Inferno
Canto XI
The descent to the next, the Seventh Circle, is now before the poets; but the fetid stench arising from it repels them so that they take refuge behind a sepulchre. The opportunity is taken by Virgil to explain to Dante the conformation of the lower Hell, and the various kinds of guilt punished in the several circles: the system being based on Aristotle’s classification, to whose Ethics Virgil refers, and on Cicero’s. Three kinds of violence are punished in three separate rings of the Seventh Circle, which they are next to visit. The fraudulent are in the Eighth, those guilty of the special fraud of treachery in the Ninth and lowest circle. Dante will now have no need to ask for what crimes the sinners he is to meet are chastised: but he fails to understand at first why all the damned are not in the City of Dis. Virgil explains that the sins of incontinence, the punishment of which they have already witnessed before entering the city, are less offensive to God and so less grievously visited.
ON THE edge of a circle of great broken stones
Rimming a cliff, we came above the place
Wherein are packed worse sins and deeper groans.
And here, because of the horrible excess
Of stench thrown upward from the unfathomed pit,
We drew, for refuge from its noisesomeness,
Behind a monument, whereon was writ:
“Pope Anastasius is here immured;[i]8. This is Anastasius , who for many centuries was generally but unjustly thought to have been induced by Photinus, deacon of Thessalonica, to deny the divinity of Christ; it is likely that he had been confused with the Byzantine emperor, Anastasius I.
Photinus lured him the true path to quit.”
“We must delay, till somewhat be inured [10]
Our sense to the vile reek, ere we descend:
Then shall it be more easily endured.”
So spoke the Master. “That our time we spend
Not vainly,” I said, “some compensation find.”
And he: “Thou seest that I so intend.”
“Son,” he continued, “within these stones wind
Three circlets, going down in three degrees,
Even like those which thou hast left behind.
They are all filled with spirits accurst: of these
That sight hereafter alone suffice thee, know [20]
Wherefore and how the pangs upon them seize.
Of all malice that makes of Heaven a foe
The end is injury, and all such end won
By force or fraud worketh another’s woe.
But since fraud is a vice of man’s alone,
It more offends God: so are lowest set
The fraudulent, and the heavier is their groan.
All the first circle is for the violent; yet,
As violence in its object is threefold,
It is in three rings built, each separate. [30]
To God, oneself, one’s neighbour, it is told,
May violence be done, both to their things
And to themselves, as I shall clearly unfold.
Force on one’s neighbour death and torment brings,
And on his goods fire, ravage and reverse
Of fortune, and the hurt extortion wrings.
The first round, then, tortures all murderers,
And, each kind separate, those who with intent
Of malice strike; robbers and plunderers.
A man may to himself be violent [40]
And to his own; in the next round, therefore,
Must each inhabitant in vain repent
Who robs himself of your world, wastes his store
Of wealth, gambles and squanders till all’s gone
And, where he should rejoice, laments the more.
Violence against the Deity may be done
In the heart denying and blaspheming blind;
In Nature, too, spurning his benison.[ii]46-48. “Violence . . . in nature”: the sodomites, or homosexuals, do violence to nature, the minister of God.
The smallest ring hath therefore sealed and signed
For its own both Sodom’s and Cahors’ offence, [50][iii]50. Cahors: a town in southern France, a notorious nest of usurers. Usurers—that is, moneylenders—do violence to human industry, the offspring of Nature.
And all who speak with scorn of God in mind.
Fraud, which so gnaweth at all men’s conscience,
A man may use on one who trusts him best
And on him also who risks no confidence.
This latter mode seems only to arrest
The love which Nature meaneth to endure;
Hence in the second circle huddled nest[iv]57. “The second circle”: the second of the “circlets” of line 17, is actually the eighth circle.
Hypocrisy, flattery; they who would conjure
By spells; and simony; the thief, the cheat,
Pandars and barrators, and the like ordure. [60]
In the other mode mankind the love forget
Which Nature makes, and that love’s after-dower
Which doth the special trust and faith beget.
Hence in the smallest circle, at the core[v]64. “The smallest circle”: the ninth and last of the circles of Hell, at the centre of the whole material universe, where Dis, or Lucifer, is confined.
Of the Universe, where Dis in darkness reigns,
Each traitor is consumed for evermore.”
And I: “Most clearly thy discourse explains,
Master, distinguishing by class and class,
This pit and all the people it contains.
But tell me: those clogged in the slab morass, [70][vi]70-72. The sinners mentioned here are: the wrathful (fifth circle), the lustful and the gluttonous (second and third circles), and the avaricious and the prodigal (fourth circle).
Those whom the wind drives and the hard rain galls,
And they whom mutual cursing tongues harass,
Why are they not in the red city’s walls[vii]73. “The red city” is the city of Dis, or Lower Hell.
Chastised, if to God’s anger they be prey?
And if not, why the woe that them befalls?”
And he to me: “Now wherefore goes astray
Thy wit beyond its wont? or is thy thought
On other things and turned another way?
Recall the words thou surely hast not forgot
In which thy Ethics makes the matter plain [80][viii]80. “Thy Ethics”: the Ethics of thy master, Aristotle, who enumerates three evils to be avoided: malice, incontinence, bestiality.
Of the three dispositions Heaven wills not,
Incontinence, and malice, and insane
Bestiality; and how incontinence less
Displeaseth God and less blame doth obtain.
If rightly to regard this thou address
Thy mind, recalling who are they who smart
Above there, in that outer wilderness,
Thou wilt perceive why they are placed apart
From these fell spirits, and why with gentler blow
The Divine Justice hammereth their heart.” [90]
“O Sun, who heal’st all troubled vision, and so
Contentest me where thou dost certify,
That to doubt pleaseth not less than to know,
Turn thee now yet a little back,” said I,
“To where thou sayest that usury doth offend
The divine goodness, and the knot untie.”
“Philosophy, to him who will attend,”[ix]97. “Philosophy”: the works of Aristotle.
Said he, “in divers places hath discerned
How Nature her example and her end
From Divine Intellect and its art hath learned. [100][x]100. “Its art”: the operation of the divine intelligence.
And to thy Physics if good heed thou pay,[xi]101. “Thy Physics”: Aristotle’s treatise on Physics (II, ii).
Thou wilt find, after but few pages turned,
That your art follows her, far as it may,[xii]103-105. Human industry follows nature as far as it can, so that it is, so to speak, the grandchild of God.
As scholar his master, so that your art is
Of the Godhead the grandchild, so to say.
By these two, if thy memory Genesis
Recalls, and its beginning, man hath need
To gain his bread and foster earthly bliss.
But the usurer, since he will not thus proceed
Flouts Nature’s follower and herself also, [110]
Setting his wealth another way to breed.[xiii]111. The moneylender sets his hope on gain derived neither from nature nor from toil.
But follow now, for I am willed to go.
The Fishes quiver on the horizon air,[xiv]113. Virgil, as usual, indicates the hour (in Jerusalem) by a description of the sky, which, of course, is not visible from Hell. The time is three hours or more after midnight.
And over Caurus all the Wain lies low.
Far on it is where we descend the stair.”