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Canto XXX
Because of Semele[759] when Juno's ire
Was fierce 'gainst all that were to Thebes allied,
As had been proved by many an instance dire;
So mad grew Athamas[760] that when he spied
His wife as she with children twain drew near,
Each hand by one encumbered, loud he cried:
'Be now the nets outspread, that I may snare
Cubs with the lioness at yon strait ground!'
And stretching claws of all compassion bare
He on Learchus seized and swung him round,
And shattered him upon a flinty stone;
Then she herself and the other burden drowned.
And when by fortune was all overthrown
The Trojans' pride, inordinate before--
Monarch and kingdom equally undone--
Hecuba,[761] sad and captive, mourning o'er
Polyxena, when dolorous she beheld
The body of her darling Polydore
Upon the coast, out of her wits she yelled,
And spent herself in barking like a hound;
So by her sorrow was her reason quelled.
But never yet was Trojan fury[762] found,
Nor that of Thebes, to sting so cruelly
Brute beasts, far less the human form to wound,
As two pale naked shades were stung, whom I
Saw biting run, like swine when they escape
Famished and eager from the empty sty.
Capocchio[763] coming up to, in his nape
One fixed his fangs, and hauling at him made
His belly on the stony pavement scrape.
The Aretine[764] who stood, still trembling, said:
'That imp is Gianni Schicchi,[765] and he goes
Rabid, thus trimming others.' 'O!' I prayed,
'So may the teeth of the other one of those
Not meet in thee, as, ere she pass from sight,
Thou freely shalt the name of her disclose.'
And he to me: 'That is the ancient sprite
Of shameless Myrrha,[766] who let liking rise
For him who got her, past all bounds of right.
As, to transgress with him, she in disguise
Came near to him deception to maintain;
So he, departing yonder from our eyes,
That he the Lady of the herd might gain,
Bequeathed his goods by formal testament
While he Buoso Donate's[767] form did feign.'
And when the rabid couple from us went,
Who all this time by me were being eyed,
Upon the rest ill-starred I grew intent;
And, fashioned like a lute, I one espied,
Had he been only severed at the place
Where at the groin men's lower limbs divide.
The grievous dropsy, swol'n with humours base,
Which every part of true proportion strips
Till paunch grows out of keeping with the face,
Compelled him widely ope to hold his lips
Like one in fever who, by thirst possessed,
Has one drawn up while the other chinward slips.
'O ye![768] who by no punishment distressed,
Nor know I why, are in this world of dool,'
He said; 'a while let your attention rest
On Master Adam[769] here of misery full.
Living, I all I wished enjoyed at will;
Now lust I for a drop of water cool.
The water-brooks that down each grassy hill
Of Casentino to the Arno fall
And with cool moisture all their courses fill--
Always, and not in vain, I see them all;
Because the vision of them dries me more
Than the disease 'neath which my face grows small.
For rigid justice, me chastising sore,
Can in the place I sinned at motive find
To swell the sighs in which I now deplore.
There lies Romena, where of the money coined[770]
With the Baptist's image I made counterfeit,
And therefore left my body burnt behind.
But could I see here Guido's[771] wretched sprite,
Or Alexander's, or their brother's, I
For Fonte Branda[772] would not give the sight.
One is already here, unless they lie--
Mad souls with power to wander through the crowd--
What boots it me, whose limbs diseases tie?
But were I yet so nimble that I could
Creep one poor inch a century, some while
Ago had I begun to take the road
Searching for him among this people vile;
And that although eleven miles[773] 'tis long,
And has a width of more than half a mile.
Because of them am I in such a throng;
For to forge florins I by them was led,
Which by three carats[774] of alloy were wrong,'
'Who are the wretches twain,' I to him said,
'Who smoke[775] like hand in winter-time fresh brought
From water, on thy right together spread?'
'Here found I them, nor have they budged a jot,'
He said, 'since I was hurled into this vale;
And, as I deem, eternally they'll not.
One[776] with false charges Joseph did assail;
False Sinon,[777] Greek from Troy, is the other wight.
Burning with fever they this stink exhale.'
Then one of them, perchance o'ercome with spite
Because he thus contemptuously was named,
Smote with his fist upon the belly tight.
It sounded like a drum; and then was aimed
A blow by Master Adam at his face
With arm no whit less hard, while he exclaimed:
'What though I can no longer shift my place
Because my members by disease are weighed!
