Inferno -- Canto XXV

The Thieves Transformed

Notes

15 The suicide is Capaneus, a king who assaulted Thebes. See Canto XIV, ll. 46-72, and note.

19 Maremma is the swampland in Tuscany.

25 Cacus, a centaur and son of Vulcan, resides here in the seventh pocket with the thieves. He was killed by Hercules.

43 Cianfa belonged to the Donati family of Florence.

68 Agnello was one of the Florentine Brunelleschi. He here is merged with the lizard Cianfa.

94 Lucan in his Pharsalia (IX) tells how Sabellus and Nasidius, two soldiers in Cato’s army, were bitten by snakes: one melted like snow, the other swelled and burst his armor. Ovid describes how Cadmus turned into a serpent and Arethusa into a fountain (Metamorphoses IV and V).

140 Buoso may be of the Donati or Abati clans.

148 Puccio Sciancato de Galigai was a Florentine Ghibelline. Francesco Cavalcanti, the third thief, was killed by the people of Gaville (l. 151), and his kinsmen avenged his death brutally. Here he steals the body of Buoso who becomes a reptile.

          At the end of this harangue of his the thief

          Raised high his fists forked into figs and cried,

          "Take that, God, I screwed them against you!"

 

          From then on the serpents were my friends

5         Because one of them coiled around his neck

          As though to say, "I’ll not have you say more!"

 

          And another whipped about his arms and tied him,

          Wrapping itself so tightly in front of him

          That with the knot he couldn’t jerk a muscle.

 

10       Pistoia, ah Pistoia! why not decree

          To turn yourself to ashes and end it all

          Since you outstrip your offspring in evil-doing?

 

          Throughout all the darkened circles of deep hell

          I saw no soul so insolent toward God,

15       Not even he who fell from the walls at Thebes.

 

          Without speaking another word, he fled,

          And then I saw a centaur, full of fury,

          Come shouting, "Where, where is that bitter beast?"

 

          I do not think Maremma has as many

20       Snakes as the centaur carried on his croup

          Right up to where our human shape begins.

 

          Upon his shoulders, just behind the scruff,

          With its wings outstretched, there sat a dragon

          That set on fire all that cross its path.

 

25       My master stated, "That centaur is Cacus:

          In a rock-cave beneath Mount Aventine

          Many the time he spilled a lake of blood.

 

          "He does not go the same road with his brothers

          Because he fraudulently committed theft

30       Of his neighbor’s mighty herd of cattle.

 

          "The club of Hercules, who must have hit him

          A hundred blows, ended his crooked deals:

          But after the tenth clout he felt nothing."

 

          While he was saying this, Cacus ran past,

35       And three spirits came along below us,

          But neither I nor my guide observed them

 

          Until they shouted up, "Who are you?"

          That put an end to our discussion, and

          Then we turned our attention fully to them.

 

40       I did not recognize them, but it happened,

          As it so often happens by some chance,

          That one had to call out the other's name,

 

          Questioning, "Where has Cianfa gone off to?"

          At this, I — to keep my guide listening —

45       Placed my finger between chin and nose.

 

          If you are now, reader, slow to believe

          What I shall tell, that would be no wonder,

          For I who saw it can scarcely accept it.

 

          While I was staring down at the three sinners

50       I saw a serpent with six feet, from in front

          Leap up on one and entirely grip him.

 

          It wrapped his stomach with its middle feet

          And with its forefeet pinned him by the arms;

          Then sank its teeth in one cheek, then the other.

 

55       It spread its hind feet down about his thighs

          And thrust the tail out between his legs

          And at his back pulled it up straight again.

 

          Never did ivy cling to any tree

          So tightly as that horrendous beast

60       Twined its limbs around and through the sinner’s.

 

          Then the two stuck together as if made

          Of hot wax and mixed their colors so

          Neither one nor other seemed what once they were:

 

          Just as, in front of the flame, a brown color

65       Advances on the burning paper, so that

          It is not yet black but the white dies away.

 

          The other two glared at one another, each

          Crying out, "O Agnello, how you change!

          Look! already you are neither two nor one."

 

70       The two heads by now had become one

          When we saw the two features fuse together

          Into one face in which they both were lost.

 

          Two arms took shape out of the four remnants;

          The thighs with the legs, belly, and chest,

75       Changed into members never before seen.

 

          Then every former likeness was blotted out:

          That perverse image seemed both two and neither,

          And, such, at a slow pace, it moved away.

 

          Just as the lizard, that under the giant lash

80       Of the dog days darts from hedge to hedge,

          Looks like a lightning flash as it crosses the path,

 

          So seemed, heading straight out toward the gut

          Of the other two, a small blazing serpent,

          Black and livid like a peppercorn.

 

85       And in one sinner it bit right through that part

          From which we first take suck and nourishment;

          And down it fell full length in front of him.

 

          The bitten sinner stared but uttered nothing.

          Instead, he just stood rooted there and yawned

90       Exactly as though sleep or fever struck him.

 

          The serpent looked at him, he looked at it:

          One through the mouth, the other through his wound

          Billowed dense smoke and so the two smokes mingled.

 

95       Let Lucan now be silent, where he tells

          Of hapless Sabellus and Nasidius,

          And let him listen to what I now project.

 

          Let Ovid too be silent about Cadmus

          And Arethusa, where in verse he makes one

          A snake and one a fount: I do not envy him,

 

100      Since he never so transmuted two natures

          Face to face that their spiritual forms

          Were ready to exchange their bodily substance.

 

          Together they responded to such laws

          That the snake slit its tail into a fork

105     While the wounded sinner drew his feet together.

 

          The legs with the thighs locked so firmly,

          One to the other, that shortly one could find

          No sign whatever where the seam had joined.

 

          The slit tail then assumed the very shape

110      That had been lost there; and the hide of one

          Softened as the skin of the other hardened.

 

          I saw his arms returning to the armpits

          And the two feet of the reptile — they were short —

          Lengthen out while the two arms shortened.

 

115      Afterward, the hind feet, twisted up

          Together, became the member that men hide,

          While from his member the wretch grew two paws.

 

          While smoke veiled both the one and the other

          With new color and made the hair grow matted

120     On the one skin, and the other it made bald,

 

          The one rose upright and the other fell,

          Neither averting the lamps of evil eyes

          As, staring, they exchanged a nose and snout.

 

          The one standing drew back the face toward

125      The temples, and from the surplus stuff massed there

          Ears emerged above the once-smooth cheeks;

 

          The surplus not pulled back but still remaining

          In front, then formed a nose for the face

          And filled the lips out to their proper size.

 

130     The one lying down sprouted forth a muzzle

          And withdrew the ears back into the head

          In the same way a snail pulls in its horns.

 

          And the tongue, once single, whole, and suited

          For speech, split, while the other’s forked tongue

135     Sealed back up, and the smoke also stopped.

 

          The soul that had been turned into a beast,

          Hissing, filed off along the gully, fast,

          And the other, speaking, spat after its tracks.

 

          He turned his new-made shoulders then and told

140     The third soul left there, "I want Buoso to run,

          The way I did, on all fours down the road!"

 

          And so I saw the cargo shift and reshift

          In the seventh hold — and let me be forgiven

          Strangeness that may have led my pen astray.

 

145      And although my eyes were somewhat out of focus

          And my mind out of joint, the three sinners

          Could not have fled so furtively that I

 

          Did not observe Puccio Sciancato,

          The only one, of the three comrades that

150     Came at first, who then had not been changed;

 

          The other was he who made you, Gaville, grieve.

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