Read The Portable Dante Online
Authors: Dante Alighieri
The Portable Dante (11 page)
86-88. Because his name was inseparably linked with the Trojan War, Homer is portrayed by Dante as a sword-bearing poet, one who sang of arms and martial heroes.
106-111. The allegorical construction of the castle is open to question. It may represent natural philosophy unilluminated by divine wisdom, in which case the seven walls serving to protect the castle would be the seven moral and speculative virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, intellect, science, and knowledge); and the seven gates that provide access to the castle would be the seven liberal arts that formed the medieval school curriculum (music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy—the
quadrivium;
and grammar, logic, and rhetoric—the
trivium).
The symbolic value of the stream also remains uncertain; it could signify eloquence, a “stream” that the eloquent Virgil and Dante should have no trouble crossing—and indeed, they “walked right over it as on hard ground” (109).
We walked right over it as on hard ground; through seven gates I passed with those wise spirits, and then we reached a meadow fresh in bloom. | 111 |
There people were whose eyes were calm and grave, whose bearing told of great authority; seldom they spoke and always quietly. | 114 |
Then moving to one side we reached a place spread out and luminous, higher than before, allowing us to view all who were there. | 117 |
And right before us on the lustrous green the mighty shades were pointed out to me (my heart felt glory when I looked at them). | 120 |
There was Electra standing with a group, among whom I saw Hector and Aeneas, and Caesar, falcon-eyed and fully armed. | 123 |
112-144. The inhabitants of the great castle are important pagan philosophers and poets, as well as famous writers. Three of the shades named (Saladin, Avicenna, Averroës) lived only one hundred or two hundred years before Dante. Modern readers might wonder at the inclusion of medieval non-Christians among the virtuous pagans of antiquity, but the three just mentioned were among the non-Christians respected, particularly during the Middle Ages.
121. Electra was the daughter of Atlas, the mother of Dardanus, and the founder of Troy; thus, her followers include all members of the Trojan race. She should not be confused with Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, the character in plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
122. Among Electra’s descendants are Hector, the eldest son of Priam, king of Troy, and Aeneas (cf. Canto I, 73-75; and Canto II, 13-24).
123. Julius Caesar proclaimed himself the first emperor of Rome after defeating numerous opponents in civil conflicts.
I saw Camilla and Penthesilea; across the way I saw the Latian King, with Lavinia, his daughter, by his side. | 126 |
I saw the Brutus who drove out the Tarquin; Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia; off, by himself, I noticed Saladin, | 129 |
and when I raised my eyes a little higher I saw the master sage of those who know, sitting with his philosophic family. | 132 |
All gaze at him, all pay their homage to him; and there I saw both Socrates and Plato, each closer to his side than any other; | 135 |
Democritus, who said the world was chance, Diogenes, Thales, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Zeno, and Heraclitus; | 138 |
124-126. For Camilla see Canto I, note on line 107. Penthesilea was the glamorous queen of the Amazons who aided the Trojans against the Greeks and was slain by Achilles during the conflict. King Latinus commanded the central region of the Italian peninsula, the site where Aeneas founded Rome. He gave Lavinia to the Trojan conqueror in marriage.
127-129. Outraged by the murder of his brother and the rape (and subsequent suicide) of his sister (Lucretia), Lucius Brutus incited the Roman populace to expel the Tarquins, the perpetrators of the offenses. This accomplished, he was elected first consul and consequently became the founder of the Roman Republic. The four women were famous Roman wives and mothers. Lucretia was the wife of Collatinus; Julia the daughter of Julius Caesar and wife of Pompey; Marcia the second wife of Cato of Utica (in the
Convivio
Dante makes her the symbol of the noble soul); and Cornelia the daughter of Scipio Africanus Major and mother of the Gracchi, the tribunes Tiberius and Caius. A distinguished soldier, Saladin became sultan of Egypt in 1174. Medieval opinion of Saladin was favorable; he was lauded for his generosity and his magnanimity.
131. To Dante, Aristotle represented the summit of human reason, that point which man could reach on his own without the benefit of Christian revelation.
137. Diogenes was the Cynic philosopher who believed that the only good lies in virtue secured through self-control and abstinence. Anaxagoras was a Greek philosopher of the Ionian school (500-428 B.C.). Among his famous students were Pericles and Euripides. Thales (ca. 635-ca. 545 B.C.), an early Greek philosopher born at Miletus, founded the Ionian school of philosophy and in his main doctrine maintained that water is the elemental principle of all things.
I saw the one who classified our herbs: Dioscorides I mean. And I saw Orpheus, Tully, Linus, Seneca the moralist, | 141 |
Euclid the geometer, and Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, and Averroës, who made the Commentary. | 144 |
I cannot tell about them all in full; my theme is long and urges me ahead, often I must omit things I have seen. | 147 |
The company of six becomes just two; my wise guide leads me by another way out of the quiet into tempestuous air. | 150 |
I come into a place where no light is. |
140. Dioscorides was a Greek natural scientist and physician of the first century A.D. Orpheus was a mythical Greek poet and musician whose lyrical talent was such that it moved rocks and trees and tamed wild beasts.
141. Tully was Marcus Tullius Cicero, celebrated Roman orator, writer, and philosopher (106—43 B.C.). Linus was a mythical Greek poet and musician who is credited with inventing the dirge. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. -A.D. 65) followed the philosophy of the Stoics in his moral treatises. Dante calls him “the moralist” to distinguish him from Seneca the tragedian, who was thought (erroneously) during the Middle Ages to be another person.