I have an arm still free for such a case.'
To which was answered: 'When thou wast conveyed
Unto the fire 'twas not thus good at need,
But even more so when the coiner's trade
Was plied by thee.' The swol'n one: 'True indeed!
But thou didst not bear witness half so true
When Trojans[778] at thee for the truth did plead.'
'If I spake falsely, thou didst oft renew
False coin,' said Sinon; 'one fault brought me here;
Thee more than any devil of the crew.'
'Bethink thee of the horse, thou perjurer,'
He of the swol'n paunch answered; 'and that by
All men 'tis known should anguish in thee stir.'
'Be thirst that cracks thy tongue thy penalty,
And putrid water,' so the Greek replied,
'Which 'fore thine eyes thy stomach moundeth high.'
The coiner then: 'Thy mouth thou openest wide,
As thou art used, thy slanderous words to vent;
But if I thirst and humours plump my hide
Thy head throbs with the fire within thee pent.
To lap Narcissus' mirror,[779] to implore
And urge thee on would need no argument.'
While I to hear them did attentive pore
My Master said: 'Thy fill of staring take!
To rouse my anger needs but little more.'
And when I heard that he in anger spake
Toward him I turned with such a shame inspired,
Recalled, it seems afresh on me to break.
And, as the man who dreams of hurt is fired
With wish that he might know his dream a dream,
And so what is, as 'twere not, is desired;
So I, struck dumb and filled with an extreme
Craving to find excuse, unwittingly
The meanwhile made the apology supreme.
'Less shame,' my Master said, 'would nullify
A greater fault, for greater guilt atone;
All sadness for it, therefore, lay thou by.
But bear in mind that thou art not alone,
If fortune hap again to bring thee near
Where people such debate are carrying on.
To things like these 'tis shame[780] to lend an ear.'
FOOTNOTES:
[759] _Semele_: The daughter of Cadmus, founder and king of Thebes, was
beloved by Jupiter and therefore hated by Juno, who induced her to court
destruction by urging the god to visit her, as he was used to come to
Juno, in all his glory. And in other instances the goddess took revenge
(Ovid, _Metam._ iv.).
[760] _Athamas_: Married to a sister of Semele, was made insane by the
angry Juno, with the result described in the text.
[761] _Hecuba_: Wife of Priam, king of Troy, and mother of Polyxena and
Polydorus. While she was lamenting the death of her daughter, slain as
an offering on the tomb of Achilles, she found the corpse of her son,
slain by the king of Thrace, to whose keeping she had committed him
(Ovid, _Metam._ xiii.).
[762] _Trojan fury, etc._: It was by the agency of a Fury that Athamas
was put out of his mind; but the Trojan and Theban furies here meant are
the frenzies of Athamas and Hecuba, wild with which one of them slew his
son, and the other scratched out the eyes of the Thracian king.
[763] _Capocchio_: See close of the preceding Canto. Here as elsewhere
sinners are made ministers of vengeance on one another.
[764] _The Aretine_: Griffolino, who boasted he could fly; already
represented as trembling (_Inf._ xxix. 97).
[765] _Gianni Schicchi_: Giovanni Schicchi, one of the Cavalcanti of
Florence.
[766] _Myrrha_: This is a striking example of Dante's detestation of
what may be called heartless sins. It is covered by the classification
of Canto xi. Yet it is almost with a shock that we find Myrrha here for
personation, and not rather condemned to some other circle for another
sin.
[767] _Buoso Donati_: Introduced as a thief in the Seventh Bolgia
(_Inf._ xxv. 140). Buoso was possessed of a peerless mare, known as the
Lady of the herd. To make some amends for his unscrupulous acquisition
of wealth, he made a will bequeathing legacies to various religious
communities. When he died his nephew Simon kept the fact concealed long
enough to procure a personation of him as if on his death-bed by Gianni
Schicchi, who had great powers of mimicry. Acting in the character of
Buoso, the rogue professed his wish to make a new disposition of his
means, and after specifying some trifling charitable bequests the better
to maintain his assumed character, named Simon as general legatee, and
bequeathed Buoso's mare to himself.
[768] _O ye, etc._: The speaker has heard and noted Virgil's words of
explanation given in the previous Canto, line 94.
[769] _Master Adam_: Adam of Brescia, an accomplished worker in metals,
was induced by the Counts Guidi of Romena in the Casentino, the upland
district of the upper Arno, to counterfeit the gold coin of Florence.
