In the middle of life's journey, somehow I lost my way and strayed deep into dark woods. It's almost beyond words how wild, how thorny and impassable that valley was. It was bitter as death -- my terror returns as I remember--but I'll tell you what I saw because it led to good.

I was so beat that I never knew where I dropped from the path, but in that cheerless dark at the end of a long ravine, suddenly there I was at the foot of a mountain. When I looked up I could see its shoulders bathed in the light that warms our way, and it began to melt the fears of that miserable night.

Broken, like a sailor washed ashore who lies wasted yet still gaping in awe at the deadly deep, I stared back as if drawn to the grim crossing that parts all from life. It was not long, however, before I started up the barren slope, with each step of my right foot planted higher on the downhill side. Day was breaking, the sun beginning to rise in Aries, among those stars that lit the young universe, the hour and sweet spring season lifting my spirits.

Yet hope was misplaced. Hardly had I left the bottom of the slope when I was startled by a dapple leopard that would not let me pass. No matter how many times I backed down from her and then tried to return uphill again, always she was there blocking my way ahead. Then a starving lion lurched up before my face, and clawed the air so brutally that it seemed enraged. When a third beast showed herself, a lean and hungry she-wolf that looked as if she had ruined many, I quit the climb, my courage gone. She charged at me again and again, and drove me down with tormented thoughts.

Canto I: 61-111 Dante meets a shade of Virgil

As I returned into the depths of the dark valley, a faint figure glided into the emptiness before me. I cried out: "Pity me, whoever you are--man or shadow!"

His voice was hoarse, as if from long silence: "No, no man but once a man. Yes, my people were Lombards, of Mantua. In the days of Julius Caesar was I born. I lived in Rome under the reign of good Augustus, but they were times of false and lying gods, and I made poems: I sang of Anchises' devout son Aeneas, who left the ashes of heroic Troy. But you, why do you haunt this place of sorrow? Why not climb the mountain of joy?"

I was humbled. My voice trembled. "Are you Virgil? That great spring of language? You glory and light to poets, my first teacher, I owe all of my art to you! I learned and copied your charming way of singing--and may it help me now! Look there! That's what drives me down here!" I wept. "Save me from that beast of terror!"

"To escape this wilderness," he said, "go another way. None may pass this mad creature here, but she jumps all, kills all, and after each feeding craves more. She lays all kinds, too, and she will keep it up until at last the Greyhound runs her down--not for money but simply for the sake of truth, love and decency. Though born between Feltro and Feltro, he will save all of lower Italy, for which the maid Camilla, Euryalus, Nissus and Turnus died of wounds. He will hunt the she-wolf from city to city, until she is driven back to hell, where envy first released her into the world.

Canto I: 112-136 Virgil will guide Dante

"Follow me," he said. "I will show you the path beyond time. You will see ancient souls in endless pain, hear them cry in despair for final rest. Then you will climb a burning mountain where souls are content in the flames, because they hope to arrive among the blessed some day, whenever it may be. After that, if you want to climb further, another guide will be sent to you, a worthier spirit than I am. The emperor above forbids me to enter his city because I did not obey his law. He is lord of all the land, sea and air, but he holds his court on high and rules from the highest throne. Blessed are they who are chosen to enter there!"

I said to him: "Poet, by that God you did not know, guide me as you have said. Lead me out of this evil place to the Gate of St. Peter."

He started off in silence, and I followed after him . . .

Canto II

Canto II: 1-42 Dante’s doubts his fitness for the journey

Daylight was departing. As I anticipated the lonely, piteous journey that true memory now will recall, umber dusk was calling earth's creatures from their labors to rest.

O Muses, high genius, help me! O memory, recorder of what I saw, show your true character and help me!

So I began: "Poet, be my guide. Look at me: tell me if I am fit, before you trust me on this steep passage way. Your Aeneas passed over into the eternal world while he was yet in his corruptible flesh and mortal senses. God well may have favored him since he was to become a father to great Rome, and her empire in the heavens. Through the mysteries that he saw, Aeneas laid a foundation for the holy seat and for the successors of great Peter's throne. Even the chosen vessel Paul followed after him to Rome, bringing confirmation that faith is the only way to eternal life. But me? Why me? Who will believe me? I am not Aeneas; I am not Paul. Nobody is going to believe that I saw eternity. It's crazy for me to go. I'm not choosing my words too well, but you see what I mean."

Like one unwishing his wishes, full of afterthoughts, I held back on the dark slope.

Canto II: 43-93 Virgil's mission from Beatrice

The great shadow replied: "You're afraid--I see it in your eyes. Fear strikes men and horses with phantom dangers that shy them away from honorable acts. Take courage, man! Hear why I have appeared to you, and why I will stay to help you.

"I was in Limbo when a lady called to me, a lady so blessed and beautiful that I begged her to command me. Her eyes shone brightly as the stars of heaven, and she began to speak softly in a musical, angelic voice: ‘Noble Mantuan, whose songs still live on earth, and will last until all motion ceases in the skies, onto a friendless shore my friend and fortune’s foe has strayed. Fears have turned him from the true path. Already he may be lost, as it is rumored in heaven. I'm afraid that I am too late. Fly to him quickly, and with your artful words counsel him for his relief, that I may be comforted. I am Beatrice, who sends you to him. I come from above, where I long to return, but love called me here to speak. When I am among the angels, I will sing your praises before my Lord.'

"Then she was silent, and I answered: 'Lady of grace, you raise humanity above all kinds that live beneath the circle of the moon. I understand you and obey. Your task so pleases me that I already should have finished it. But how do you dare to descend here into this pit and leave behind the wide heaven of your joy?'

She replied: 'I'll tell you. The only things to be feared are those that have the power to harm. Because of God’s mercy, suffering does not hurt me. The burning flame has no power over me.

Canto II: 94-120 Lucia is sent to Beatrice

"There is a gentle lady in heaven, who from love toward my friend directed Lucia, who opposes all cruelty, to carry out her request. She said: 'Your faithful one is in need. In his troubles I commend him to you.'

"Lucia rose and came instantly to the place where I sat with Rachel of old. Lucia said: 'Beatrice, God’s true praise, why don't you help him, who loved you so much that he left everybody else for you? Don't you hear how he mourns? Don't you see how he struggles beside the river of death, more fearful than any ocean?'

'When I heard Lucia speak, no soul on earth was ever as quick to search for good, or to run from harm, as I to descend to you from my blessed seat. I put my trust in your true speech, that honors you and all those who hear it.' She turned away to hide a tear that urged me to come instantly to you, and so I saved you from that beast that blocked the quick way up mountain.'

Canto II: 121-142 Dante is persuaded to go

"So what's your problem?" the poet asked me. "Why hold back? Fear not: I say that three blessed ladies in the courts of heaven above watch over you. I swear that great good awaits you."

As flowers wilted in the night stand up again with the morning sun and spread their petals wide to receive the warm light, so my drooping spirits rose. Zeal flooded through my veins as if I had been born again. "Blessed is that Lady of pity, and blessed are you who came to my aid so quickly at her command. Your words have revived me. Lead on, my guide, my lord and master, for the two of us now are one."

He turned as I spoke, and I followed at his back on that hard, dangerous path.

Canto III

Canto III: 1-21 The gate of hell

       I AM THE WAY TO THE CITY OF SORROW,
       THE WAY TO ETERNAL PAIN,
       THE WAY TO PUNISHMENT.

        JUSTICE MOVED MY HIGH MAKER
      BUILDING WITH DIVINE POWER,
      SUPREME WISDOM AND FIRST LOVE.

      BEFORE ME, THERE WAS NOTHING,
      AND I WILL LAST FOREVER:
      ABANDON HOPE, YOU THAT ENTER HERE.

I saw these hard words cut in stone above a gate, and I asked the teacher to interpret their meaning.

He answered wisely: "Put your mistrust behind you--end your fears. This is the place that I told you about. Here you will see the sorrowful people who have lost the good of intellect." He extended a reassuring glance and led me by the hand through the gate toward the mysteries beyond.

Canto III: 22-69 The uncommitted souls

Sighs, groans, and wails now pierced the starless air, so that soon I began to weep. A confusion of tongues and strange accents sounded in pain and anger. Voices deep and hoarse and shrill, with the sounds of blows intermingled, roiled in the dirty air, like sand spiraling in a whirlwind. I said: "Teacher, I'm surrounded by turmoil. Whose griefs are making this relentless stir?"

He answered: "Outsiders who lived without commitment. Their neutral souls mix here with the angels that stood only for themselves, undecided, neither rebellious nor faithful to the deity. To keep her beauty, heaven put them out, but hell could not receive them, since it would have been improved by their presence."

I asked further: "Teacher, what makes them groan? What's their punishment?"

He replied: "The less said about them the better. They have no hope of death, and they envy the fate of all other souls. Their lives were so empty that the world records no mention of them. Mercy and justice give them no name. Speak no more of them, but look and keep moving."

I saw a banner twirling around and around in the mist, without any rest, and behind it followed endless mournful columns of souls in pain. Who knew that death had undone so many?

I recognized a few among them, including the spirit of that coward who made 'the great refusal.' I realized at once that this was a parade of outcasts, estranged from God and also from God's enemies. These wretches never truly had lived, and they were not alive now, and yet they fled naked from swarms of wasps and hornets that tortured them more, the more they fled, and that made their faces stream with blood and pus that dribbled down to their feet, mixed with their tears, to be eaten by foul worms and maggots.

Canto III: 70-99 Charon, ferryman of the Acheron

As I looked further ahead, I saw a crowd by the bank of a great river, so I asked: "Teacher, I can hardly see in this infected light. What souls are those before us? And what makes them so anxious to cross over?"

The sage replied: "You'll see soon enough when we stand on the beach of Acheron." I could see that I had asked too many questions. I lowered my eyes in shame and continued on beside him in silence until we had reached the water's edge.

A barge drew near to us at the shore. The elderly pilot with hoary white hair shouted: "Joylessness to you, everybody! Never again hope to see the light! All aboard for everlasting darkness, fire and ice!" Then he looked straight at me: "Hey, you there, live one, get away from these stiffs! They're dead."

He fumed when I didn't move. "You can't cross here! Go away, find another port somewhere! Do you think my boat can float all of that ballast of yours?"

But my guide said to him: "Charon, calm yourself. He is meant to be here. Ask no more."

The bearded ferryman of the ancient marsh made no reply. There were wheels of flame round his eyes.

Canto III: 100-136 The souls by the shore of Acheron

When they heard Charon's cruel words, the naked and weary dead grew more pale and gnashed their teeth. Weeping in despair, they blasphemed God, blamed humankind in general, and cursed their parents, their place and time of birth, and the sperm and egg of their conception. They were headed for the further shore that awaits all those who are fearless of God.

With demon eyes like burning coals, Charon gathers them in, one and all, and swats any stragglers with his oar. As autumn leaves fall, one after another, until the branch waves bare above the rustling ground, so fallen Adam's bad seeds drop down from the bank, one by one. Then they all float away over the dark stream like falcons lured by a call. And before they reach the far shore, another eager gang of dead already crowds the bank to catch the next boat.

"My son," the gentle teacher said, "from every country in the world, all of those who die in enmity with God assemble here to cross the river. They drive themselves to this place through the power of divine justice. What they should fear is what they desire--they yearn to be here. Good spirits do not pass this way. That is why Charon growled at you."

As soon as he stopped talking, the gloomy ground began to rumble and shake. I drench myself in sweat when I recall how the tear-soaked earth vented out a cloud of gas that flamed up into a red sky, and all of my senses were overpowered. I stumbled and crashed into darkness, like a man falling asleep.

Canto IV

Canto IV: 1-63 The First Circle: Limbo: The Pagans

A crack of thunder shattered my unconsciousness, as if someone had laid violent hands on me in the middle of a deep sleep. My eyes seemed refreshed, however, so I picked myself up to look around and find my bearings. I stood at the edge of a cliff dropping straight down into a desolate chasm! The abysmal pit below thundered continually, as if with a multitude of cries, but it was so deep, dark, and clouded that I could not see into it.

The poet spoke. "It's time to descend further--I'll go first, and you follow." His color was ash, deathly pale.

I said: "You're scared stiff! How can you expect me to follow you?"

He answered: "Afraid? I'm white with pity for those below, but we must go now. A long road lies ahead."

