Inferno
Canto XIV
The third ring of the Seventh Circle is the ring of Burning Sand, which torments the violent against God, who lie supine; the violent against Nature and Art, who sit all huddled up; and the violent against Nature, who are forced to be continually moving: on all of them falls a fiery rain. Among the first group is Capaneus, one of the Seven Against Thebes, who retains his fierce rebellious spirit. Virgil guides Dante along the edge of the Wood of the Suicides, so as to avoid the burning sand which the wood encloses all round; and from the wood flows a red stream, apparently a branch of Phlegethon, which has petrified its banks, which are high, like dykes, and has the power of quenching the flames which fall on it. Virgil explains the origin and course of the rivers of Hell.
THE dearness of my native place perforce
Constraining me, those scattered leaves I brought
Back to him, who by now grew faint and hoarse.
Then came we where is the division wrought
Between the first ring and the second: here
Heaven’s justice hath conceived a fearful thought.
To make the strangeness of the new things clear,
I say we reached a waste, which from its bed
Rejects all plants, and none permitteth near.
By the drear wood it is engarlanded [10]
Round, as the wood is by the dismal fosse.
Here, at the very edge, our steps we stayed.
The ground was of a sand both dry and gross,
Not different in its quality, I trow,
From that the feet of Cato trod across.[i]15. Cato led the remnants of Pompey’s army across the Libyan desert in 47 B.C.
O chastisement of God, how oughtest thou
To be of each one feared who reads with awe
What to my eyes was manifested now.
Many herds there of naked souls I saw,
Who all bewept the misery on them come, [20]
And seemed to suffer under diverse law.
Supine lay some upon the ground; and some
Were sitting in a huddle all compressed:
Others were stirred continually to roam.
Those that moved much outnumbered all the rest,
Those lying in torment fewer, but wailed their woe
More loudly, seeing their pain was bitterest.
All over the wide sands descending slow
Were rained dilated flakes of dropping fire;
As without wind falls in the hills the snow. [30]
Like to the flames which in the regions dire[ii]31-36. Dante apparently got this story from Albertus Magnus.
Of India’s heat on Alexander smote
And on his host, falling to earth entire,
Whereat he made his men take careful thought
To trample down the soil beneath their feet
(Those single fires being readier to put out),
So was the falling of the eternal heat,
By which, like tinder under steel, the sands
Caught fire, and with a doubled torment beat.
Now here, now there, the miserable hands [40]
Were shaking off the scorchings without rest,
As they were still renewed, in helpless dance.
I began: “Master, thou who conquerest
All things, except only those demons hard
That at the gate our entry did contest,
Who is that great spirit who seems not to regard[iii]46. “That great spirit” is Capaneus, one of the seven kings who attacked Thebes; scaling the walls, whence his gigantic shadow frightened the city, he mocked at the gods and challenged Jupiter, who thereupon slew him with a thunderbolt.
The fire, and scowls disdainful on his bed,
So that the rain tames him not, though so charred?”
And he himself, alert to what I said,
And knowing that I asked of him, forthwith [50]
Cried: “What I was alive, that am I dead.
Though Jupiter should weary out his smith[iv]52-60. Even though Jupiter should labour as he did in the battle against the giants, in the valley of Phlegra in Thessaly, he could not subdue the spirit of Capaneus.—“His smith”: Vulcan.—“All the rest”: the Cyclops, assistants of Vulcan.—‘Mongibello”: a Sicilian name for Aetna.
From whom, incensed, he took the bolt whereby
On my last day he blasted through my pith,
And though he weary out all the rest who ply
The black forge under Mongibello’s vault,
One after one, and ‘Help, good Vulcan,’ cry,
As at the fight at Phlegra, when his bolt
At me with all his fury of hate he flung—
Yet in his vengeance shall he not exult!” [60]
Then my Guide spoke with such a force of tongue
As never had I heard him use before:
“O Capaneus, in that thou still hast clung
To thine unquenched pride, thou art punished more.
No torture but the thoughts that make thee rave
Would be a pain proportioned to thy score.”