This false coin is mentioned in a Chronicle as having been in
circulation in 1281. It must therefore have been somewhat later that
Master Adam was burned, as he was by sentence of the Republic, upon the
road which led from Romena to Florence. A cairn still existing near the
ruined castle bears the name of the 'dead man's cairn.'
[770] _The money coined, etc._: The gold florin, afterwards adopted in
so many countries, was first struck in 1252; 'which florins weighed
eight to the ounce, and bore the lily on the one side, and on the other
Saint John.'--(Villani, vi. 54.) The piece was thus of about the weight
of our half-sovereign. The gold was of twenty-four carats; that is, it
had no alloy. The coin soon passed into wide circulation, and to
maintain its purity became for the Florentines a matter of the first
importance. Villani, in the chapter above cited, tells how the King of
Tunis finding the florin to be of pure gold sent for some of the Pisans,
then the chief traders in his ports, and asked who were the Florentines
that they coined such money. 'Only our Arabs,' was the answer; meaning
that they were rough country folk, dependent on Pisa. 'Then what is your
coin like?' he asked. A Florentine of Oltrarno named Pera Balducci, who
was present, took the opportunity of informing him how great Florence
was compared with Pisa, as was shown by that city having no gold coinage
of its own; whereupon the King made the Florentines free of Tunis, and
allowed them to have a factory there. 'And this,' adds Villani, who had
himself been agent abroad for a great Florentine house of business, 'we
had at first hand from the aforesaid Pera, a man worthy of credit, and
with whom we were associated in the Priorate.'
[771] _Guido, etc._: The Guidi of Romena were a branch of the great
family of the Counts Guidi. The father of the three brothers in the text
was grandson of the old Guido that married the Good Gualdrada, and
cousin of the Guidoguerra met by Dante in the Seventh Circle (_Inf._
xvi. 38). How the third brother was called is not settled, nor which of
the three was already dead in the beginning of 1300. The Alexander of
Romena, who for some time was captain of the banished Florentine Whites,
was, most probably, he of the text. A letter is extant professing to be
written by Dante to two of Alexander's nephews on the occasion of his
death, in which the poet excuses himself for absence from the funeral on
the plea of poverty. By the time he wrote the _Inferno_ he may, owing to
their shifty politics, have lost all liking for the family, yet it seems
harsh measure that is here dealt to former friends and patrons.
[772] _Fonte Branda_: A celebrated fountain in the city of Siena. Near
Romena is a spring which is also named Fonte Branda; and this, according
to the view now most in favour, was meant by Master Adam. But was it so
named in Dante's time? Or was it not so called only when the _Comedy_
had begun to awaken a natural interest in the old coiner, which local
ingenuity did its best to meet? The early commentators know nothing of
the Casentino Fonte Branda, and, though it is found mentioned under the
date of 1539, that does not take us far enough back. In favour of the
Sienese fountain is the consideration that it was the richest of any in
the Tuscan cities; that it was a great architectural as well as
engineering work; and that, although now more than half a century old,
it was still the subject of curiosity with people far and near. Besides,
Adam has already recalled the brooks of Casentino, and so the mention of
the paltry spring at Romena would introduce no fresh idea like that of
the abundant waters of the great fountain which daily quenched the
thirst of thousands.
[773] _Eleven miles_: It will be remembered that the previous Bolgia was
twenty-two miles in circumference.
[774] _Three carats_: Three carats in twenty-four being of some foreign
substance.
[775] _Who smoke, etc._: This description of sufferers from high fever,
like that of Master Adam with his tympanitis, has the merit, such as it
is, of being true to the life.
[776] _One, etc._: Potiphar's wife.
[777] _Sinon_: Called of Troy, as being known through his conduct at the
siege. He pretended to have deserted from the Greeks, and by a false
story persuaded the Trojans to admit the fatal wooden horse.
[778] _When Trojans, etc._: When King Priam sought to know for what
purpose the wooden horse was really constructed.
[779] _Narcissus' mirror_: The pool in which Narcissus saw his form
reflected.
[780] _'Tis shame_: Dante knows that Virgil would have scorned to
portray such a scene of low life as this, but he must allow himself a
wider licence and here as elsewhere refuses nothing, even in the way of
mean detail, calculated to convey to his readers 'a full experience of
the Inferno' as he conceived of it--the place 'where all the vileness of
the world is cast.'