So he entered and led me into the first circle that surrounds the abyss. No tormented wailing greeted us here. The timeless air trembled only with sighs. They came from endless crowds of children, women, and men--all mourning but apparently free of torture.

The teacher said to me: "Why don't you ask what these shadows are? You ought to know, before we go any farther. They were sinless, but not baptized into your faith. They lived before anyone knew the right way to worship. I am one of these who suffer for our ignorance. We continue on and on in everlasting desire, without hope."

Sadness overwhelmed me when I heard his words. I thought how many persons of great worth must be suspended in this limbo. Yet I wondered how faith might make a difference, so I did ask a question: "Tell me, Teacher, were any people ever transferred from here to heaven, either through their own merit or because others of great merit saved them?"

He sensed the secret meaning of my careful question, and he answered: "I was a newcomer here when a great one arrived crowned with the sign of victory. He took away with him the shade of our first father Adam, also his son Abel, and Noah, and the lawgiver Moses, the patriarch Abraham, King David, Jacob with his father and his children, and Rachel, for whom Jacob labored so long, and also many others, and all of these were blessed. But I want you to know that no souls were saved before these.

Canto IV: 64-105 The Princes of Poetry

We kept moving as he talked, and soon we entered a region thick with souls crowded together like saplings in a woodlot. We had not gone far from where I slept, when I could see a distant flame that revealed a hemisphere of shadows. As we came closer to that glow, I began to realize what noble people these must be: "Master of Arts and Sciences, whose souls are these, that enjoy so much more honor than all the rest here?"

He replied: ‘Their honors on earth are favored in heaven." Suddenly, as he spoke, an announcement rang out: "Honor the Prince of Poets: he returns again to us. He is come."

Then I could see four mighty ghosts, without apparent sadness or happiness, marching solemnly towards us. As they approached, the Teacher whispered to me: "Take note of him, with a sword in hand, who comes in front of the other three, as if he were their lord. That is Homer, the king of poets! Next comes Horace the satirist, then Ovid is third, and last is Lucan. Each of these is worthy, with me, to be called a prince of poets, so that the honor they show to me also honors them."

Thus I saw gathered together in one place the great masters of the noble school whose songs soar, like eagles, above all others. When they had consulted one another for a moment, they turned to welcome me, at which my teacher smiled. They honored me further by inducting me into their circle, so that I made a sixth among that wise company.

Together, all of us went on toward the light, while we discussed topics that need not be repeated now, though they seemed appropriate then.

Canto IV: 106-129 The lords and ladies on the green

We came to a great castle, surrounded by seven towering walls and a pleasant brook encircling all. With the sages I crossed over this moat as if it were solid earth, and we entered through seven gates to arrive at a fresh green meadow. The people there were majestic, with calm and solemn looks, speaking seldom and then only softly. We six withdrew to a bright and open height to view souls on the green below. As the great spirits of the past were pointed out to me, I was thrilled to view their glory.

I saw Electra in a great crowd, amongst whom I knew Hektor, Aeneas and falcon-eyed Caesar, fully armed. I saw Camilla and the Amazon queen Penthesilea across the field, and the Latin King Latinus, with his daughter Lavinia seated by his throne. I saw the good Brutus who expelled the Tarquin, then Lucretia, Julia, Marcia and Cornelia. I also saw Saladin, by himself apart from the others.

Canto IV: 130-151 The philosophers and scientists

When I lifted my eyes a little higher, I saw the master of those who know, amongst the great souls of philosophy. All around him in his circle honored him. There I saw Socrates and Plato, nearer at his side than any of the rest. Democritus I saw, who ascribes the world to chance, Diogenes and with him Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Zeno. I saw the good collector of healing plants--Dioscorides, I mean--and I saw Orpheus, Cicero, Linus, and Seneca the moralist, Euclid the geometer, and Ptolemaeus, Hippocrates, Avicenna, Galen, and Averrhoes, who wrote the vast commentary.

I cannot take time now to tell about all of them. My long story forces me to keep moving along, so that my words sometimes must fall short of the reality.

The company of six is reduced again to two. My guide leads me by another path out of that serenity into the roaring air of hell. I pass out of the light into a region where nothing shines.

Canto V

Canto V: 1-51 The Second Circle:
Minos: The Lustful

I went down into the second circle, a much tighter space clogged with dead in such a jam of agony that they howl like one undivided herd. In the entranceway is the judgment seat of Minos who snarls at the throngs of stiffs that crowd before him, a bigass worm.

Each of them is processed in an identical way. Each, in turn, steps up and unburdens its inmost secrets to him, but when he has heard its confession, he grins and winds up his serpentine tail with as many writhing coils as he finds correct. Then he shakes his butt a little and, whack! he uncocks the verdict with a stinging lash. As the victim is whipped headlong into the abyss and freefalls down toward whatever hell hole justice requires, all of the others swarm to take its place in line. They can't wait to tell their stories.

Nothing gets past Minos: he noticed us and stayed his proceedings. "Hey," he bellowed at me, "whats you doin? You could get slammed nosin roun here! It ain't so nice on the inside, man! Gets you home and come back later."

My guide interrupted him: "No more from you! This man is meant to enter. What is meant to be, shall be. Say no more to him! Say nothing!"

Next I heard bitter sobbing, waves of weeping in darkness that soon roared around and overhead like great seas wracked by raging winds. The storm swept along big flocks of ghosts, whirling and battering them, driving them up and down in crazy ballooning orbits past a whistling gap in the ruins through which we had stepped. As they whipped by us, the shadows wailed, yowled and cursed divine power.

I learned that it was the endless flight of those whose logic was controlled by lust: their souls are whirled around like starlings borne high aloft by winter's blasts in great wheeling flights. Forever darting here and there, tossed higher and lower, they have no rest or hope of relief. As they blow over, they squawk like flocks of cranes.

Canto V: 52-72 Virgil names the lovers

The voices quickly came and went in the black squall, and I had to shout over the uproar: "Teacher, who flies in the gale?"

He answered: "That first one was an empress over peoples of many languages. She was so lewd that she had to repeal the laws against the sex crimes that she committed. She's Semiramis. As you've read, she was the wife of Ninus, and succeeded him as ruler of the lands that the Sultan of Baghdad holds today.

"Next to her that's Dido who broke faith with Sichaeus' ashes and then killed herself for love. And there's that sex pot Cleopatra. Look: that's Helen, for whom the mills of war revolved for so long. And there's great Achilles who died with love of Polyxena . . . There's Paris and Tristan, too." He pointed out more than a thousand shadows of those who had died for love.

Canto V: 70-142 Paolo and Francesca

As he named all of these knights and famous ladies of old, I was overcome by heartache. Reeling in melancholy, I said: "Poet, I'd love to speak with those two up there who glide together so lightly on the wind."

"Watch them," he said. "When they pass by again, call to them in the name of love that brought them here, and they will not ignore you."

When the tumult pushed them around to us again, I called them in a pitying voice: "Weary ones, please take a break and speak to me, if you can!"

My cry moved them. From on high in Dido's soaring crowd, the pair turned to us and swooped down through the bad air like mating doves that glide on bittersweet desire to their love-nest. Then the lady spoke: "Live one, pilgrim to our purple heaven, it's kind of you to visit us whose blood has stained the earth. If the King of the Universe were still our friend, we would make him send peace to you, because you pity us. We will stay and chat while the wind allows. Ask us anything that you want.

"I was born by the shore near the mouth of the River Po and its murmuring streams. Love quickly seizes a gentle heart, and it seized my lover with a passion for the sweet body that now I have lost. Love permits no loved one not to love, and it seized me with such hot desire for him that it will never leave me, as you see. Love led us to one death. Our murderer is awaited in the place of Caïn, in the ninth circle."

As I listened to their sad story, it weighed on me. The poet asked me why I hung my head so low, and I told him what I was thinking: "Oh, what sweet desire, what irresistible young longing brought these two lovers such suffering?"

Then I turned to those shadows again: "Francesca, your torment grieves me. I melt in sorrow because of your pain. How did love lure you into his dangerous paradise?"

She replied: "For one in misery there's no greater pain than the memory of happy times, as your guide knows. But if you must hear how our love began, I will weep again and tell you. Purely for pleasure one day, we read the romance of Lancelot and how love conquered him. We were alone and innocent, never suspecting what would happen next. As we read, our eyes began to meet, and soon we started to blush and grow pale, but then in a single moment the story undid us. When we came to the part where that lover kissed his beloved, my soul mate all trembling kissed my lips. That book was a pandering Galeotto. That day we read no further."

As she spoke, her companion moaned so that I was overcome with sympathetic tears. I went limp and drooped to the ground as if I had died.

Canto VI

Canto VI: 1-33 Third Circle: Cerberus: The gluttons

Those two kind spirits had stunned me with such total grief that I had swooned, but when my senses returned, I found new torments and new tormented souls all around me, wherever I turned. I was in the third circle, in an eternal, accursed, cold, heavy downpour. Huge hail stones and foul water, mixed with dirty sleet, fall ceaselessly from the murky air.

The souls wallowing in that putrid-smelling mire are tormented by Cerberus, a cruel monster with three throats that bark like dogs. Its eyes are red, its beard gruesome and black, its belly swollen to enormous size, and its paws clawed to clutch, flay and quarter its prey. Each victim also howls like a dog, when it twists in the rain and miserably tries to protect one naked side of its body with the other.

When Cerberus saw us, it shook its huge serpent body in fury, and opened all of its mouths, showing lots of fangs. My guide reached down to the ground, grasped full fistfuls of filth, and hurled them, again and again, into the ravenous jaws. Like a dog that suddenly grows silent when it begins to gnaw a bone, so Cerberus then was muzzled, and we heard no more of the thunderous growling and barking that made the spirits wish that they were deaf.

Canto VI: 34-63 Ciacco, the glutton.

We passed over souls that lay still in the rain, each of our steps treading on a soul that felt lumpy like a body. All of them lay flat in the mire, except one that suddenly sat upright as we passed by. He spoke to me: "You that are led through this inferno, you were born before I died. Remember me if you can."

I answered him: "I don't remember anybody in a mess like yours. Others are punished more severely here, but nobody's punishment is more disgusting. Who are you?"

And he said: "My sty in life was your Florence, your city overflowing with envy. You people called me Ciacco, and gluttony brought me here to lie the rain, but I'm not alone. All of the other pigs here are punished like me."

I answered him: "Ciacco, yes! Sure. Well I'm so sorry for you that I could cry, but tell me, if you can, what will happen to those good Florentines--if you will call any of them good! Why can't they live in peace with each other? Why are they tearing the city apart?"

Canto VI: 64-93 Ciacco's prophecy of Florence

He answered: "It will come to bloodshed. The Whites will drive out the Blacks, but then within three suns the Blacks will return in triumph, by the power of him who plays both sides. They will hold the head high for a long time, hard-hearted, shameless, weighing down their rivals under heavy oppression. Two of their number are just, but nobody listens to them. Pride, envy and avarice are the three burning coals that have set all hearts on fire."

Here he paused in his sad prophecy, and I urged him to continue: "Tell me more. Where are Farinata and Tegghiaio, who were worthy enough, and Jacopo Rusticucci, along with Arrigo and Mosca, and the rest who set their minds on doing good. Are they now in heaven or hell?"

‘You may see all of them if you sink deep enough," he replied. ‘They're among the vilest here, weighed down to the bottom by their crimes. But when you return to the sweet world again, please remember me to everybody. I will say no more, and more I will not answer."

He looked at me for a moment with an oddly fixed gaze. Then he bent his head and sank back down among his blind companions.

Canto VI: 94-115 Virgil speaks of Doomsday

My guide said to me: "He will not rise again until the heavenly trumpet sounds, when the power comes to oppose evil. All of these spirits then will revisit their graves, resume their flesh and form, and hear their eternal judgment."

With slow steps we passed through the foul brew of rain and shadows, and we spoke a little of the future life. I asked: "Teacher, will these torments increase after the great judgment, will they lessen, or will they stay the same?"

He replied: "Remember what science says: the more perfect a body is, the more it feels pleasure and pain. These doomed ones never will reach the joy of true perfection, but their pain will become more perfect hereafter."

We circled along that road, speaking of much more than I repeat, until we came to another place of descent, where we found Plutus, the god of wealth, the great enemy of humankind.

