Inferno
Canto XXVI
Dante addresses his native city in shame. He had recognised five Florentines of noble family among the Thieves. Virgil leads him up the rugged pat to the next chasm, the eighth, where are the Evil Counsellors, whose theft is spiritual, each imprisoned in a burning flame. One of the flames has a double tip and conceals the spirits of Ulysses and Diomed. Virgil asks one of them to speak; and Ulysses tells of his last voyage into the unknown ocean below the Equator and shipwreck near the Mount of Purgatory. This story does not agree with the Odyssey and is thought to be Dante’s invention. (It suggested Tennyson’s poem.)
FLORENCE, exult that thou hast grown so great
That thy wings beat, the seas and lands around,
And wide thy name is spread within Hell’s gate!
Among the Thieves five of such note I found
Thy citizens, whence shame comes to my cheek,
Nor to thine honour doth it much redound.
But if the truth in dream of morning speak,[i]7. It was a popular belief that dreams occurring just before dawn would come true.
Thou shalt in short time feel what upon thee
Prato, and others also, thirst to wreak.[ii]9. “Prato” is a little town near Florence: thou shalt feel the grief which even thy nearest neighbours wish thee.
If it were now, not too soon would it be! [10]
Since come it must, I would that come it were,
For, with each year, heavier it is for me.
Thence we departed; and by that same stair
Which served for our descent, of ledges frayed,
My Guide climbed back, and me with him up-bare.
And as our solitary way we made
Among the juts and splinters of the scarp,
The foot sped not without the hand to aid.
Then did I grieve, and grief returneth sharp,
Seeing what I saw in memory, and I rein [20]
More than of wont my genius, lest it warp
And run where Virtue is not to constrain,
So that if good star or aught better still[iii]23. “Aught better” is divine grace.
Enrich me, I may not grudge myself the gain.
Like fire-flies that the peasant on the hill,[iv]25. In this pretty simile of the fireflies, the season which is indicated (lines 26-27) is the summer solstice, the hour (line 28) is dusk.
Reposing in that season, when he who shines
To light our world his face doth least conceal,
At that hour when the fly to gnat resigns,
Sees glimmering down along the valley broad,
There, where perhaps he ploughs or tends the vines,— [30]
So numerous the flames in the Eighth Chasm glowed
Down all its depth, laid open to mine eyes
Soon as I came to where the bottom showed.
As he who avenged him by the bears saw rise
The fiery chariot that Elijah bore
With horses mounting straight into the skies,
For follow it with his eyes he could not more
Than to behold only the flame serene
Like to a little cloud above him soar;
Thus moved along the throat of that ravine [40]
Each flame, for what it stole it doth not show,
And within each a sinner is, unseen.
I stood upon the bridge, rising tip-toe:
Had I not caught a rock and on it leant
I should have fallen, without thrust or blow.
The Guide, who saw me gazing thus attent,
Said: “Within these fires are the spirits confined,
Burned by the shroud within which they are pent.”
“Master,” I answered, “this had I divined
Myself already, which thou makest plain. [50]
And ev’n now was the question in my mind:
Who is in that fire which comes so torn in twain
As if it rose above the pyre that bare
Eteocles beside his brother slain?”[v]54. Eteocles and Polynices, the rival sons of Oedipus, contending for the possession of Thebes, killed each other. When their bodies were burned on the same pyre, the flames divided into two peaks.
He answered me: “Ulysses suffers there,[vi]55-60. Ulysses and Diomed, two of the leading heroes of the Trojan war, go together in their punishment, as they went together to expose themselves to divine wrath.—“Deplore the Horse . . .”: the wooden horse full of Greek warriors, which the Trojans were persuaded to take into the city. By this means Troy was destroyed, and Aeneas and his followers, who afterwards founded the Roman stock, had to flee.
And Diomed; as they braved Heaven’s wrath before
Together, now its vengeance must they share.
Within their flame tormented, they deplore
The Horse and its deceiving ambuscade
Which opened for Rome’s gentle seed the door. [60]
And they lament the guile, whereby the shade
Of Deidamia for Achilles rues;[vii]62. Thetis, to save her son Achilles from the war, disguised him as a girl and entrusted him to King Lycomedes of Scyros; there won the love of the king’s daughter Deidamia, and promised he would be true to her. Discovered by Ulysses and Diomed, he departed with them to the war, and forgot his promise.