Then turned to me, a gentler look he gave,
Saying: “This spirit was one of those Seven Kings
Who besieged Thebes, and had, and seems to have, [70]
God in despite; and scorn upon Him flings.
But, as I have told him, his revilings black
For such a breast are fittest garnishings.
Now go behind me, and see that in my track
Thy feet not on the burning sand be set,
But by the wood’s edge keep them always back.”
Silent we came to where a rivulet
From the wood’s shadow gushing outward shows,
Whereof the redness makes me shudder yet.
As from the Bulicame a streamlet goes[v]79. “Bulicame”: a hot spring near Viterbo, frequented as a bath. The stream issuing from it was divided into separate baths for prostitutes, who were compelled to stay apart from the others.
Which ’mid themselves the sinful women share, [80]
So down across the sand this water flows.
The bottom, and the banks on each side, were,
With the edges raised above it, become stone:
Here then, I knew, should be our thoroughfare.
“Mid all the rest that I to thee have shown,
Since by the gate we entered into hell,
Of which the threshold is denied to none,
Thine eyes have seen nothing so notable
As is the present stream, which has the might
Within it all the flames above to quell.” [90]
These words my Guide spoke; wondering at the sight,
I prayed him that he might vouchsafe me taste
Of that whereof he had vouchsafed appetite.
“In the mid sea a country lies, all waste,”
He therefore now continued, “Crete by name,[vi]95. In the golden age, under Saturn.
Under whose king the world of old was chaste.
There stands a mountain, Ida called, the same
Which once with green leaf and glad water shone,
Now desert, like a thing of mouldered fame.
This for the trusty cradle of her son [100][vii]100-102. Rhea, wife of Saturn, to save the infant Jupiter from his father, who devoured his sons, entrusted him to the Curetes, or Corybantes, in Crete; and when he cried, she had them drown the sound with noise.
Did Rhea choose of yore; and to protect
His infant cries, had clamour made thereon.
Within the mount a great old man erect[viii]103. “A great old man”: in the island of Crete is the figure of an aged man—a statue evidently representing humanity at its successive ages. Ever since the Golden Age mankind has been imperfect; therefore all the statue except the head is split by a crack. From this fissure flow the tears of the sinful generations of men; descending into Hell, they make the infernal streams.
Looks out to Rome as if it were his glass;
His shoulders Damietta’s coast reject.[ix]105. “Damietta,” an Egyptian city, represents the ancient, pagan world; “Rome” stands for the modern, Christian world.
A head shapen of perfect gold he has;
Of pure silver his arms are, and his breast:
But to the fork he is of molten brass.
Thence down he is all of iron, proved the best,
Except that the right foot is baked of clay, [110]
And on this, more than the other, doth he rest.
All portions of him save the gold betray
Fissures that drop tears, oozing without end,
Which through the cave, collecting, force their w
Their streams cascading in this valley spend:
Acheron they make, and Styx and Phlegethon;
Then by this narrow conduit they descend
To where is no descending more; whereon
They form Cocytus; and what manner of pool[x]119. The frozen Cocytus forms the bottom of Dante's Hell.
It is, thou’lt see: words for it now I have none.” [120]
And I to him: “If from our own world full
It flows thus down, why doth it only appear
To us upon this selvage visible?”
And he: “Thou knowest the place is circular;
And though, going ever leftward, so much space
Thou hast travelled, and hast now descended far,
Much of the circle thou hast still to trace:
Wherefore if sight of aught new we obtain,
This ought not to bring wonder to thy face.”
“O Master, where are found,” I asked again, [130]
“Phlegethon and Lethe? of one thou speakest naught,
And the other is formed, thou sayest, by this rain.”[xi]132. “This rain”: the rain of tears that forms the stream.
“In all thy questions thou dost please my thought,”
He answered; “but the red stream’s boiling hiss[xii]134-135. The heat of this stream proves that it is Phlegethon.
The answer of one might well to thee have taught.
Thou shalt see Lethe; but beyond the abyss,
There where the spirits go, themselves to cleanse,
When by their penitence guilt assoiled is.”
Then he said: “It is time that we go hence,
And quit the wood. See that thou follow me: [140]
The unscorched marge makes for our feet defence,
And over it no fire hath power to be.”