Canto VII

Canto VII: 1-39 The Fourth Circle: Plutus: The Greedy

‘Pape Satan, pape Satan, aleppe,’ Plutus croaked in fury, but my gentle guide understood everything and reassured me, saying: ‘Don't worry about him. He has no power stop you.’ Then he turned to that face swollen with madness and said: ‘Peace, evil wolf! Eat your insides, in your rage. Heaven sends us on this dismal trail into the deep, following the way of the angels beaten down by Michael.’

Like a sail, bellying in the wind, when it collapses into a heap after the mast has broken, so the cruel creature sagged to ground and deflated at our feet.

Into that dismal pit of all depressions, we climbed down into the fourth circle. It seemed as if there were many more souls in this circle than in those above. How can I begin tell all of the pain and suffering I saw there? Holy Justice! How our sins wreck us!

They were divided into two teams and forced to dance like waves from Charybdis, striking the counter-waves that rise against them. They put their shoulders against big barrels and shoved them around, slamming the great loads against each other and then wheeling around and rolling back the reverse way, one side howling ‘Miser, why do you hoard?’ and the others countering ‘Waster, why do you spend?’

So these maniacs jousted over and over along the gloomy ring, from the right and left to collide in the center, and then to revolve away again, always returning in the same half-circles, always screaming the same insults at each other. I felt a sudden pain in my heart, and I said: ‘Master, tell me who these people are--and whether those tonsured ones over there, to our left, were churchmen.’

Canto VII: 40-66 The misers vs. the prodigals

He replied: ‘They were bald priests, Popes and Cardinals, most twisted by greed. In life, their minds were deformed by possessions--wild spenders on the one side and scrimping cheapskates on the other. You hear how they bellow at each other, though their needs are complementary.’

‘Master,’ I said, ‘I should know at least a few in this gang.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Because they lived in ignorance, they are now incapable of being known. They will butt against each other forever until these misers rise from their graves with grasping fists, and those prodigals come up shorn of even the little hair that they now have left. Useless saving, and useless spending, robbed them of their time, and left them with the business that you now see as well as I do. Men may brawl and swindle their way into Lady Fortune's favors, but she deceives them. Not all of the gold that is, or ever was, could buy any of these exhausted wretches a single moment's rest.’

‘Tell me more about this Lady Fortune,’ I said. ‘Who is she that holds the world's wealth?’

Canto VII: 67-99 Virgil describes Lady Fortune

‘Fools all, blind in ignorance, now listen carefully to me! The king whose wisdom is infinite made the heavens and gave them ruling powers, so that the eternal light would fall on all spheres equally. When he made the earth, he gave it for its ruler this Lady Fortune. She's the reason that all possessions on earth pass from nation to nation, and house to house, always in ceaseless change. No mortal can stop her wheel from spinning. No human thought foresees what she will spin. And so one people rules and others serve, all because of her whose wisdom is hidden from them like a snake in the grass.

‘She controls those on earth, as other immortal powers rule other worlds. She has to work fast because she has so many to make and break in so little time. People blame her spitefully, even when they have prospered and ought to sing her praises, but she does not hear anybody's curses as she sits in bliss and spins joyfully among the other primal spirits of the universe.

‘But now let us go down to greater misery. Already the stars are falling that were rising when we began. Our remaining time is short.’

Canto VII: 100-130 The Styx: approaching the Fifth Circle

We crossed over to the edge of the chasm and came to a boiling spring that pours down from a great crevice that it has worn in the ledge. Along side the dirty black water, a dark path sinks down among the rocks, and we followed it all the way to the bottom, where the stream ends in a dreary malignant swamp called Styx. On the surface I saw a swarm of muddy people in the quagmire, naked and raging. They battered each other with punches and kicks, and they head-butted and slammed and bit as if they would tear each other limb from limb.

My good Master said: ‘Son, there you see the aggressive spirits of those that live in anger, but where the water seems to be boiling up in misery, other souls are submerged and stuck in the slime down on the bottom, sighing: “We were terrified by the air that is sweetened in the sun, and as its glory shone, our hearts poured out nothing but somber smoke. Terrorized we were and terrorized now we lie stuck forever in this sludge.” They gargle this noise in their throats, as if they are singing without lyrics or music.’

So we circled on along the bank, and we watched the foul souls, some wallowing in the filth and the others swallowing it, until at last we came to the foot of a great tower.

Canto VIII

Canto VIII: 1-30 The Fifth Circle: Phlegyas: The Angry

I return to my story. We had seen the great tower long before we reached its base. High on top of it there were two beacon-flames. Another fire, far more distant, answered with faint signals through the mist. ‘I wonder what it's saying,’ I said. ‘And what the other light answers. Who is making those signals?’

The font of knowledge knew. ‘You can see there, approaching over the marsh, if the fog does not shroud it from you.’

No deadly arrow ever shot through the air so quickly as the prow of the little skiff that I saw darting toward us through the polluted waves. Its helmsman called angrily: ‘Are you here at last, damned spirit?’

My teacher said: ‘Phlegyas, Phlegyas, you waste your breath on this one. You can't keep us longer than the time it takes to cross the marsh.’

The mad fiend muttered with resentment, as if he had been cheated. My guide climbed down into his boat, and then motioned me to follow him. The hull settled down into the water only as I came aboard. We departed at once, the ancient prow plowing deeper into the water than it ever had before.

Canto VIII: 31-63 They meet Filippo Argenti

As we were crossing the dead swamp, a lump of slime rose up in front of me, and a voice cried out from within it: ‘Who are you that come here before your time?’

I answered: ‘I may be here--but not to stay. Who are you, covered in muck?’

‘You see that I am one who weeps.’

‘Dog of hell, weep and wail forever! I know you well enough, filthy as you are.’

He stretched out both hands toward the boat, but my protective Master shoved him off with few words: ‘Away, there, with the other dogs!’ Then he put his arms around my neck, kissed me on the cheek, and said: ‘Blessed be she who bore you, soul of righteous indignation. In life, this was an arrogant knave, so he's not remembered for any redeeming features at all, and his soul wallows in anger. How many living today, believing themselves to be mighty kings, will lie here like pigs in mire, leaving curses as their legacies!’

"Master," I said, "I hope to see him gag in this stew before we leave this place."

He replied: ‘You will see it before we go ashore! Your wish will be fulfilled.’

Not long after this, I saw a muddy swarm mangling him so that I gave God thanks and praise for it. All of them shouted: ‘Get Filippo Argenti!’ That Florentine dog bit himself in rage.

Canto VIII: 64-81 They approach the city of Dis

We left him there, so I'll say no more about him. I spun around, toward the sound of much more wailing ahead of us, and the Master said: ‘Now, my son, we approach the garrisoned city of Dis, with its swarms of sad citizens.’

‘Master, in the valley I can see its minarets. They glow red like embers smoldering after a fire bomb.’

‘They're red because huge underground fires burn below them,’ he explained.

We now reached the steep ditch that formed the moat around the joyless city. The walls looked to me as if they were made of iron. We made a wide circuit around and finally came to the entrance where the ferryman shouted at us: ‘This is it: get out!’

Canto VIII: 82-130 The fallen Angels block the way

I saw them perched above the gate, more than a thousand angels that had fallen like rain from glorious heaven. They roared in rage, as if to say: ‘Who is this that lives but dares to enter the place of the dead?’

My teacher signaled to them that he wished to speak privately with them, and they began to quiet down. One of them ordered: ‘Come on, but come alone. Tell your bold companion, who thinks he can get in here whenever he wants, to go back the same fool's way that he came. Only the dead get in here. Once they're in, they don't get out.’

Reader, you can imagine how those terrible words sank into my heart. I thought I might never return to the land of the living. I begged: ‘Dear Master, you have stood by me before, so don't leave me now! If they don't want us here, let's go back together to the daylight.’

But my guide and leader replied: ‘There's nothing to fear. Nothing can stop us: a great power gives us the right to pass. Wait here for me--and don't worry! I won't leave you wandering around alone down here.’

So the gentle old man goes, and leaves me in doubt, with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ splitting my heart between hope and fear. I did not hear his words to them, but suddenly the hoard that packed all around him broke away, howling and jostling, scrambling back into the city. They slammed the towering gate in his face, leaving him alone outside the wall.

He returned to me slowly. His eyes were downcast, his brows creased, and he muttered: ‘Who are they to forbid me to enter the house of pain? Well, it's distressing, but don't you worry.’ He paused but then continued, ‘We will go on, even if these devils try to stop us. Their arrogance is not new. They showed it before at hell gate, where you read the inscription tonight. Yet that gate was broken open in spite of them. Through that same entrance a great one passes even now. He descends down to us circle by circle. He needs no guide and at his touch every door must open.’

Canto IX

Canto IX: 1-33 Dante asks about precedents

My face lost its color when I saw my guide turned back at the gate, but oddly the color returned in his appearance. He stood there in an alert silence as if he were listening, unable to see so far through the fog of the dark night air. ‘Surely we were meant to pass this point,’ he began. ‘If not . . . . but help was promised! Oh, how long until our help arrives?’ His words started one way but then halted and reversed meaning, incoherently. The unfinished phrases scared me, but maybe I read too much into them.

‘Tell me, Master, do any of the souls in limbo, the souls who have everything but hope, do they ever descend into this place?’

He answered me. ‘It rarely happens that any of us makes this journey. Rarely, well, I do remember that I was down here, once before. Yes, I was conjured here by that cruel witch Erichtho, the one who reanimated corpses with their spirits. My flesh had been removed from me for only a short time when her spell made me enter through this very gate, to bring a spirit all the way back up from the circle of Judas. Of course, that's the deepest circle, the darkest and furthest from Heaven, and I was able to return from there all right. So you see, I know the way well enough. Be assured. The toxic marsh gas inhaled here makes it hard for us to enter this city without a fight. . .’

Canto IX: 34-63 The Furies and Medusa

If he said more, I do not remember because my attention was pulled away. On the high tower, where the horn-like pair of fire-beacons had been, there appeared in an instant three fiendish Furies, smeared with blood. They rose up with the limbs and heads of women, but tangles of green hydras wound around their waists for belts. They had adders for hair and horned vipers bound their foreheads.

My teacher knew these handmaids of the queen of eternal sorrow: ‘These are the awful Erinyes. That is Megaera on the left, the one that weeps. On the right is raving Alecto. Tisiphone is in the middle.’ That was all he said.

‘Let Medusa come,’ they called, and they looked down on me. ‘Let him turn to stone. Let him not go free like Theseus.’ As they chanted, each one beat her brows and clawed her bleeding breasts. They shrieked so that terror pressed me close to the poet.

‘Turn your back!’ my teacher shouted--and quickly twisted me away from them. ‘Cover your eyes, and keep them shut, or you'll never see daylight again. If you look at the Gorgon, you're a stone.’ Not trusting my hands to do the job, he wrapped his hands in a tight band over mine, hiding my eyes.

Canto IX: 64-105 The Messenger from Heaven

You intelligent people, please see the good sense hidden behind the weird mask of this story!

Now, over the dirty waves, came an awful crash, and the shores of hell trembled. It sounded like a tempest, born of the collision of freezing and burning winds, as they blast a forest and rip the limbs, and the exploded debris flies off in all directions, and animals and shepherds scatter in panic, driven by swirling clouds of stinging dust. The Master uncovered my eyes, and said: ‘Now look there, across to the swamp where the smoke is thickest.’

Like frogs churning a pond as they scatter from a snake, and try to hide in the depths by squatting on the bottom, more than a thousand ruined souls fled in front of one who crossed the Styx with dry feet. With his left hand he fanned the noxious air away from his nose in annoyance. I thought that he must be a messenger from Heaven, and I was about to tell the Master, but he gestured at me to shut up and to bow.

Full of scorn, the presence reached the city gate, and tapped it with a wand. Instantly, it burst wide open! He stood on the dread threshold and spoke: ‘Exiles from heaven, how can this hatred still exist in you? Why continue to fight that which cannot be beaten? How can you win by opposing the inevitable? Each try only adds to your frustration. Your Cerberus still shows the scars on his necks from such futile resistance.’

Then he departed over the swamp in the same way that he had come. He said nothing to us, but seemed preoccupied by distant concerns. We approached the city without fear after his sacred speech.

Canto IX: 106-133 The Sixth Circle: Dis: The Heretics

We entered the open gate unopposed. As soon as we were inside the fortress, I looked around and saw punishments and new torments everywhere on a vast cemetery plain. As at Arles, where the River Rhone stagnates in marshes, or at Pula, beside the Gulf of Quarnaro that confines Italy with its coast, countless sepulchers were spread in all directions, but the tombs here were not places of rest. Cruel flames ringed them and made their walls red-hot, hotter than metal in a smithy's forge. The lids of all of the biers were loose, and pushed aside, so that the groans of the tortured spirits were not muted.