And for Palladium stolen are they paid.”[viii]63. Ulysses and Diomed stole the Palladium, an image of Pallas, on which the fate of Troy depended.
“If they within those sparks a voice can use,
Master,” I said, “I pray thee of thy grace—
A prayer that strongly as a thousand sues—
Forbid me not to tarry in this place
Until the hornèd flame blow hitherward:
See, toward it how the longing bends my face.”
And he to me: “The thing thou hast implored [70]
Deserveth praise: and for that cause thy need
Is answered: yet refrain thy tongue from word.
Leave me to speak, for well thy wish I read.
But they, since they were Greeks, might turn aside,
It may be, and thy voice disdain to heed.”
After the fire had come, where to my Guide
Time and the place seemed fit, I heard him frame
His speech upon this manner, as he cried:
“O ye who are two within a single flame,
If while I lived, merit of you I won, [80][ix]80. Virgil assumes that he has immortalised Ulysses and Diomed in his Aeneid.
If merit, much or little, had my name,
When the great verse I made beneath the sun,
Move not, but let the one of you be heard
Tell where he went to perish, being undone.”
The greater horn of the ancient flame was stirred
To shudder and make a murmur, like a fire
When in the wind it struggles and is blurred,
Then tossed upon a flickering crest yet higher,
As it had been a tongue that spoke, it cast
A voice forth from the strength of its desire, [90]
Saying: “When I from Circe broke at last,[x]91. Circe, daughter of the sun, was a sorceress who turned men into beasts. Ulysses visited her and compelled her to restore her victims to human form.
Who more than a year by Gaeta (before[xi]92. Aeneas named the place in memory of his nurse Caieta, who had died there.
Aeneas had so named it) held me fast,
Not sweet son, nor revered old father, nor
The long-due love which was to have made glad
Penelope for all the pain she bore,
Could conquer the inward hunger that I had
To master earth’s experience, and to attain
Knowledge of man’s mind, both the good and bad.
But I put out on the deep, open main [100]
With one ship only, and with that little band
Which chose not to desert me; far as Spain,
Far as Morocco, either shore I scanned.
Sardinia’s isle I coasted, steering true,
And the isles of which that water bathes the strand.
I and my crew were old and stiff of thew
When, at the narrow strait, we could discern
The boundaries Hercules set far in view[xii]108. “The boundaries’: the pillars of Hercules, on either side of the Strait of Gibraltar.
That none should dare beyond, or further learn.
Already I had Sevilla on the right, [110]
And on the larboard Ceuta lay astern.
‘Brothers,’ I said, ‘who manfully, despite
Ten thousand perils, have attained the West,
In the brief vigil that remains of light
To feel in, stoop not to renounce the quest
Of what may in the sun’s path be essayed,
The world that never mankind hath possessed.
Think on the seed ye spring from! Ye were made
Not to live life of brute beasts of the field
But follow virtue and knowledge unafraid. [120]
With such few words their spirit so I steel’d,
That I thereafter scarce could have contained
My comrades from the voyage, had I willed.
And, our poop turned to where the Morning reigned,[xiii]124. They turn their stern to the morning and sail forth, constantly gaining on the left; that is, their course is not due west, but southwest.
We made, for the mad flight, wings of our oars,
And on the left continually we gained.
By now the Night beheld within her course
All stars of the other pole, and ours so low,[xiv]128. “Ours”: our northern pole; when they pass the equator, the North Star sinks below the sea level.
It was not lifted from the ocean-floors.
Five times the light had been re-kindled slow [130][xv]130. “Five times . . .”: they have sailed five months.
Beneath the moon and quenched as oft, since we
Broached the high venture we were plighted to,
When there arose a mountain in the sea,[xvi]133. Doubtless the mountain of Purgatory, directly opposite Jerusalem, in the middle of the Hemisphere of Water.
Dimm’d by the distance: loftier than aught
That ever I beheld, it seemed to be.
Then we rejoiced; but soon to grief were brought.
A storm came out of the strange land, and found
The ship, and violently the forepart caught.
Three times it made her to spin round and round
With all the waves; and, as Another chose, [140]
The fourth time, heaved the poop up, the prow drowned,
Till over us we heard the waters close.”