Notes
34 Amphiaraus was another of the seven kings
who fought in the siege of Thebes. He was a seer who foresaw his own death; he is damned
to the fourth bolgia. See also Purgatorio XII, n.
50,
and Paradiso IV, n. 103.
40 Tiresias, the Theban soothsayer, spent
part of his life as a woman, according to Ovid’s Metamorphoses III.
46 Aruns was an Etruscan diviner who
prophesied the Roman civil war.
55 Manto, Tiresias’ daughter, fled
Thebes after his death and, after much wandering, came to Lake Garda (Benaco, l. 63) and
settled on an island there where she founded Mantua, Virgil’s birthplace. The
dioceses of Trent, Brescia, and Verona meet there (l. 67). The other places named are all
located around the lake.
95 Alberto de Casalodi, lord of Mantua, was a
Guelph who was duped by Ghibelline Pinamonte de’ Bonaccorsi into surrendering the
city in 1272.
110 Eurypylus and Calchas are given here as
examples of Greek augurs involved in choosing the sailing date for Troy. See Aeneid
II, 161-186.
116 Michael Scot, a Celtic scholar in
Frederick II's court, studied the occult.
118 Guido Bonatti from Forlė was a
thirteenth-century astrologer; Asdente, a cobbler from Parma, practiced magic.
126 Cain with his thornbush was the medieval
version of the Man in the Moon. It is early morning on Holy Saturday. |
|
- Now
new punishments I must fit to verse,
-
Shaping the subject for my twentieth canto
- Of
the first canticle on the buried damned.
-
-
Already I was fully set to look
- 5
Far down into the depth that opened to me
- To
see its bottom bathed with tears of anguish,
-
- When
through the valley’s circling I descried
-
People coming hushed and weeping, at the pace
-
Followed by processions in this world.
-
- 10
As my fixed gaze descended lower to them,
- Each
seemed bizarrely twisted at the neck
-
Between the chin and top part of the chest,
-
-
Because their faces turned round to their haunches
- So
that they were compelled to walk backwards
- 15
Since they could not possibly see ahead.
-
-
Perhaps a stroke of palsy once has twisted
-
Someone so completely, but I doubt it
- For I
have never seen a case like this.
-
- May
God so grant you, reader, to find fruit
- 20
In your reading: now ponder for yourself
- How I
could keep the eyes in my head dry
-
- When
I saw close at hand our human image
-
Contorted so the tears streaming from their eyes
-
Bathed their buttocks and ran between the cleft.
-
- 25
I wept, surely, while I leaned back against
- A
rock there on that rugged ridge; my escort
- Said,
"Still like all the other fools, are you?
-
-
"Here pathos lives when its false meaning dies,
- Since
who is more pathetic than the person
- 30
Who agonizes over God’s just judgments?
-
-
"Lift up your head, lift it, see him for whom
- The
earth cracked open before the Thebans’ eyes
- While
they all cried, ‘Where are you rushing off,
-
-
" 'Amphiaraus? Why do you flee the battle?’
- 35
And he didn’t once pause in his headlong flight
- Down
to Minos who snatches every soul.
-
-
"Look how he’s made a chest of his own shoulders:
-
Because he wished to see too far ahead
- He
stares behind and takes a backward path.
-
- 40
"See Tiresias, who changed his likeness:
- Being
a man he then became a woman,
-
Transforming all the members of his body,
-
-
"Until, a second time, he had to strike
- The
two lovemaking serpents with his staff
- 45
Before he donned again his manly down.
-
-
"And backing against his belly is Aruns
- Who,
in the hills of Luni where the folk
- Of
Carrara cultivate the valley,
-
-
"Dwelt in a cave among white marble cliffs,
- 50
And from that vantage with an unblocked view
- He
gazed out at the stars and at the sea.
-
-
"And she who with her wild disheveled hair
-
Covers up her breasts so you can’t see them
- And
keeps all of her hairy parts to that side
-
- 55
"Was Manto, who had searched through many lands
-
Before she settled there where I was born:
- On
this I want you to hear me for a while.
-
-
"After her father Tiresias left this life
- And
the city of Bacchus lay enslaved,
- 60
For long years she wandered through the world.
-
-
" High up in lovely Italy, at the foot
- Of
those Alps that wall in Germany
- Above
Tirol, lies a lake called Benaco;
-
-
"A thousand brooks and more, I believe,
- 65
Bathe Garda, Val Camonica, and Pennino
- With
the waters flowing through that lake,
-
-
"And in its center is a spot the three
-
Bishops of Trent, Brescia, and Verona,
- If
ever they should pass that way, would bless.
-
- 70
"Peschiera, a strong and handsome fortress
- Built
against the Bergarnese and Brescians,
- Sits
at the low point of the surrounding shore.
-
-
"There all the waters which cannot be contained
-
Within the bosom of Benaco tumble
- 75
To form a river down through greening fields;
-
-
"As soon as this water starts to course,
- It is
known as the Mincio — not Benaco —
- To
Governolo where it falls into the Po;
-
-
"Not running far, it finds a level ground
- 80
Where it spreads out and turns into a marsh
- Which
is in summer sometimes low and foul.
-
-
"Passing that way, the savage virgin saw
- Land
there in the middle of the swamp,
-
Untilled and barren of inhabitants.
-
- 85
"There, to flee all human fellowship,
- With
her slaves she stopped to ply her arts,
- And
there she lived and left her empty body.
-
-
"Later the people who were dispersed about
-
Gathered to that place, since it was protected
- 90
By the swamp that ringed it on all sides.
-
-
"Over her dead bones they built a city
- And,
after her who first picked out the site,
-
Without casting lots, they named it Mantua.
-
-
"Once far more people dwelt within it,
- 95
Before Casalodi through his foolishness
- Was
taken in by Pinamonte’s tricks.
-
-
"I charge you, therefore, if you ever hear
-
Another origin claimed for my city,
-
Don’t let false stories cheat you of the truth."
-
- 100
And I said, "Master, this account of yours
- Makes
me so sure and so wins all my trust
- That
I think other versions just dead coals.
-
-
"But tell me if among the people passing
- You
notice anyone worth mentioning,
- 105
For that alone keeps coming to my mind."
-
- To
this he said to me, "That one whose beard
-
Streams down from his cheeks to his brown shoulders
- Was
— when Greece became so drained of males
-
-
"That scarcely were there sons for the cradles —
- 110 An
augur, and he set the time with Calchas
- To
cut the first ship-cables at Aulis.
-
-
"His name was Eurypylus, and of him
- My
high tragedy sings in one passage
- Which
you know well who know the whole of it.
-
- 115
"That other one, so thinned-out in the shanks,
- Was
Michael Scot, who certainly perceived
- How
to play the game of magic fraud.
-
-
"See Guido Bonatti; see Asdente,
- Who
wishes now he had kept to his thread
- 120
And shoe-leather, but he repents too late.
-
-
"See those wretched women who left needle,
-
Spool, and spindle for their fortune-telling;
- They
cast their spells with herbs and image-dolls.
-
-
"But come now; already Cain with his thornbush
- 125
Stands at the border of both hemispheres
- And
touches the waves below Seville,
-
-
"And last night’s moon was already round and full.
-
Remember her well, for through her in times past
- No
harm came to you deep in the dark forest."
-
- 130
So he spoke to me as we journeyed on.
|
return
to Inferno XIX