I asked: ‘Master, who's shut in the crypts calling out in so much pain?’

He replied: ‘Heresiarchs of all kinds, along with their followers. There are more of them than you may suspect, a number to each tomb. They are sorted by degrees: each sepulchre is fired to a different temperature.’ We turned to the right and walked between the torture chambers and the ramparts.

Canto X

Canto X: 1-21 Epicurus and his followers

As I followed my master on a dark path between the city walls and its tormented denizens, I asked: ‘Highest virtue, you have told me about the other circles that we have seen, but teach me about this one now, because I don't understand: why are these tombs open? Can we see the souls inside? The lids are raised, and no one stands guard.’

He answered: ‘All of these lids will be closed, and the tombs sealed forever when the souls return here from Jehoshaphat with their bodies restored to them. They include Epicurus and all who spread the false belief that the soul cannot live without the body! You will soon have an answer to your question about seeing them--and you will also have an answer to your real question, the private one that you keep to yourself.’

I said: ‘Good guide, nothing can be hidden from you. If I say little, it is because I am following your advice.’

Canto X: 22-51 Farinata degli Uberti

‘You, Tuscan, who dares to breathe in this burning town, wait a minute! Your speech betrays your birthplace as that noble city that I unsettled too much.’

These words burst from one of the vaults. I bolted in terror to cling to my guide. ‘What's the matter with you?’ he said. ‘Turn around. Look who has raised himself! It's Farinata, from the middle up.’

I had seen him already. He had partly arisen and was sitting in his box as tall as he could, with chest puffed out as if in contempt of all beneath him. My guide shoved me past the sepulchers toward him, all the while cautioning that I must choose my words with care when speaking to this fellow. When we got as close to his tomb as I would be pushed to go, Farinata looked me over for a time, quite arrogantly, and finally he said: ‘Who could your ancestors have been?’

I did not try to hide the truth; I told him everything.

He arched his brows and boasted: ‘They were enemies to me, and to my family and to my party, and so I routed them out, not once but twice!’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘My people were forced out, but they returned twice, didn't they? Unlike your people and their party who returned only once upon a time . . . ’

Canto X: 52-72 Cavalcante Cavalcanti

Just as I was speaking, another shadow popped up behind Farinata in the tomb. This one was visible only down to the chin, so I guessed that maybe he was kneeling. He glanced all around me, as if anxious to see who was there behind me, and then he broke down weeping: ‘If you know in this prison of blindness, tell me: where is my son? Why isn't he here with you?’

His words and his punishment revealed to me who he was, and so I was able to answer him without any further questioning. ‘I was led here, though my guide is now behind me here. He's one that your Guido never cared for in his life.’

Suddenly, he shot up on his feet and cried: ‘Never . . . in his life? What did you say? Is my son dead? Can he not see the sweet daylight?’

I was a little slow to begin my answer to him, and abruptly he sank out of sight, and never showed himself again.

Canto X: 73-93 Farinata prophesies Dante’s exile

But the other one, who had called me to him, never turned his head or changed his expression. He continued to speak as though nothing had happened: ‘If my party has not returned, it burns me more than this bed! But soon you too will learn how hard it is to return. You will learn it before the infernal moon goddess, who rules us, fully shows herself fifty times! How can the city remain so hostile toward my family?’

I answered him: ‘Indictments against them are read in the churches. Everybody still remembers when the Arbia ran red with blood.’

He shook his head in protest: ‘I did not fight alone! We had good cause for what we did! And when my allies decided to demolish the city and put an end to her forever, I alone stood up against them and saved Florence.’

Canto X: 94-136 The prophetic power in hell

‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘may your family find peace. But there's still something I don't understand about you. How can you see the future if you don't know what's happening in the present?’

‘Call us farsighted,’ he explained. ‘The lord of light lets us foresee distant things, but as they approach and come into being we lose them in a glare. We know nothing about that which is, unless we are told, and on Doomsday we will lose our foreknowledge, too, when our lids are sealed forever.’

‘In that case,’ I said, feeling guilty, ‘please tell the one who fell down next to you just now that his son still lives. I was slow to answer his question a minute ago because I was so confused about your states of knowledge.’

My Master now was pulling me away, and so in haste I asked Farinata to tell me, as briefly as he could, who was sleeping with him. He said: ‘More than a thousand lie here with me, including Frederick the Second and Cardinal Ubaldini. I will say no more.’

With those words, he hid himself, but I was upset about his prediction of my future. ‘What's troubling you now?’ the ancient poet asked as I returned to him. Before I could tell him, he raised his finger at me and lectured: ‘You sorrow because of the dark things that have been forecast here, but listen more attentively to this prediction: you will rise in the radiance of that lady whose bright eyes see everything, and not before then will you completely know your destiny.’

We turned back to the left, away from the wall and toward the middle, and soon came to a trail above a valley of more foul gas, and the rank smell rose up to us.

Canto XI

Canto XI: 1-66 Virgil describes circles #7-9

Enormous broken boulders were strewn around the circular rim of a high bank. An overpowering stench welled up on breezes from the deep abyss and its fuming souls. We stopped there behind the shelter of a large monument with an inscription that said: ‘I hold Anastasius, that Photinus drew away from the true path.’

There the teacher said: ‘Before we go down there, we need to get used to the smell. Let's breathe here until we hardly notice it.’

‘That could take a while!’ I said. ‘What will we do to pass the time?’

He had an idea about that, he said, and he began to recite a lecture. ‘My son, below this wall of stone lie three smaller circles, similar to the larger ones that you are leaving. All three are packed with ghosts, but let me explain their problems so that you will know them when you see them.

‘The places below are set aside for malice, which means intent to harm others, by force or fraud. Those who cause harm by force lie immediately below us in the seventh circle, but that circle is subdivided into three rings because violence takes three different forms: there is violence against neighbors, violence against self, and violence against God. Let me define these types clearly for you.

‘Violence against neighbors includes killing or injuring others or destroying, burning or stealing their property. So, the first ring holds killers, muggers, thieves and robbers of all the various types.

‘Violence against self is punished in the second ring. Here are the suicides, gamblers who dissipate their wealth, and all those weep when they should be happy.

‘Violence against God includes blasphemy, atheism and contempt for nature and her good gifts. Accordingly, those who are bound in the smallest ring include those marked with the brand of Sodom and Cahors, together with all others who reject God.

‘Below these rings of violence, fraud gnaws the conscience. Fraud is especially hateful toward God, because it is uniquely human, so deceivers find themselves lying lowest and bearing the most pain. In the worst cases the victim trusts the defrauder, but in other cases there is no personal bond of trust. This latter, general kind of fraud is unnatural because it goes against the natural bond of all humanity. It is punished in the eighth circle, which holds all who are guilty of hypocrisy, sorcery, flattery, cheating, simony; pimping, corruption in public office, and similar cons.

‘The personal kind of fraud based on special relationships of trust is punished in the ninth and tightest circle, at the base of the universe, where Dis has his throne and every traitor is tormented forever.’

Canto XI: 67-93 Contrasting the upper circles, #1-6

I said: ‘Teacher, thank you for explaining the populations below, but what about those that we have seen already: those in the great swamp, those blowing in the wind, those beaten in the rain, those who bump together and howl? Why aren't they punished down here in the flaming city? If they are hateful toward God, then why aren't they cast down lower?’

He replied: ‘You haven't understood? Read the Ethics, where Aristotle describes the offending tendencies in the human spirit: incontinence, brutishness, and malice. Remember how he says that incontinence offends least and incurs least blame? If you hold this idea, and remember those who are punished in the circles that we have seen, you will realize why they are found in the higher circles and why their pain is less severe.’

Canto XI: 94-115 Virgil explains banking

I said: ‘O, the fog has lifted! You answer me so well that to have questions is better for me than to have understanding! So please clarify one more point of confusion, if you will. Return to what you mentioned a moment ago about money lending. What's wrong with that?’

He answered: ‘Philosophy reasons that divine intelligence directs all of the artistry of nature. Human arts then imitate nature, as well as they can, like students following their teacher, as Aristotle says near the start of the Physics. In this sense, human arts should be like the grandchildren of God. People must use these arts to earn their daily bread, as it says in the beginning of the Book of Genesis, and yet the money lender does no such work. Unearned income is unnatural and therefore ungodly.

‘But now it's time to go. The great bear in Caurus can see the fish quivering low on the horizon. The way down over the cliff lies ahead.’

Canto XII

Canto XII: 1-27 Guardian of the 7th circle: the Minotaur

Over the edge, an enormous rock slide led down through a desolate mountainous terrain that was appalling to see. It resembled the lifeless slope of stone that tumbles down to the left bank of the River Adige, all of the way to Trent, the result of some massive earthquake. A few of the shattered boulders appeared to form a very rough stairway down, but the top step was guarded by the monster of Crete, the beastly Minotaur conceived on Pasiphaë when she disguised herself in wood as a cow.

When he saw us, he began to chew on himself insanely, as if to eat the rage within himself. My guide taunted him: ‘Are you afraid that the Duke of Athens has returned? Get out of here, you monster! This man has not been seduced by your sister Ariadne to kill you. He comes here only to observe your torture.’

For a moment the Minotaur shuddered, like a bull when it receives the fatal blow and loses control of its motion, plunging here and there. My guide cried: ‘Run quickly now, while he's stunned!’

I started down over the rubble of rocks that often shifted beneath my feet, from the unaccustomed weight. My master could see that I was full of wonder. ‘What about these fallen rocks? The last time I was down here, the cliff still stood; this slide is more recent. I think that this hateful valley must have shook, just before the great ones were rescued from the first circle. The whole earth seemed to tremble at that time, and so maybe that's when these ancient rocks broke free and tumbled.

‘But look now, down in the valley. We are close to the river of boiling blood, where those who bled their fellow human beings now must swim.’

Canto XII: 49-99 The First Ring: The Centaurs: The Violent

Blind, mad desires drive us during our brief lives, and utterly sink us for all eternity! As my guide said, I saw a wide, winding canal circling the plain below. Running between its bank and the cliff were centaurs, a whole herd armed with weapons, as once upon a time they used to hunt upon the face of the earth.

They watched our descent, and as we came within range three of them stepped forward aiming bows and spears at us. One of these shouted from the distance: ‘What pain are you here for? Stop and answer, or I'll shoot!’

My teacher said: ‘Your anger still hurts you. We will speak to Chiron, there by your side.’

Then he explained to me: ‘That is Nessus, who was killed by Hercules for trying to rape fair Deianira; he used his own poisoned blood to revenge himself and kill his slayer. Next to him, in the center there, with his head bowed to his chest, is the great Chiron, who taught Achilles. The third one is Pholus, fiercest of all. They and thousands of their companions patrol the channel and shoot any of the ghosts that climb up out of the blood above the level of their guilt.’

The three drew near. With the notched end of an arrow, Chiron pushed his beard away from his lips, uncovering a huge mouth, and he observed to his companions: ‘Have you noticed that the one in the rear moves whatever he touches? The feet of dead men normally don't do that.’

My good guide now stood next to Chiron's chest, where the two parts of him join, and he replied: ‘He's alive, and he's here by necessity, not desire. I have come along only to show him the way. The lady who gave me this job sings Alleluias. He's no thief, and neither am I, so let one of your breed show us where the ford is, and carry this one across the river on his back, since he cannot fly like a spirit through the air.’

Chiron turned to his right, to Nessus, and ordered: ‘Guide them, and if another crew meets you, keep them off.’

Canto XII: 100-139 The Tyrants, Murderers and Warriors

Myself following our local guide and the poet following me, as he directed, we processed along the shore of that boiling bloody canal, where the ghosts roiled and shrieked. Some of the bathers were immersed up to their eyeballs, and the centaur commented: ‘These are tyrants who lived by killing and plunder, but now they beg for mercy. There's Alexander, and fierce Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse who brought so many years of pain to Sicily. Over there, that head of black hair is Azzolino, and the blonde one is Obizzo da Este, who was murdered by his stepson up in your world.’

A little further on, where people boiled in the blood up to their throats, Nessus paused to point out one of the spirits, apart by itself. ‘That one is Guy de Montfort, who in God’s house pierced that heart that is still venerated by the Thames.’

