The Divine Comedy (Illustrated Edition). Dante Alighieri
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me. Hesitating I remain
At war ’twixt will and will not in my thoughts.
I could not hear what terms he offer’d them,
But they conferr’d not long, for all at once
To trial fled within. Clos’d were the gates
By those our adversaries on the breast
Of my liege lord: excluded he return’d
To me with tardy steps. Upon the ground
His eyes were bent, and from his brow eras’d
All confidence, while thus with sighs he spake:
“Who hath denied me these abodes of woe?”
Then thus to me: “That I am anger’d, think
No ground of terror: in this trial I
Shall vanquish, use what arts they may within
For hindrance. This their insolence, not new,4
Erewhile at gate less secret they display’d,
Which still is without bolt; upon its arch
Thou saw’st the deadly scroll: and even now
On this side of its entrance, down the steep,
Passing the circles, unescorted, comes
One whose strong might can open us this land.”
Footnotes
1 Phlegyas, so incensed against Apollo for having violated his daughter Coronis, that he set fire to the temple of that deity, by whose vengeance he was cast into Tartarus. See Virgil, Æneas, 1. vi. 618.
2 Boccaccio tells us, “he was a man remarkable for the large proportions and extraordinary vigor of his bodily frame, and the extreme waywardness and irascibility of his temper.”—“Decameron,” G. ix. N. 8.
3 Seven times.” The commentators, says Venturi, perplex themselves with the inquiry what seven perils these were from which Dante had been delivered by Virgil. Reckoning the beasts in the first Canto as one of them, and adding Charon, Minos, Cerberus, Plutus, Phlegyas, and Filippo Argenti, as so many others, we shall have the number; and if this be not satisfactory, we may suppose a determinate to have been put for an indeterminate number.
4 Virgil assures our poet that these evil spirits had formerly shown the same insolence when our Saviour descended into hell. They attempted to prevent him from entering at the gate, over which Dante had read the fatal inscription. “That gate which,” says the Roman poet, “an angel had just passed, by whose aid we shall overcome this opposition, and gain admittance into the city.”
Canto IX
ARGUMENT.—After some hindrances, and having seen the hellish furies and other monsters, the Poet, by the help of an angel, enters the city of Dis, wherein he discovers that the heretics are punished in tombs burning with intense fire; and he, together with Virgil, passes onward between the sepulchres and the walls of the city.
THE hue,1 which coward dread on my pale cheeks
Imprinted, when I saw my guide turn back,
Chas’d that from his which newly they had worn,
And inwardly restrain’d it. He, as one
Who listens, stood attentive: for his eye
Not far could lead him through the sable air,
And the thick-gath’ring cloud. “It yet behooves
We win this fight” — thus he began — “ if not —
Such aid to us is offer’d. — Oh, how long
Me seems it, ere the promis’d help arrive!”
I noted, how the sequel of his words
Clok’d their beginning; for the last he spake
Agreed not with the first. But not the less
My fear was at his saying; sith I drew
To import worse perchance, than that he held,
His mutilated speech. “Doth ever any
Into this rueful concave’s extreme depth
Descend, out of the first degree, whose pain
Is deprivation merely of sweet hope?”
Thus I inquiring. “Rarely,” he replied,
“It chances, that among us any makes
This journey, which I wend. Erewhile ’tis true
Once came I here beneath, conjur’d by fell
Erictho,2 sorceress, who compell’d the shades
Back to their bodies. No long space my flesh
Was naked of me, when within these walls
She made me enter, to draw forth a spirit
From out of Judas’ circle. Lowest place
Is that of all, obscurest, and remov’d
Farthest from heav’n’s all-circling orb. The road
Full well I know: thou therefore rest secure.
That lake, the noisome stench exhaling, round
The city’ of grief encompasses, which now
We may not enter without rage.” Yet more
He added: but I hold it not in mind,
For that mine eye toward the lofty tower
Had drawn me wholly, to its burning top.
Where in an instant I beheld uprisen
At once three hellish furies stain’d with blood:
In limb and motion feminine they seem’d;
Around them greenest hydras twisting roll’d
Their volumes; adders and cerastes crept
Instead of hair, and their fierce temples bound.
He knowing well the miserable hags
Who tend the queen of endless woe, thus spake:
“Mark thou each dire Erinnys. To the left
This is Megaera; on the right hand she,
Who wails, Alecto; and Tisiphone
I’ th’ midst.” This said, in silence he remain’d
Their breast they each one clawing tore; themselves
Smote