Sant’ Andrea!4 what avails it thee,”
It cried, “that of me thou hast made thy screen?
For thy ill life what blame on me recoils?”
When o’er it he had paus’d, my master spake:
“Say who wast thou, that at so many points
Breath’st out with blood thy lamentable speech?”
He answer’d: “Oh, ye spirits: arriv’d in time
To spy the shameful havoc, that from me
My leaves hath sever’d thus, gather them up,
And at the foot of their sad parent-tree
Carefully lay them. In that city’5 I dwelt,
Who for the Baptist her first patron chang’d,
Whence he for this shall cease not with his art
To work her woe: and if there still remain’d not
On Arno’s passage some faint glimpse of him,
Those citizens, who rear’d once more her walls
Upon the ashes left by Attila,
Had labour’d without profit of their toil.
I slung the fatal noose6 from my own roof.”
Footnotes
1 A wild and woody tract, abounding in deer, goats, and wild boars. Cecina is a river not far to the south of Leghorn; Corneto, a small city on the same coast, in the patrimony of the Church.
2 “I it was.” Piero delle Vigne, a native of Capua, who from a low condition raised himself, by his eloquence and legal knowledge, to the office of Chancellor to the Emperor Frederick II. The courtiers, envious of his exalted situation, forged letters to make Frederick believe that he held a secret and traitorous intercourse with the Pope, who was then at enmity with the Emperor. He was cruelly condemned to lose his eyes. Driven to despair by his unmerited calamity he dashed out his brains against the walls of a church, in the year 1245.
3 Lano, a Siennese, who being reduced by prodigality to a state of extreme want, found his existence no longer supportable; and having been sent by his countrymen on a military expedition to assist the Florentines against the Aretini, took that opportunity of exposing himself to certain death, in the engagement which took place at Toppo, near Arezzo. See G. Villani, Hist. lib. vii. c. cxix.
4 Jacopo da Sant’ Andrea, a Paduan, who, having wasted his property in the most wanton acts of profusion, killed himself in despair.
5 “——— Florence, that city which changed her first patron Mars for St. John the Baptist.”
6 “I slung the fatal noose.” We are not informed who this suicide was; some calling him Rocco de’ Mozzi, and others Lotto degli Agli.
Canto XIV
ARGUMENT.—They arrive at the beginning of the third of those compartments into which this seventh circle is divided. It is a plain of dry and hot sand, where three kinds of violence are punished; namely, against God, against Nature, and against Art; and those who have thus sinned, are tormented by flakes of fire, which are eternally showering down upon them. Among the violent against God is found Capaneus, whose blasphemies they hear. Next, turning to the left along the forest of self-slayers, and having journeyed a little onward, they meet with a streamlet of blood that issues from the forest and traverses the sandy plain. Here Virgil speaks to our Poet of a huge ancient statue that stands within Mount Ida in Crete, from a fissure in which statue there is a dripping of tears, from which the said streamlet, together with the three other infernal rivers, are formed.
SOON as the charity of native land
Wrought in my bosom, I the scatter’d leaves
Collected, and to him restor’d, who now
Was hoarse with utt’rance. To the limit thence
We came, which from the third the second round
Divides, and where of justice is display’d
Contrivance horrible. Things then first seen
Clearlier to manifest, I tell how next
A plain we reach’d, that from its sterile bed
Each plant repell’d. The mournful wood waves round
Its garland on all sides, as round the wood
Spreads the sad foss. There, on the very edge,
Our steps we stay’d. It was an area wide
Of arid sand and thick, resembling most
The soil that erst by Cato’s foot was trod.
Vengeance of Heav’n! Oh! how shouldst thou be fear’d
By all, who read what here my eyes beheld!
Of naked spirits many a flock I saw,
All weeping piteously, to different laws
Subjected: for on the’ earth some lay supine,
Some crouching close were seated, others pac’d
Incessantly around; the latter tribe,
More numerous, those fewer who beneath
The torment lay, but louder in their grief.
O’er all the sand fell slowly wafting down
Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow
On Alpine summit, when the wind is hush’d.
As in the torrid Indian clime, the son
Of Ammon saw upon his warrior band
Descending, solid flames, that to the ground
Came