As we continued upstream I began to see souls that could hold their heads and upper bodies out of the bath, and I could name many of them. The flow gradually became shallower and shallower, until it cooked only the feet, and finally we came to the place of our ford across the ditch.

Before he left me and turned back across the stream, the centaur said: ‘You can see how the stream flows less and less on this side, but on the other side it rises more and more, until it comes again to the depths where the tyrants stew. There holy justice scorches Attila, the scourge of the earth; and Pyrrhus, and Sextus Pompeius; and it draws tears from Rinier da Corneto, and Rinier Pazzo, who terrorized the highways.’

Canto XIII

Canto XIII: 1-30 The Second Ring: The Harpies: The Suicides

Nessus had not yet reached the other bank when we entered a wood where no trail had been blazed. The foliage was much darker than green, almost black. With poisonous thorns poking out in all directions, the branches were twisted, gnarled, and fruitless, more thick and tangled than the lairs of beasts that hide in the rough Tuscan wilds between Cecina and Corneto. Those creatures with human faces and necks, but broad wings, large feathered bellies and clawed feet, Harpies fill that dark wilderness with mournful cries as terrifying as the prophecies of disaster that once drove the Trojans from the Strophades!

The kind teacher spoke. ‘This is the second ring, from this point until you come to the awful sands. I could tell you what's here, but you would not believe me.’

I heard sighs all around me, but I saw no one there. Were there people hiding behind the trees? The teacher said: ‘Break a little twig from any one of these branches, and you will see.’

Canto XIII: 31-78 The Wood of Suicides: Pier delle Vigne

I reached out to a large thorn bush and snapped off a stick. ‘Ouch! What are you doing!’ It shrieked, and dark blood oozed down the trunk. ‘What was that for? So what if we are bushes, or snakes, or anything else! We were human once, like you. You should be kind to us!’

Like a green branch that spits and hisses at one end while the other end burns, so the injured shrub bubbled out blood and sobs together. I had dropped the bloody piece in horror, and froze spooked, half-turned toward my guide.

He spoke to it. ‘If he had remembered my poem, he might not have torn into you, but you are too well camouflaged! I'm sorry that I let him hurt you, but he can repay you if you tell him a little something about yourself. When he returns to the sweet world up above, he can make you famous, you know.’

The bush replied: ‘All right. Yes, I've got a story for you. I'm Pier delle Vigne, or I was, the one who held the keys to Frederick's chest, so many keys that I, almost alone, unlocked all of its secrets. That was no ordinary job. It cost me a lot of sleep and then my life, too.

‘What finally made Augustus turn my honor into grief? That jade in Caesar’s household, that common whore in all great households: envy! My success stirred many inferior minds against me. In the end I could not take their insults. Their torture made me unjust to myself, even though I had never been unjust to anybody. I swear, by these roots of mine, I never betrayed my honorable lord. If you ever rise in the world above, restore the reputation that I lost when envy knocked me down.’

Canto XIII: 79-108 The fate of the Suicides

The poet listened but nothing more could be heard. ‘He is silent,’ he said to me. ‘But speak to him. Don't lose your chance. Ask him to tell you more.’

But I was choked by pity. ‘You ask him,’ I said. ‘Ask him about whatever you want. I can't speak to him.’

He continued: ‘Broken soul, this man may need a little more information to care for your memory as you have requested. Tell us how spirits like yours can be bound and twisted into these knots. Do any of you ever manage to get free?’

At that, the thorn exhaled a great sigh which slowly grew into a voice that said: ‘After a violent spirit rips itself from the body, Minos slaps it down here to the seventh depth of sorrow. It falls into these woods, and wherever it happens to land, it sprouts like a grain of German wheat. But as soon as it leafs out like a tree, the Harpies feed on its growth. Crooked, fruitless, always in pain: this is what becomes of those who take the easy way out.

‘We will get our corpses back on Doomsday, but not to put them on again--we can never again wear what we have taken off. We will drag our bodies here to this wood and hang them to dangle forever on our thorns.’

Canto XIII: 109-129 Lano and Jacomo

While we were still listening, hoping that the thorn might tell us more, we were startled by a noise on the left, as if wild boars were barreling toward us through the dense undergrowth. We turned and saw two naked, torn souls, running so hard that they broke every thicket in the woods.

‘Come death, come now!’ the leader cried.

‘Lano, your legs were not so swift at Toppo,’ called the other, Jacomo, running in second place. Jacomo looked beat. He stopped and hid behind a bush.

Suddenly the woods behind them were filled with black bitch hounds, eager and quick as greyhounds that have slipped the leash. They clamped their teeth into Jacomo as he squatted there. They tore him limb from limb, and then they carried off the pieces!

Canto XIII: 130-151 The unnamed Florentine

My guide now took me by the hand, and led me to the bush where Jacomo had hid. It was grieving through its bleeding splinters: ‘Jacomo da Sant’ Andrea, what have you gained by making your cover of me? Why should I suffer for your sins?’

The teacher stopped next to it and asked: ‘You that mourn and bleed through so many wounds, who were you?’

It answered: ‘It's enough that you have seen my mangling by these outrageous hounds. Gather up my shredded leaves and lay them around my barren trunk. I am from the city that changed allegiance from Mars to John the Baptist. For that insult, the god of war will make it bleed forever. Florence was rebuilt from the ashes that Totila left only because a few pieces of the god's statue were rescued from the Arno and set up on the bridge. For me, I have no story. I made a gallows for myself from a support beam.’

Canto XIV

Canto XIV: 1-42 The Third Ring: The Violent against God

Nostalgia for my home town stirred within me, and I picked up the scattered leaves, and presented them to him whose voice already was mute.

Passing on, we came out to the edge that divides the second and third ring. There before us was a desert, encircled by the mournful wood just as the bloody ditch surrounds the wood. It was a dead plain, dry and thick with sand like Cato's Sahara. An awful form of justice was to be seen there. God’s vengeance should terrify all of you readers who can visualize what I saw!

There on the vast sands were herds of naked spirits, all weeping bitterly, some lying face upward on the ground, some crouching together, some ranging across the burning sands. The wanderers were the largest number, but those who lay in torment cried louder. Like snowfall in high mountains when there is no wind at all, large flakes of fire slowly drifted down on all alike. Like the flames that fell on Alexander and his army in the hottest regions of India, the flames fell perpetually and doubled the agony by kindling the sand, like tinder under a flint and steel. The little fires had to be trampled underfoot as soon as they hit the ground so that they would not join and spread. The twitching of the tortured hands never stopped, now here, now there, all over, endlessly flicking away the fresh brands.

Canto XIV: 43-72 Capaneus

I said: ‘Teacher, you have shown the way to pass every obstacle so far, except when we were stopped by those fiends at the city gate. So tell me now, who is that wraith lying there facing the firestorm with so much scorn, the one that looks so indifferent to pain?’

The one I asked about heard me and answered directly: ‘The same that I was, when I lived, I am now. Jupiter will never beat me, though one day in a rage he forced grimy Vulcan to hammer out the lightning bolt that struck me down. Let him burn out all of the Cyclopes at the black forge of Aetna, too, until they are exhausted and plead for Vulcan's help. Let him aim at me every bolt they can produce. Let him throw has hard as he can, as at Phlegra when he fought the giants. He can't ever defeat me!’

Then my guide spoke up, with more force than I had heard from him before: ‘Capaneus, you torment yourself! No punishment fits your proud fury except your own mad raving.’

Then he turned to me and explained with calm voice: ‘He was one of the seven against Thebes. He thinks that he rages at God, but in fact, as I told him, he curses only his own heart.’

Canto XIV: 73-120 The Ancient Giant under Crete

‘Now follow me, but keep your feet off the burning sand. Stay close to the trees.’

Walking in silence, we came to a place where a little stream seeps out from the woods and runs away across the desert. I shudder to recall its redness, crossing the sand like the sulphur streams that flow from the Bulicame spring that the whores share near Vitterbo. Its bed was petrified, as were the banks beside it, so I realized that our way across the desert must lay there.

‘Among the wonders that I have shown you since we entered though the gate that opens for everybody, your eyes have seen nothing like this stream that quenches all of the flames as it flows over the sands.’ These were my guide’s words, and I asked him to tell me more. I wanted to know all about it.

He obliged. ‘In the middle of the sea there is a desolate island named Crete, under whose king the antique world long ago was pure. In those days, a mountain there, called Ida, was blessed with waters and vegetation, and under this mountain Rhea chose a cave to be the secret crypt and trusted cradle of her son. She posted her guardians around the infant, and their loud shouts echoed from the cave whenever he cried.

‘Standing upright inside this mountain there is an Ancient Giant. His shoulders are turned toward Damietta in Egypt, but his head is turned toward Rome, as if it were his mirror. The head is made of pure gold, his arms and chest are refined silver, and the belly to the waist is bronze. From there on down, he is all choice iron, except that the right foot is clay, and more of his weight falls on that foot than on the other one. Every part, except the gold, is cracked with a cleft that sheds tears, which collect and erode the cave. Their course falls from rock to rock into the underworld. They form Acheron, Styx and Phlegethon, and then by this narrow overflow channel here they hurtle down and disappear into Cocytus. You will see that lake later, so I won't describe it to you now.’

Canto XIV: 121-142 The Rivers Phlegethon and Lethe

‘If this stream flows down like that from the world above,’ I asked, ‘then why haven't we seen it before?’

He replied: ‘Don't be surprised to see new things. Though you have descended a long way, always circling down to the left, you have not yet turned through a complete round of the underworld.’

I asked more: ‘Master, where are Lethe and Phlegethon? You have said nothing of Lethe, but you say that the other is formed from the tears that you have described.’

He replied: ‘You please me with your questions, yes you do, but this boiling red water here answers one of them. As for Lethe, you will see it later above this cave, on the Mount where the spirits go to wash away their guilt by penitence.

‘Now it's time to leave the woods. Everything out there is burning except the stream banks that quench the fires. See that you follow me closely. ’

Canto XV

1-42 The Violent against God: Brunetto Latini

Now one of the stone banks leads us into the vast desert, in the shade of a steam cloud above the brook. Those banks were built just as the Flemish between Bruges and Wissant make dykes to hold back the sea that threatens to flood them; and as the Paduans do, along the Brenta, to defend their town and homes before the warmth of spring thaws the Carnic Alps. But whoever built these banks constructed them not nearly as high or as wide as those.

After the woods receded out of sight, we met a group of ghosts coming from the other direction on the sands beside the bank. They squinted up at us, as people peer at one another at twilight under a new moon, or as elderly tailors do when trying to thread the eyes of needles. One of them recognized me and grabbed the skirt of my robe. ‘How marvelous!’ he said.

I had strained to see him as he reached up toward me. I knew him in spite of all the burn marks. I extended my hand toward his familiar face and replied: ‘Are you here, Ser Brunetto?’

‘My boy,’ he answered, ‘don't be upset if Brunetto Latini sticks with you for a time, and lets his other friends run along without him.’

I said: ‘With all my heart, yes, please stay with me. I'll sit here with you right now, if my companion doesn't mind.’

He said: ‘O my son, around here anybody who sits anywhere, even for a minute, is stuck there for a hundred years with the firestorm beating him! No, just keep marching, and I'll stumble along at your heels until I have to rejoin my choir with their endless laments.’

Canto XV: 43-78 Brunetto’s prophecy

I did not dare to step down from the path to his level but as we walked I, like one in reverence, kept my head bowed in his direction. He began: ‘Is it destiny or chance that brings you here before your last day? And who's this fellow that leads you?’

I replied: ‘I lost the bright life up above somehow, and I wandered into the valley before my time had come. I set out only yesterday morning, but I was turning back when this guide appeared. He's taking me home this way.’

And he said to me: ‘Follow your star, and you cannot fail to reach a glorious harbor! I knew it while I lived: I could see Heaven's favor upon you. If I had not died before you, I would have supported you in all of your work. But that ungrateful, hateful people, who came down from Fiesole to Florence in ancient times, they still have mountain and rock in their hearts. They will be your enemies forever because of the good things that you do.

‘Your destiny is honorable, but they are blind, envious, arrogant, greedy people. The fig tree will not bear sweet fruit in an orchard of sour crab-apples. Avoid their soil: no plant can grow under a goat! If you sprout from their dunghill of malice, both parties will eat you! Let the herd from Fiesole chew one another, but never bite off the remaining shoot of the sacred seed of the Romans.’