142. Euclid was a Greek mathematician (ca. 300 B.C.) who wrote a treatise on geometry that was the first codification and exposition of mathematical principles. Ptolemy was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and geographer. The universe, according to the Ptolemaic system (which was accepted by the Middle Ages), so named although he did not invent it, had the earth as its fixed center encircled by nine spheres.
143. Hippocrates was a Greek physician (ca. 460-377 B.C.) who founded the medical profession and introduced the scientific art of healing. Galen was a celebrated physician (ca. A.D. 130-ca. 200) who practiced his art in Greece, Egypt, and Rome. Avicenna (or Ibn-Sina) was an Arabian philosopher and physician (A.D. 980-1037) who was a prolific writer.
144. Ibn-Rushd, called Averroës (ca. A.D. 1126-ca. 1198), was a celebrated Arabian scholar born in Spain. He was widely known in the Middle Ages for his commentary on Aristotle, which served as the basis for the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.
F
ROM
L
IMBO
Virgil leads his ward down to the threshold of the Second Circle of Hell, where for the first time he will see the damned in Hell being punished for their sins. There, barring their way, is the hideous figure of Minòs, the bestial judge of Dante’s underworld; but after strong words from Virgil, the poets are allowed to pass into the dark space of this circle, where can be heard the wailing voices of the Lustful, whose punishment consists in being forever whirled about in a dark, stormy wind. After seeing a thousand or more famous lovers
—
including Semiramis, Dido, Helen, Achilles, and Paris
—
the Pilgrim asks to speak to two figures he sees together. They are Francesca da Rimini and her lover, Paolo, and the scene in which they appear is probably the most famous episode of the
Inferno.
At the end of the scene, the Pilgrim, who has been overcome by pity for the lovers, faints to the ground.
This way I went, descending from the first into the second round, that holds less space but much more pain—stinging the soul to wailing. | 3 |
There stands Minòs grotesquely, and he snarls, examining the guilty at the entrance; he judges and dispatches, tail in coils. | 6 |
By this I mean that when the evil soul appears before him, it confesses all, and he, who is the expert judge of sins, | 9 |
knows to what place in Hell the soul belongs; the times he wraps his tail around himself tell just how far the sinner must go down. | 12 |
4. Minòs was the son of Zeus and Europa. As king of Crete he was revered for his wisdom and judicial gifts. For these qualities he became chief magistrate of the underworld in classical literature. (See Virgil,
Aeneid
VI, 432-433.) Although Dante did not alter Minòs’ official function, he transformed him into a demonic figure, both in his physical characteristics and in his bestial activity.
The damned keep crowding up in front of him: they pass along to judgment one by one; they speak, they hear, and then are hurled below. | 15 |
“O you who come to the place where pain is host, ” Minos spoke out when he caught sight of me, putting aside the duties of his office, | 18 |
“be careful how you enter and whom you trust it’s easy to get in, but don’t be fooled!” And my guide said to him: “Why keep on shouting? | 21 |
Do not attempt to stop his fated journey; it is so willed there where the power is for what is willed; that’s all you need to know. ” | 24 |
And now the notes of anguish start to play upon my ears; and now I find myself where sounds on sounds of weeping pound at me. | 27 |
I came to a place where no light shone at all, bellowing like the sea racked by a tempest, when warring winds attack it from both sides. | 30 |
The infernal storm, eternal in its rage, sweeps and drives the spirits with its blast: it whirls them, lashing them with punishment. | 33 |
When they are swept back past their place of judgment, then come the shrieks, laments, and anguished cries; there they blaspheme God’s almighty power. | 36 |
I learned that to this place of punishment all those who sin in lust have been condemned, those who make reason slave to appetite; | 39 |
31-32. The
contrapasso
or punishment suggests that lust (the “infernal storm” is pursued without the light of reason (in the darkness).
and as the wings of starlings in the winter bear them along in wide-spread, crowded flocks, so does that wind propel the evil spirits: | 42 |
now here, then there, and up and down, it drives them with never any hope to comfort them— hope not of rest but even of suffering less. | 45 |
And just like cranes in flight, chanting their lays, stretching an endless line in their formation, I saw approaching, crying their laments, | 48 |
spirits carried along by the battling winds. And so I asked, “Teacher, tell me, what souls are these punished in the sweep of the black wind?” | 51 |
“The first of those whose story you should know, ” my master wasted no time answering, “was empress over lands of many tongues; | 54 |
her vicious tastes had so corrupted her she licensed every form of lust with laws to cleanse the stain of scandal she had spread; | 57 |
she is Semiramis, who, legend says, was Ninus’ wife as well as his successor; she governed all the land the Sultan rules. | 60 |
The next is she who killed herself for love and broke faith with the ashes of Sichaeus; and there is Cleopatra, who loved men’s lusting. | 63 |
See Helen there, the root of evil woe lasting long years, and see the great Achilles, who lost his life to love, in final combat; | 66 |
64. Helen of Troy.
65-66. Enticed by the beauty of Polyxena, a daughter of the Trojan king, Achilles desired her to be his wife, but Hecuba, Polyxena’s mother, arranged a counterplot with Paris so that when Achilles entered the temple for his presumed marriage, he was treacherously slain by Paris.