Inferno
Canto XXV
Fucci cries out in blasphemous rage, and is set upon by the serpents. Cacus, a giant robber in the Aeneid, but here represented as a centaur, pursues him. Then three thieves appear; and on one of them, Agnello, a kind of dragon (really Cianfa who has been transformed into it) fastens itself so closely that they merge into one strange shape. Then a viper (into which Francesco de’ Cavalcanti has been changed) bites Buoso degli Abati; and this time, serpent changes into man and man into serpent. Francesco had been killed at Gaville, near Florence.
WHEN he had made an end, the thief exclaimed,
Raising his hands with both the figs on high:[i]2. “The figs”: a coarse, insulting gesture.
“Take thou them, God; at thee, at thee they are aimed.”
Thenceforth the serpents were no enemy
To me; for round his neck, as if it hissed
Thou speak’st no more! one coiled and clung thereby.
Another about his arms began to twist
And tighten, prisoning him in front so fast,
There was no wriggle in him that could resist.
Pistoia, ah Pistoia! thou shouldst blast [10]
Thyself to a cinder and toll thine own death-knell,
For in evil thine old seed thou hast surpassed.[ii]12. “Thine old seed”: Pistoia, according to tradition, was founded by the remnants of Catiline’s army.
Through all the sombre corridors of hell
No spirit so insolent against God I found,
Not him ev’n, who at Thebes from the wall fell.[iii]15. Capaneus.
He fled, and uttered not another sound:
And I beheld a Centaur full of storm
Come crying: “Where, where goes he, the evil hound?”
I think not that Maremma holds such swarm[iv]19. “Maremma”: a wild and swampy part of Tuscany.
Of snakes as clustered on his haunch and spread [20]
Even to where begins our human form.[v]21. The human part of the centaur.
Over his shoulders and behind the head
Lay a dragon with extended wings aglow;
On all whom it encountered fire it shed.
“He is Cacus,” said my Master, “who below[vi]25-30. In a lair on Mt. Aventine dwelt the bloody monster Cacus, son of Vulcan. When Hercules returned from the west with Geryon’s herd, Cacus stole a part of it. Warned by their bellowing, Hercules followed the cattle into Cacus’ cave, and slew the thief with a club.
The rocks and caverns of Mount Aventine
Full often made a river of blood to flow.
He is trooped not with his brethren, by design,
Because by trickery he enticed to pen
The neighbouring great herd of stolen kine; [30]
Wherefore his crooked works were ended then
By the club of Hercules, who dealt him nigh
A hundred blows, and had to endure not ten.”
While thus he spoke, the Centaur hasted by;
And under us on the path three spirits came near[vii]35. Virgil and Dante are looking down from the bank, The three spirits turn out to be Agnolo Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, and Puccio Sciancato. Two more come presently in the form of snakes.
Whom both I and my Guide failed to espy
Till they called: “Who are ye? What do ye here?”
Our discourse therefore halted short; and all
Intent, to them alone did we give ear.
I knew them not; but so it did befall, [40]
As often it befalleth by some hap,[viii]41. “Cianfa” Donati was a Florentine; we have no information concerning his thefts. He appears, in line 50, in the guise of a serpent.
That one had need the other’s name to call,
Saying: “Where is Cianfa? What hath made him stop?”
Whereat I, that my Guide might give full heed,
From chin to nose my finger pointed up.
E thou art slow of faith, thou who dost read
What I shall tell, ’tis nothing for surprise,
Since half I doubt, I who witnessed it indeed.
While with brows raised I held them in mine eyes,
Lo, a serpent with six feet one sinner faced [50]
And darting clamped its body entire on his.
With the middle feet his belly it embraced,
With the forefeet grips the arms and held them pent;
Then of both cheeks its fangs had the full taste.
With the hind feet stretcht along his thighs it leant,
And whipt its tail out in between the two
‘And upwards on the loins behind him bent.
Ivy upon a tree never in-grew
Close as that hideous creature, all up-reared,
To the other’s body did its body glue. [60]
Like heated wax the shapes of them were slurred
Together, and their mingling colours swam:
Nor this nor that was as it first appeared.