Canto XV: 79-99 Dante accepts his fate

I answered him: ‘If I had one wish, you would still live in the world above. I remember you always as the dear, kind, fatherly man who, hour by hour, taught me the way that men make themselves immortal. As long as I live, the words I write will show how I treasure your teaching. I will write down your prediction for my future. I'll keep it with other prophecies I've received, and I'll show them to a lady who will know how to interpret them, if I ever find her.

‘Whatever happens, I will take anything Fortune gives me, as long as my conscience does not trouble me about it. I've heard predictions like yours before, so let Fortune spin her wheel, if she must, as the peasant turns his spade.’

At that, my Master looked back, turned around to face me, and said: ‘One who truly listens knows what has been said.’

Canto XV: 100-124 Brunetto names his companions

I kept talking with Ser Brunetto, and I asked him to name the most famous of his companions. He answered: ‘I will tell you a few, but there's no time to name them all. On earth, they were writers and famous scholars, but they all made the same mistake.

‘Priscian goes in that dour crowd, and Francesco d’Accorso: and if you want to see scum you can find Andrea di Mozzi there, who was forced by that servant of the servant of God, I mean Pope Boniface, to move his bishopric from the Arno to Vicenza’s Bacchiglione, where he departed from his queer body.

‘I would tell you more, but another cloud rises in the desert, and I can't face the group that's coming. Remember my Tresoro, in which I still live. That's all I ask.’

He turned back, and seemed to me like one who runs through the open fields for the green cloth at Verona, but he ran like a winner.

Inferno Canto XVI

1-45 Jacopo Rusticucci, Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi

Already we could hear, rumbling with the hum of a beehive, the sound of the place where the water fell down into the next circle, when three spirits broke away from their company on the burning plain and bolted toward us. As they ran, they called to me: ‘Wait, wait a minute! By your dress, you look like a traveler who comes from our corrupted city.’

O, what wounds, both old and fresh, branded their naked bodies! Even now, the memory of their burned flesh is horrifying. My teacher heard their call and stopped. ‘Wait for them,’ he said. ‘Show respect, for these souls are deserving. In fact, if it were not for the fires out there, I would tell you to run to them.’

We waited, but when the three of them reached us, they formed themselves into a circle, wheeling round like champion wrestlers, naked and oiled, gripping one another's arms while looking for a hold or an advantage, before they strike. Each of them directed his gaze at me, so that his head and feet turned in an opposite directions.

One of them began: ‘The horror of this wasteland, and our broiled faces, may make us contemptible in your eyes, but let our fame move you to tell us who you are, and how you can walk with carnal feet through hell. This peeled and naked soul who circles around this wheel ahead of me was greater in worldly honor and degree than you may guess. His name is Guido Guerra, grandson of the good lady Gualdrata, and in his life he won great fame in council and in fighting. This other one, who comes behind me, is Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, whose advice the world ought to have followed. And I, joined with them in this torture, I am Jacopo Rusticucci, and I owe my pain mostly to my shrewish wife.’

Canto XVI: 46-87 The condition of Florence

I would have thrown myself down into their wheel right then and there, if I had been protected from the fire. I think that my teacher would have let me go, too, but since I would have been burned to a crisp, fear overcame my impulse to embrace them.

I answered: ‘I have only compassion for you. I feel nothing but sadness as I look on your torment. I was speechless with grief when my guide said that such men as you were here. I am from your own city, and I have often heard your names and your deeds remembered with honor and affection. Now I have left that place of gall behind, and I am on the way to sweet happiness, as my honest guide here promises, but we are going by way of this desert. In fact, we're going all the way down to the bottom.’

He replied: ‘Long live your soul within your body, and may your fame shine after you! Tell us if courage and good manners still remain in our city, as they used to, or if they are things of the past? We are pained by the bad news we have heard on this subject from Gugliemo Borsiere, who recently joined us here.’

I said: ‘Newcomers, with new wealth, have brought arrogance and excess to you, Florence, so that already you weep for it.’ I shouted these words with an uplifted voice. The three below me took them to be my answer.

They looked at one another, as if they had heard the truth. They replied: ‘Happy are you, if you can answer questions so easily! Happy are you to have such a gift of free speech! If you escape from this black hole, if you ever see the beauty of the stars again, when you are moved to tell people “I was down there,” please remember to mention us.’

Then they broke up their circle and ran away so fast that their legs seemed like wings. An Amen could not have been said in the time it took for them to vanish,

Canto XVI: 88-136 Virgil goes fishing

My master moved on again, and I followed him. Soon we came to a great waterfall thundering so that, if we had been shouting, we hardly would have heard each other. Like the Acquacheta river (that springs from its source at Monte Veso on the Apennines' slope, then flows east and loses its name, to become the Montone, at Forlì) as that river falls at San Benedetto dell' Alpe, so down a single rocky precipice those tainted waters plunged with the deafening crash of a thousand torrents.

My master asked to borrow the rope that was looped around my waist. (Once I had hoped to catch the spotted leopard with it.) When I gave him the coil, he turned to the right, and threw one end of it far over the ledge into the abyss, his eyes following it so closely that, I thought, he must be looking for something strange from the deep.

Ah, how careful we should be when in the company of those who can read our minds! He said to me: ‘What I expect will soon ascend, and what you imagine will soon appear to you.’

People should not speak, if they can help it, when the truth will sound untrue, but I just can't maintain silence here. Reader, I swear to you, by the words of this Commedia, as I hope that they will find lasting favor, I swear that I saw a shape swimming upwards through the murky air! It looked like a diver who returns to the surface after freeing an anchor caught on shoals or other things hidden in the sea: he kicks and surges up with both arms held out straight overhead.

Canto XVII

1-30 The fraud-beast Geryon

‘Look there: the beast with the sharp tail that cuts across the land, pierces through walls and armor, and stinks up everything.’ This was my master's description of the creature that he waved to come ashore at the rock ledge at the end of our path. A repulsive image of fraud floated up to us, kindly grounded its head and chest on the cliff, but left its tail dangling down over the edge out of sight.

It had the face of any honest man, harmless-looking in its features, friendly in expression, but down below was a the body of a beast. Its paws and arms up to the armpits were hairy, but its back, chest, and flanks were reptilian, imprinted with such designs of knots and circles that neither Tartars nor Turks ever wove cloth with more subtle color nor more intricate pattern, nor did Arachne ever spin such a web on her loom. As a boat lies beached, part drawn up on land and part lying in the water, or as the beaver (up in the country of the swilling Germans) readies itself either to fight or to dive by standing near the shore with its tail in the pond, so the front of that predator hung on the lip of stone, but its tail twitched down in the void and thrashed the venomous fork like a scorpion.

My guide said: ‘Our way lies ahead, through this malign creature.’

Canto XVII: 31-78 The Money Men

The creature lying in the path, we stepped down to the right along side of the beast and carefully took ten paces by the edge of the fire, but I noticed a group sitting a little distance further away in the sand on the brink of the abyss. ‘Go and look: they will complete your knowledge of this circle,’ my Master instructed, ‘but don't be long. I'll negotiate with this monster for a ride on its back.’

So I left him and walked out alone to the circle's outer edge, to the spot where a miserable bunch huddled in obvious pain. Their hands were forever busy flicking away the falling embers and sometimes flaming sands. They jerked around like dogs in summer, now twitching the muzzle, now the paws, when stung by fleas, gnats and horse-flies. I searched their faces, but they were burned beyond recognition.

From the neck of each hung a distinctive moneybag, and all eyes were fixed on these purses. Each pouch was brightly colored with its own coat of arms. One was a blue seal on a golden-yellow bag, and it looked something like the head and body of a lion. Another, on a blood-red bag, displayed a goose whiter than butter. A third was a white purse stamped with a pregnant-looking blue sow, and it's bearer barked at me: ‘What are you doing here? Go away! You're not dead! This empty seat by my side is reserved for my neighbor Vitaliano, who should be arriving shortly. Look, there are too many Florentines to deal with already. I'm Paduan. They drive me nuts with their calls: 'Send down the knight of the three eagles’ beaks!'’

Then he puckered up and stuck out his long tongue. He looked like an ox licking its nose. I turned and walked away, afraid to stay any longer, for my guide had told me to be brief.

Canto XVII: 79-136 The descent on Geryon’s back

I found him already mounted on the broad back of the creature. He called me to join him: ‘Be brave! This is the only way down! You go in front, and I will ride behind to guard you from the poisonous tail.’

Like those who shake with malarial fever, nails pallid, shivering with chill at the mere sight of shade, so I trembled at first, but then I felt the shame that makes a servant brave in the presence of a worthy master. I forced myself to climb on top of those huge hairy shoulders. I wanted to scream ‘Hold me tight!’ but the words would not come out. As soon as I was mounted, he who helped me in other troubles took hold of me around the waist. He steadied me and said: ‘Now move, Geryon! But circle slowly. Take us down gently! Remember you are carrying an unusual load.’

As a small boat backs off from a beachhead or mooring, so the monster slid back from that stony shore, and when it was well clear of the rim, it swung its tail around, stretched it out behind, and began to wave it like an eel, while also paddling with its paws, as if trying to stay afloat. I cannot believe that Phaëthon knew more terror when he dropped the reins and scorched across the sky where it still looks burned today; I cannot think that poor Icarus felt more panic when the wax feathers melted from his arms, and he heard his father Daedalus screaming up at him: ‘You're too high!’ I was surrounded on all sides by nothing but air! Everything vanished except the savage beast!

It swims slowly, descends slowly in a big spiral. I can't see the destination, but I can feel a chill breeze from below on my face. Soon I begin to hear the whirlpool, on the right, and then a terrible roaring underneath us. I stretch my neck out over the side and look down, but now I'm even more afraid. I see fires, and hear moaning, so that I cower back and tighten my legs. And finally there appeared what had been unseen before: our sinking and circling path winding through torments that seemed to be closing in on us from all sides.

As the defiant or sulking falcon, that has been circling long aloft without finding prey, descends wearily when the falconer cries ‘stoop!’ but then darts off to land somewhere far from its master, so Geryon set us down, at the base, close to the foot of the fractured rock, but as soon as it was relieved of our weight, it instantly shot away from us like an arrow from a bow.

Canto XVIII

1-21 The Eighth Circle: Malebolge

There's a district of Hell called Malebolge, all made of the same iron-colored stone as the towering cliffs that surround it. Right in the center, there's a grim drain that yawns wide and deep, but I'll describe that later, when I get around to it. Between this drain and the cliffs on the perimeter lies a circular terrain that is divided into ten narrow ditches or sinks, like ten successive moats encircling the ramparts of some huge fortification. And like bridges that cross moats into a castle, or like spokes on a wheel that join rim and hub, narrow ridges of rock cross the ditches from the cliffs down to the drain. There's also a ridge around the base of the cliffs, and that's where Geryon had dumped us.

Canto XVIII: 22-39 The First Ditch: Pimps and Seducers

The poet turned and went left. As I hurried after him, I could see over on my right, down in the first ditch, new kinds of behavior, new tortures and tormentors. Down in that bottom naked spirits paraded in two separate lanes. Those nearer to us approached and passed opposite to our direction, and those farther away moved left as we did, but they hustled a lot faster. The Romans used a similar traffic plan at the recent Jubilee, where huge crowds were directed to inbound or outbound lanes across the bridge: on one side all faced towards the castle and went in the direction of St Peter’s, while on the other side, all moved out toward Monte Giordano.

On this side and on that, all along the way, horned demons took perverse delight in whipping the marchers from behind. How the first crack of any of those big switches made them skip! None waited around for a second or third lash!

Canto XVIII: 40-66 The Pimps: Venedico de’ Caccianemico

As I went on, my eyes met one who briefly glanced up at me, and I thought: where have I seen this guy before? I looked the fellow over carefully, while my guide waited and let me retrace some of my steps. That character now was trying to hide from me by lowering his face, but I did not let him get away. I said: ‘Hey, you with your head hung low, I'm talking to you! If you are anybody at all, you must be Venedico de' Caccianimico! What happened to you?’

He stopped to reply: ‘Hey, why don't you ask me a blunt question? Maybe I don't want to talk about it, you know? But I can't lie to you now. You remember my name all right. I . . . persuaded my sister to lay the Marquis of Este. You think that sounds bad or something? I'm not the only Bolognese doing time here! This place is packed with us, lots more than all the mouths living today between Savena and Reno that say sipa for sì. You know my town well enough--how we adore cash.’ Just as he spoke, a demon struck him with his whip, and screamed: ‘Move, pimp! You can't cash in on any whores around here!’

