercules il potente,
    
    Per mostrare alla gente
    
    Che loco sia finata
    
    La terra e terminata."
17. Stanza 42, line 125 Odyssey, XI. 155: "Well-fitted oars, which are also wings to ships."
18. Stanza 43, line 127 Humboldt, Personal Narrative, II. 19, Miss Williams's Tr., has this passage: "From the time we entered the torrid zone, we were never wearied with admiring, every night, the beauty of the Southern sky, which, as we advanced toward the south, opened new constellations to our view. We feel an indescribable sensation, when, on approaching the equator, and particularly on passing from one hemisphere to the other, we see those stars, which we have contemplated from our infancy, progressively sink, and finally disappear. Nothing awakens in the traveller a livelier remembrance of the immense distance by which he is separated from his country, than the aspect of an unknown firmament. The grouping of the stars of the first magnitude, some scattered nebula, rivalling in splendor the milky way, and tracks of space remarkable for their extreme blackness, give a particular physiognomy to the Southern sky. This sight fills with admiration even those who, uninstructed in the branches of accurate science, feel the same emotion of delight in the contemplation of the heavenly vault, as in the view of a beautiful landscape, or a majestic site. A traveller has no need of being a botanist, to recognize the torrid zone on the mere aspect of its vegetation; and without having acquired any notions of astronomy, without any acquaintance with the celestial charts of Flamstead and De la Caille, he feels he is not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation of the Ship, or the phosphorescent clouds of Magellan, arise on the horizon."
19. Stanza 48, line 142 Compare Tennyson's Ulysses:—
    
    "There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
    
    There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
    
    Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,—
    
    That ever with a frolic welcome took
    
    The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
    
    Free hearts, free foreheads,—you and I are old;
    
    Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;
    
    Death closes all: but something ere the end,
    
    Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
    
    Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
    
    The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
    
    The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
    
    Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
    
    'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
    
    Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite
    
    The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
    
    To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
    
    Of all the western stars, until I die.
    
    It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
    
    It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
    
    And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
    
    Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
    
    We are not now that strength which in old days
    
    Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
    
    One equal temper of heroic hearts.
    
    Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
    
    To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."