As runneth up before the burning flame
On paper, a brown colour, not yet black,
And the white dieth; such their hues became.
The other two gazed on him, and “Alack!”
Each cried, “O Agnel, how thou alterest!
Lo, neither two nor one shape dost thou make.”
The two heads were by now to one comprest, [70]
When there before our eyes two forms begin
To mix in one where neither could be traced.
Two arms were made where the four bands had been;
The belly and chest and legs and thighs below
Became such members as were never seen.
Each former aspect was annulled, and lo,
The unnatural image seemed neither and both,
And such with languid step we watched him go.
As a lizard in the Dog-star’s days of wrath
Shunning from hedge to hedge the scorching flame [80]
Flickers like lightning if it cross the path,
So swift on the other two, with angry aim
At the belly, a little viper all alight,
Livid, and black as a corn of pepper, came.
On one of them it pierced with sudden bite
That part in us whereby we first are fed,[ix]86. “That part in us. . .”: the navel.
Then, dropping down, lay stretched out opposite.
That pierced one stared on it but nothing said;
Nay, without motion of his feet he yawned
A if a sleep or fever on him weighed. [90]
He eyed the snake, the snake him: from his wound
The one smoked fiercely, the other from its mouth;
Their smoke commingled in the air beyond.
LetLucan tell no more the fate uncouth
Of poor Sabellus and Nasidius,[x]95. In Lucan’s Pharsalia, Sabellus, as the result of being bitten by a little snake in the desert, melts away like snow. Nasidius, who had been poisoned by another serpent, swells into a shapeless globe and bursts his armour.
But stay to hear shot forth a stranger truth;
Norr Ovid boast Cadmus and Arethuse
More; if the one he fabled into a snake,
To a fountain the other, I grudge it not his Muse,
For never did he such transfusion make [100]
As that both persons, front to front, should find
That each to itself could the other’s substance take.
They mutually responded in such kind
That the snake split its tail into a fork,
And close the wounded one his feet combined.
The legs, and thighs with them, adhered so stark
Of their own will, that soon the eye would fail
The least division in their joins to mark.
That figure was assumed by the cleft tail
Which opposite had melted, and its skin [110]
Grew soft, and the other hard with horny scale.
I saw the arms at the armpits enter in
And the two feet of the serpent, which were short,
Lengthen as much as those had shortened been.
The two hind-feet together, as they contort,
Combine into the member man conceals:
From his the wretch grows two feet of like sort,
The while the smoke with altered colour steals
Both in its veil, and on one side bestows
The hair that from the other side it peels. [120]
The one fell prostrate and the other rose,
But not withdrew the lamps of wicked glow[xi]122. “Lamps”: glaring eyes.
’Neath which these muzzles were exchanged for those
The erect one drew his upward toward his brow,
And from the too much matter that it gained
Out of the flat cheeks ears started to grow.
The flesh that slipt not back but there remained
Of its excess made rise a nose, and swell
The lips till a right thickness they attained.
The prostrate one shot out his muzzle an ell [130]
And quite into his head drew back the ears,
As a snail draws its horns into its shell.
The tongue, before whole, fashioned to converse
In speech, divides; and in the other head
The fork unites; the smoke no longer stirs.
The soul that had become a reptile fled
With hissing noise along the valley side,
And the other sputtered at it as it sped.[xii]138. “The other sputtered . . .”: human saliva was thought to be poisonous to snakes.
Toward it he turned then his new back, and cried
Aloud to the other: “I'll have Buoso crawl [140]
Along the road where I was made to glide.”
Thus I beheld the seventh pit’s ballast all
Change and re-change; and here let the surprise
Excuse me, if ill my pen the thing recall.
And though bewilderment confused my eyes
And bruised my perfect understanding, flee
These did not, ere that I could recognise
Puccio Sciancato; of all the three
Companions who came first, he only had kept
His form from those malign mutations free: [150]
The other was he for whom Gaville wept.[xiii]151. “The other,” originally the second snake, was Francesco, nicknamed Guercio de’ Cavalcanti, killed for his misdeeds by the people of Gaville, a village on the upper Arno. Gaville mourns because of the vengeance taken for his death.