XVIII: 67-99 The Seducers: Jason

I rejoined my guide, and in a few steps we came to one of the stony spokes that ran across the ditches from the cliff toward the center. We made a left onto this ridge and very easily climbed over the top of the first trench. My guide paused in a place with an open view of the action below us, and he said: ‘If you look back to the left now you can see the faces that we couldn't see before.’

We saw them hurrying on, driven by the whips toward us now. As I was about to question him, my master anticipated what I wanted to know. ‘Yes, that one seems majestic. Look how he suffers, but not a tear falls from his eyes. He still acts like a king! He's the treacherous Argonaut Jason, who robbed the Colchians of the Golden Fleece.

‘On that quest, he sailed by the isle of women, Lemnos, where the feminists had overthrown the men and put all but one of them to death. Stopping there, he found Hypsipyle, the loving young girl who had managed to save her father's life by tricking the murderous women. Jason used gifts and sweet words to deceive this poor child, and as soon as he got her pregnant, he sailed away and left her forever. For this deceit, and of course for abandoning Medea, he pays the penalty that you see. All of his companions here used similar seductions. That's the whole story of this first channel.’

Canto XVIII: 100-136 The Second Ditch: The Flatterers

Continuing along the ridge, as we approached the second ditch, we could hear all kinds of whining, snorting, and slapping. Coming closer, we could see that the banks of that moat were covered with a crust of mold, no doubt formed by the gas that rises from below and condenses there--and assaults both the eyes and nose! We could not observe the bottom of that gorge until we stood on the rock arches directly over the top of it. Looking straight down from there, I could see the inhabitants immersed in flowing excrement that looked as if it had been flushed from sewers. My eyes were drawn to one of them whose head was so covered with shit that you could not have guessed if he was a priest or a parishioner!

‘What the hell are you looking at?’ he shouted up at me. ‘I'm no more full of crap than others here!’

I answered him: ‘I pick you out because, I think, I have seen you before--though much less filthy then. You are Alessio Interminei of Lucca, if I recall.’

He struck his forehead: ‘So this is what you get for a lifetime of flattery! I must have kissed too many butts!’

My guide poked me: ‘I'll show you a foul obscenity. Look over there, at the one that scratches herself with fecal-lined nails as she squats and spreads her legs. That's Thais, the tart. One of her customers once asked her: "How great am I?" She answered him: "You're enormous!" Well, it's time for us to move along.’

Canto XIX

1-30 The Third Ditch: The Sellers of Holy Things

Simon Magus! and you fellow whores of his, who sell the things of God for pieces of gold or silver! The trumpets sound for all of you, your burning beds await you in the third ditch.

Highest Wisdom, your art appears in the heavens, on the earth, and in the underworld! Your power is manifested in justice!

Already we had climbed to the center of the archway that bridges the third ditch. On the sides and floor of this pit, the livid stone was full of large holes, all of the same size. Each one was rounded, as big as those fonts in the Baptistery of St John where the baptizing takes place. I broke one of those fonts not many years ago to rescue a child who was drowning in it: I swear that's the truth!

A body was stuffed inside each one of these holes, with only the naked feet and legs up to the knee sticking out of the ground. The soles were all on fire, and the legs twitched so violently that no rope or chain could have held them. As a flame will burn only along the surface of a greasy object, so here the fires slid back and forth between the heels and the toes.

Canto XIX: 31-87 Pope Nicholas III

‘Master,’ I said, ‘Do you see the one that kicks more than all of the others--the one writhing with the reddest flames? Who is that?’

He answered: ‘If you let me take you down, you can ask him who he is and why he is here.’

I agreed: ‘I'm with you. You are the leader, and I will obey your wishes, as you know already since you understand every thought of mine, even the unspoken ones!’

We went down to the bank and then descended it, always keeping to the left, until we reached the bottom of that holey ditch. When we reached the burrow in question, I addressed the wild twitcher: ‘You unhappy spirit, whoever you are, you with your upper body planted like a stake in the ground, speak to me if you can.’ I stood there like a friar beside a treacherous assassin who is fixed in the ground but delays his burial by making a very full confession.

He cried out: ‘Is that you, Boniface? Are you here already? The prophecies then are wrong by a few years. Have you tired of all the treasure that you plundered from our lady, the church? Are you finished deceiving and abusing her?’

For a moment I could not think how to reply without mocking him, but Virgil understood and advised: ‘Just tell him that you are not the person he believes.’ That's what I did, at which the legs convulsed.

After a moment, he sighed and said, in a tearful voice: ‘Then what do you want of me? If it means so much to you to understand who I am, then know that I wore the great mantle and was son of the she-bear, so eager to protect my cubs that pocketing wealth was my only goal.

Other simonists who came before me lie cowering in cracks in the rock down below my head. I too will be injected somewhere down there, when Boniface is shoved into my hole. (I'm sorry, I thought you were that crook.) But I have toasted my soles here much longer than he will. He will quickly lose his outstanding place here to one from the west, a lawless shepherd whose fouler deeds will surpass all that Boniface and I have done. He will be a new Jason, the high priest that we read about in the Book of Maccabees. As Jason bought his office from by King Antiochus, so this successor of mine will be an installation of the King of France.’

Canto XIX:88-133 Dante speaks against Simony

I do not know if I was too bold in replying to him, but I said: ‘Tell me, how much cash did the Lord demand of Peter in exchange for the keys of the church? He demanded none. He said only: Follow me. And how much gold and silver did Peter and the other apostles demand from Matthias, to fill the place that Judas had lost through his guilt? None! You belong right here. Your punishment is well deserved.

‘You extorted pay-off money when you joined the conspiracy against Charles of Anjou. If I did not respect the great keys that you held in your hand while you lived, I would say worse things about you, too, because your greed grieves the whole world, tramples the good, and supports the wicked. John the Evangelist spoke of your kind, when he saw the kings of the earth screwing the great whore who sits on the waters. She was born with seven heads, and her ten big horns shine as long as a consort makes love to her.

‘Your god is made of gold and silver. You are worse than an idolater that adores one image, for you treasure all of them! Ah, Constantine, how much evil you began, after your conversion, when that donation of yours made Sylvester the first wealthy pope!’

While I sang these notes to him, his feet thrashed violently from rage--or maybe from conscience gnawing him. I think that my speech greatly pleased my guide, for while I lectured he smiled and listened closely to truth of my ringing words. He took hold of me with both of his arms, and when he had gripped me close to him, he carried me back up the trail we had descended. He did not tire under my weight until he had reached the top of the ridge above the fourth bank. There he set down his load, carefully, for the way at this point was so steep and rugged that it would have been hard going for a goat. From that elevation, I could see into the new ditch below.

Canto XX

1-30 The Fourth Ditch: The Prophets

Now I must sing of new torments, for the twentieth Canto of my Canticle which tells of those who are confined underground.

I had a clear view down into the depths of the ditch, a desolate dale bathed with tears of anguish. A very slow procession wound silent and sobbing around and around the circling valley. They were all horribly disfigured. Their chins were not in the normal position over their chests; instead, their heads faced backward. They had to walk butt first, since that's the direction they see. At first I thought that they might be suffering from some terrible palsy, but I changed my mind because I had never seen such extreme deformity before.

Reader, as God may give you joy from reading this poem, ask yourself how I could have kept from crying when I saw those poor souls with their tears streaming down into the clefts of their buttocks. Yes, I wailed, and steadied myself by leaning against the stony cliff, but my guide rebuked me: ‘Are you still a fool, then? Will you feel pity instead of piety? Who is more impious than one who feels sorrow at God’s judgments?’

Canto XX:31-51 The Ancient Seers

‘Lift up your eyes! Look at that one, who was swallowed up by the earth right in front of all the Theban troops, at which they cried out: “Where did you go, Amphiaräus? Why do you disappear from the battle?” He did not notice the gaping hole before him but tumbled headlong into it and landed down below at the feet of all-seizing Minos. Note how his front is now his backside! In life he pretended to see far ahead, so now he looks backward and stumbles in reverse.

‘There's another, Teiresias, who turned himself into a woman, each and every part entirely feminized, a trick that was nearly irreversible. He did not recover his manhood until finally he found the pair of entwined snakes again, and he struck them once more with his staff.

‘And there's Aruns, the one backing up into Teiresias' belly. He worked up in the Tuscan hills of Luni, above the flats where the Carrarese farm. He lived in a cave of solid white marble, in which he claimed to have unobstructed vision of the stars and the sea.

Canto XX:52-99 Manto and the founding of Mantua

‘Next, she who hides her breasts with her flowing tresses behind is Manto. She wandered in many lands before she settled where I was born. I would like you to hear the full story.

‘Once her father was dead, and Bacchus' sacred Thebes had been enslaved, she escaped and wandered alone through the earth for many years. Where a wall of mountains rise to form fair Italy's border above Tirolo lies a lake, known in ancient times as Benacus, now known as Garda, Val Camonica, and Penninois. A thousand streams feed that lake, and right in the middle there is an island which the bishops of Trent, Brescia, and Verona all could bless, if they could find it. At the shoreline's lowest point stands strong and beautiful Fort Peschiera which challenges the Brescians and Bergamese.

‘All of the overflow of this lake descends as a river through the green fields below. It's called Mincio down to Governolo where it joins the Po. Then it spreads into a marsh, which becomes stagnant in summertime. There the wild virgin found a stretch of dry land, untilled and uninhabited, and there she lived and practiced her arts alone, tended only by her ministers.

‘When she left her corpse, there was none to bury her, but neighbors soon moved in, since the place was well defended by the marshes on every side, and over her white bones they built a city which (without further divination) they called Mantua, because she was its foundation. Many more people used to live there once--before the foolish Casalodi was deceived by Pinamonte. That's the whole truth. So I charge you, if you ever hear a different story about the founding of my hometown, do not believe it!’

Canto XX:100-130 The Magicians and Witches

I answered him: ‘Teacher, your story seems so entirely true, so completely believable, that all other tales would be like burned out ashes. But tell me about the others who are passing by, if you see any that are worthy to mention, since my thoughts dwell on them.’

Then he said to me: ‘That one whose beard stretches down over his brown shoulders was an augur, when Greece was nearly emptied of males, except infants in the cradle, for they all had sailed off to Troy. Together with Kalkhas at Aulis, he divined the proper moment for cutting loose the first cable. Eurypylus is his name, and my tragic poem sings of him, as you understand--for you know the whole thing.

‘The next one, so small about the flanks, is Michael Scot, who knew all of the illusions of magic. There's Guido Bonatti, also Asdente, who wishes now he had attended more to his shoemaker’s leather and cord, but repents too late. The others are poor women who abandoned the needle, shuttle and spindle to work with oracles. They practiced witchcraft, using herbs and images.

‘But come now, for Cain, the Man in the Moon with his bundle of thorns, already sets in the west and touches the waves south of Seville. Last night, the Moon was full: you must remember it since it lit your way in the deep wood.’ So he concluded, and we moved on.

Canto XXI

1-30 The Fifth Ditch: The Corrupt Politicians

From bridge to bridge we went, talking of things that my comedy does not sing . . .

Up on the summit arch of the fifth bridge of Malebolge, we were staring down and listening for more griefs. It was really pitch dark! As in winter, in the arsenal at Venice, where they boil a sticky tar to caulk the leaking boats that can't be sailed in that stormy season; and some hands build new boats, while others repair the seams of vessels that have made many voyages; one hammers at the prow, another at the stern, some make oars, and some twist rope, one mends a jib, the other a mainsail: even so, down in the ditch far below the arch where we stood, there bubbled a dense black ooze, heated not by any manmade fire, but by divine craft. I saw it, but nothing in it, except a few bubbles that arose and burst, the occasional heavings of the thick jell and subsequent contractions when relieved of its gas.

My guide shouted: ‘Look out! Look out!’ and suddenly yanked me to him, from where I had been standing. As he pulled me away, I looked back round, like one who runs in terror and yet turns wanting to view the dread that pursues him. It was swooping down the cliff, a darting terror, a great black gargoyle.

Canto XXI:31-58 The bribe takers

How fierce he looked! How cruel, with his outspread wings and lightning speed! Over one of his high pointed shoulders, he had slung a senator's haunches, a load he secured with a crushing clasp of claws on both ankles.

