Inferno Xviii
INFERNO XVIII
1–18. The extended introductory passage interrupts the narrative in order to set the new scene: Malebolge, the eighth Circle, with its ten varieties of fraudulent behaviors. Only in Inferno does an equal number of cantos (17 and 17) create a precise center for a cantica in the space between two cantos, and we have just passed it. The last canto ended with a sort of “comic” conclusion to Dante’s dangerous voyage on Geryon. He has now traversed precisely half of the literary space devoted to the underworld. Thus, fully half of the cantica, Cantos XVIII to XXXIV, is dedicated to the sins of Fraud. That division tells us something about the poet’s view of human behavior, namely that it is better typified by the worst of sins than by the lesser ones.
The poetry of Malebolge, studied by Sanguineti (Sang.1962.1), is strikingly self-confident. One has the feeling that Dante, having finished his apprenticeship, now has achieved a level of aesthetic performance that may have surprised even him. In the seventh canto he had conjoined two kinds of sinners, the avaricious and the prodigal; but these are two sides of the same sin. Here for the first time, as something of a tour de force, he includes two entirely separate categories of sin in a single canto, one of them itself subdivided into two groups, as in Canto VII—all of this in 115 lines. The precision of the operation is noteworthy, and may be represented as follows:
| (1) panders & seducers | (2) flatterers |
| disposition of both (22–39) | disposition (100–114) |
| modern exemplar (52–66) | modern exemplar (115–126) |
| classical exemplar (82–99) | classical exemplar (127–136) |
The hellscape offers a gray stone circular wall surrounding a stone “field,” which in turn surrounds a pit (the “keep” of this “castle”); the field is divided into ten valleys, which resemble moats set around a castle. The analogy is complete, but works in reverse, since a castle rises above its surroundings, while this “castle” is a hole leading into hell. Our first view of Malebolge (the name is a Dantean coinage made up of words meaning “evil” and “pouches”) makes it seem like a vast, emptied stadium, e.g., the Colosseum, which Dante might have seen in 1301 if he indeed visited Rome then, or the arena of Verona, which he probably saw at least by 1304. The former hypothesis is attractive in that the second image of the canto is also modeled on Roman architecture: the bridge over the Tiber between the Vatican and the city. [return to English / Italian]
19–21. The narrative is now joined to the action concluding the last canto and the poets resume their leftward circling movement. [return to English / Italian]
22–27. The panders, moving from left to right as Dante views them, are moving in a direction contrary to his; the seducers, moving from his right to his left, and thus moving in parallel with him, are going faster than he; but then he has no demons lashing him with whips. [return to English / Italian]
28–33. The simile, reflecting the Roman invention of two-way traffic in 1300 for the crowds thronging to the holy places, on the bridge across the Tiber, from the city (to St. Peter’s, after they pass Castel Sant’Angelo) and back again (to the area of Monte Giordano, just off the Tiber), has caused some to argue that Dante had been in Rome during the Jubilee. It is more likely that he was in fact there in 1301 and heard tell of this modern wonder of crowd control. That the first city that Malebolge calls to mind is Rome in the Jubilee Year is not without its ironic thrust, especially since it had been Pope Boniface VIII, so hated by Dante, who proclaimed this great event (the first in the Church’s history). [return to English / Italian]
35. In his commentary to the passage Benvenuto da Imola suggests that the panders are punished by horned devils because their actions resulted in the cuckoldry of others. [return to English / Italian]
50. Venedico was an important political figure of Bologna in the second half of the thirteenth century. His sin was in selling his own sister to Opizzo of Este (see Inf. XII.111). He actually died in 1302, although Dante obviously believed he had died before 1300. [return to English / Italian]
58–61. Venedico’s pleasantry insists that there are more Bolognesi in this zone of hell than currently populate the city itself. “Sipa” is ancient dialectical Bolognese for “yes,” and thus the phrase means “have grown up speaking Bolognese dialect” between the rivers that mark the eastern and western confines of the city. [return to English / Italian]
66. The demon’s rough remark is variously understood: either “there are no women here to defraud” (as Venedico did his sister), or “there are no women here for sale” (to offer to Dante). And there may also be a hint of slang words for female genitalia. In our translation we have tried to keep both of the first meanings possible. [return to English / Italian]
72. The circlings of the whipped sinners, not of the ditches themselves, are almost certainly what is referred to, just as Francesco da Buti, in his commentary to this passage, said centuries ago. However, it was only some eighty years ago that Enrico Bianchi (Bian.1921.1) brought such a comprehension back to the verse, thereby increasing its power: the reference is to the Florentine custom of whipping a condemned man along the route to his execution. Most contemporary commentators accept this reading. [return to English / Italian]
73–78. At the high point of the bridge over the ditch on their way toward the next bolgia the travelers stop to observe the second set of sinners in this one, whom they have not been able to examine because these were going along in the same direction as were they, and at a faster clip. [return to English / Italian]
83–85. Like Capaneus (Inf. XIV.46–48), the heroic Jason is allowed to keep some of his dignity and his stoical strength. [return to English / Italian]
86–96. Jason, who will be remembered in Paradiso in a far more positive light, as the precursor of Dante in his having taken a great voyage and returned with the golden fleece (Par. II.16–18; XXV.7; XXXIII.94–96), is here presented as the classical exemplar of the vile seducer. Dante has Virgil condense the lengthy narrative of Jason’s exploits found in Ovid (Metam. VII.1–424) into two details, the seductions of Hypsipyle (daughter of the king of Lemnos) and of Medea (daughter of the king of Colchis).
For the resonance at v. 91 of Beatrice’s description of Virgilian utterance as “parola ornata” see the note to Inf. II.67. As for Jason’s segni (signs of love), Dante may be thinking of his ability to move Medea by tears as well as words (see Metam. VII.169). [return to English / Italian]
100–114. The second ditch is filled with supernatural excrement (it only seems to have come from the toilets of humans). What do flatterers do? It is unnecessary to repeat the slang phrases that are used in nearly all languages to characterize their utterance. What they did above, they do below, wallowing in excrement, their faces ingesting it as animals guzzle food from their troughs (see v. 104). [return to English / Italian]
122. Alessio Interminei is the first Lucchese whom we encounter, but there will be others, below. Dante seems systematically to include in hell representatives of all the major Tuscan cities. [return to English / Italian]
133–135. Thaïs is a courtesan in Terence’s comic play Eunuchus, and had a reputation even into the Middle Ages as a flatterer. Whether Dante is citing Terence directly (most currently dispute this) or through Cicero (De amicitia XXVI.98—a text that Dante assuredly did know and which explicitly associates Thaïs with flattery, though there and in Terence she is the one flattered, not the flatterer) is a matter that still excites argument. For the most recent claims for Dante’s knowledge of Terence see Villa (Vill.1984.1); but see also the countering arguments of Bara´nski (Bara.1993.1), pp. 230–38. [return to English / Italian]