He cried to another: ‘Malebranche Evil-Claw! Here's another senior official from the city of Santa Zita for you! Push him under while I grab another one. That town's infested with them! They're all on the take, all except Boss Bonturo obviously. In Lucca, they vote Yes for No as often as it pays!’

He threw his catch down, then wheeled back up along the stony cliff, swifter than any bloodhound unleashed to take a thief. The grafter plunged into the black oil, then moments later rose to the surface again, face up with his arms straight out to his sides. The devils under the bridge hooted at him: ‘The Jesus float is NOT allowed here! No floats of any kind! Do you think you are swimming in the Serchio, mister? Don't come up for air around here unless you want to feel our hooks!’

Then they perforated him with more than a hundred jabs of their sharp pitchforks. ‘Down you go! Conceal your activities! Steal where nobody can see you!’ Each one thrust his fork like a cook who keep poking a piece of meat down into the boiling broth to stop it from floating.

Canto XXI:59-96 Virgil confronts Bad Ass

My good teacher said to me: ‘Take cover behind a rock. Keep yourself hidden. Whatever insult they offer to me, don't worry. I know what I'm doing. I've been in these scrapes before.’

He crossed over to the further bank and presented himself with a confident pose, though the demons rushed up from below the bridge, and turned their weapons on him, with the fury of dogs that rush at a poor beggar as he seeks alms. As they stormed toward him, Virgil shouted: ‘Put up your weapons! I've got news for you, boys! One of you come over here and listen to me, and then decide whether it's a good idea to slice me apart with your forks.’

Surprisingly, they stopped. Then they cried, ‘You go, Bad Ass!’ at which one proud brute stepped forward from the gang and came towards Virgil, muttering. ‘Talk? Talk does him a lot of good!’

My guide said: ‘Bad Ass, do you think I have come all of the way here on this wild road, safe and sound, without having God's help? I must pass, since it is the will of Heaven that I show this savage place to my companion.’

Those words so deflated that demon that his fork fell at his feet. I heard him advise his fellows: ‘We got to let him go!’

My guide then called in my direction: ‘You can come out now! Come out from crouching behind the crags. It's safe to come to me now!’

I stepped as quickly as possible to his side. All of the devils pressed forward in my face to make me imagine they would not obey their orders. I saw something similar once, when a yielding army marched out from Fort Caprona, under a treaty of surrender, but those soldiers were terrified to find themselves unarmed and surrounded by so many hostile enemies.

Canto XXI: 97-139 The demon escort

I pressed my body as close to my guide as I could, and I never took my eyes away from those nasty demons. They had lowered their forks at me and kept squawking to one another ‘Shall I stick him in the butt?’ and answering, ‘He sure deserves it!’

But Bad Ass silenced them: ‘Shut up, Scarmiglione. Shut up, all of you!’ Then he said to us: ‘You can't go any farther along this trail. It's not possible, you see, because, well, the sixth bridge here is destroyed, broken off at the base just a short way from here. Yes, it happened in the quake twelve hundred and sixty-six years and nineteen hours ago. So if you hope to go farther down in this circle, you will have to go back around our pool to the next ridge, and turn onto the causeway spoke there.

‘It just so happens that I'm sending a squad to patrol that area now. Why don't you tag along with them? They are completely trustworthy.’ Then he gave them their orders: ‘Report, Alichino and Calcabrina, and you, Cagnazzo! Barbariccia, you lead the ten. Libicocco, you go, and Draghignazzo, tusked Ciratto, Grafficane, Farfarello, and mad Rubicante. Search the pitch and see these two gentlemen safe, as far as the cliff where they can find their own way down.’

I said: ‘Master, I don't like these escorts. Let's go alone, if you know the way. Look at them--I mean, I'm sure you notice how they grind their teeth and knit their brows. They must be plotting something!’

He replied: ‘Be not afraid: they're not interested in you. They can hardly wait to torture the wretches boiling in the oil.’

They turned by the left bank to march away, but first, each of them saluted the commander by sticking his tongue out between his teeth, and he sent them off by trumpeting with his ass!

Canto XXII

1-30 More of the Fifth Ditch

I have seen cavalry break camp, and I have seen them charge into battle, pass in review, and now and then retreat to save themselves. I have seen scouts setting out to explore the territory of the Aretines, and also foraging parties, tournaments, and jousts. I have seen all of these actions orchestrated, sometimes to the sound of trumpets, or to the ringing of bells, or to the beat of drums or to the flashes of flares. I have seen commands accompanied by every sort of sign, but I never saw infantry or cavalry or navy signaled to set off by farts!

We went with the ten Malebranche--a savage company, just as I had feared! You know the old saying: ‘when looking for saints don't go to the bar.’ I couldn't get my mind off of the boiling pitch. I noted each feature of that ditch, and those roiling in the lake. Like dolphins, arching their backs, telling the sailors to brace their ship for a gale, so now and then to ease their torment some showed their backs on the surface, and then sank out of sight again, all as quick as a flash.

And as frogs squat at the edge of a pond, with only their snouts showing, with their feet and the rest of them hidden below, so they in the dark pitch must have watched for our patrol, but as soon as we approached with Barbariccia, only a few ripples on the surface indicated where they had been.

Canto XXII:31-75 Ciampolo

Only one lingered, just as a single frog sometimes remains after the others have scattered. What happened to him is especially disturbing for me to recall. Graffiacane, who was nearest, hooked him by the sticky hair and hauled him up dripping like an otter. (I already knew the names of every demon from when they were called, and when they shouted to each other.)

‘Rubicante, get your claws in him! Scratch him to shreds!’ they all cried together.

‘Teacher,’ I said, ‘I want to know the story of that poor bastard who's been nabbed by the fiends. Who is he?’

My guide marched right up to the wraith and asked where he came from. He answered: ‘I was born in Navarre. My old man was a bum who wasted himself and all his shit, so my mom gave me up to a nice lord, to be his lackey. I'm doing time here for selling jobs in the recruiting office of King Thibaut.’

Just then Ciriatto, with tusks like a boar's on both sides of his mouth, gouged the boy open. The mouse had come among evil cats, but Barbariccia grabbed him away, and told them off: ‘All of you stand back; he's mine to cut!’ To my teacher, he then added quietly: ‘Ask quickly, if you want to learn anything else from him. Ask before they butcher him.’

So my guide said: ‘Tell me now, who swims with you in the pitch? Do you hear any Latin spoken down there?’

Ciampolo answered: ‘Italians, you better believe it! I'm sorry I just left one. I mean, he's safe from these claws and forks down there!’

That's when Libicocco complained: ‘Too much talk!’ Suddenly with a prong, he grappled Ciampolo’s arm, mangling it and tearing off a piece of flesh. Draghignazzo also wanted a swipe at the legs, but the demon leader rounded on them with a dirty look.

Canto XXII:76-96 Ciampolo names other crooks

With this short pause in the action, Ciampolo was examining the remains of his arm, but my guide seized the chance to continue the interview: ‘Who was that lucky Latin, you say, you left behind to come ashore?’

He replied: ‘Friar Gomita, from the part of Sardinia called Gallura. He played every con there is. His master's prisoners all sang his praises, for he took their coin and let them run. In every game, the friar was a big time star.

‘Another Sardine swims with him, Don Michel Zanche. He's from Logodoro, the pair of them always yakking about Sardinia. I'd tell you lots more, but look at that demon grinding his teeth. I must have an itch he wants to scratch!’

At that, their great captain turned on Farfarello, whose eyes gleamed in anticipation of a strike, and shouted: ‘Back off, you filthy hawk!’

Canto XXII: 97-123 Ciampolo escapes

Ciampolo looked scared but resumed: ‘You guys want to see Tuscans or Lombards? I can dredge up lots of them for you right now! Of course, the gargoyles here will need to back away, so that they are out of sight. When they're hiding, I'll give the all clear sign with a whistle, as I always do. That will surface them. I'll show you at least seven of them!’

Cagnazzo raised his snout at these words and, shaking his head, objected: ‘Listen to the wicked lie this boy has invented to escape from us!’

Ciampolo indeed knew the tricks of his trade. He charmed them with his reply: ‘Why should I lie to you? I'll have the joy of getting my friends into more trouble than I'm in now.’

Alichino could contain himself no longer, because he loved a challenge, and so, without consulting the others, he blurted out: ‘Boy, if you try to jump, I've got wings that can beat you to the pitch. We will stand back from the ledge a little to hide ourselves on the bank, but I dare you, all by yourself, to try to outmatch all of us!’

O reader, here's a strange new sport! The Malabranche retreated from the cliff side a short way, led by the one who first had objected to the plan. The Navarrese chose his moment perfectly, planted his feet firmly, and in an instant leaped to freedom.

Canto XXII: 124-151 The Malebranche quarrel

The whole demon squad was stung with shame, but Alichino most of all, so he was the first to dive in pursuit, screaming: ‘Now I've got you!’ But his wings, swift though they were, could not match the other's terror, and he had to pull out of his dive as the lad hit the pond. It looked like a falcon swooping down on a wild duck, when the duck dives safely beneath the waves, and the falcon comes up with both claws empty.

In the meantime, Calcabrina, in a fury, had pursued Alichino in hopes that the boy would escape, so that he would have an excuse to brawl. When Ciampolo vanished from view, the two gargoyles soon were grappling with one another in mid-air above the ditch. They clawed each other and plummeted together into the center of the boiling tar.

The heat instantly separated them, but their wings were glued with pitch so that they could not rise. Barbariccia, no less upset than his troops, ordered four of them to fly over with grappling irons. They dropped their lines in pairs from both sides of the ditch and trolled for their trapped brethren, who already were scalded all over.

And there we left them, in that mess.

Canto XXIII

1-57 The Sixth Ditch: The Hypocrites

We traveled on in silence without companions, one in front and one following after, like Franciscan friars on a journey. The recent battle turned my thoughts to Aesop's fable of the frog and mouse. ‘Si’ and ‘Yes’ are not more alike than the fable and the Malabranche fight, if you think about the beginning and ending of both.

One thought led to another, however, and soon my mind again was full of terror. I reasoned: ‘Because of us, these fiends were fooled, so now they must be choking with hurt and ridicule, and with this rage of resentment added to their malicious nature, they are sure to hunt us down, like a pack of snapping dogs ready to pounce on a rabbit.’ I felt my hair standing up in fright. I looked carefully around behind us. ‘Teacher, you must hide us immediately.’ I said. ‘The Malebranche must be following us. I think I hear them already.’

He replied: ‘If I were a mirror, I would not see your face more clearly than I now can read your mind. Your thoughts now are so like mine that both lead me to the same conclusion. If the right bank has the right slope, we can skid down into the next ditch and slip our pursuers.’ He barely had finished announcing this plan, when I saw them, not far off, eager to seize us, quickly closing in with extended wings.

The next thing I knew, I had been seized by my guide, like a mother who is wakened by a noise, sees flames burning in front of her eyes, and grabs her child and runs, forgetting to put on a robe. Down from the ridge of the steep bank, he leaped and slid on the dam of barren rocks, down on his rump all of the way to the bottom. Water never raced through the course of a mill-wheel more nimbly than he slipped down that slope, the whole trip carrying me like a child in his belly.

His feet hardly had touched down on the valley plain before the demons were on the heights above us, but we had little fear of them now. High Providence that gave them control over the fifth ditch apparently did not grant them power to leave it.

Canto XXIII:58-81 The Hypocrites

In that depression we found mourners cloaked in gold, circling in slow motion and tears, weary and defeated. Their massive habits, in the French-cut style worn by the monks of Cluny, had deep hoods that hid their eyes and faces. On the outside the robes were gilded to dazzle the beholder, but inside they were lined with lead, so heavy that the shrouds designed by Frederick would seem light as straw. Weighty wear!

We turned left again, to walk beside them to hear their complaints, but they were so slow under their loads in that heavy procession that every step we took brought us along side a different group of them. ‘I wonder if there's anyone here whose name or doings we have heard?’ I asked my guide. ‘Can you take a close look at them as we pass?’

One of them recognized my Tuscan words and called out to us. ‘Wait, you quick one in the dark! Slow down and perhaps I'll tell you what you want to hear.’

My guide turned and advised: ‘Wait for him and creep along at his pace.’

Canto XXIII:82-126 The Jolly Friars: Caiaphas

So I waited--and waited--and watched two of them, who seemed eager to join me, laboring in my direction, it seemed as if fo