And I, "Master, thy discourses are so certain to me, and so lay
hold on my faith, that the others would be to me as dead embers.
But tell me of the people who are passing, if thou seest any one
of them worthy of note; for only unto that my mind reverts."

Then he said to me, "That one, who from his cheek stretches his
beard upon his dusky shoulders, was an augur when Greece was so
emptied of males that they scarce remained for the cradles, and
with Calchas at Aulis he gave the moment for cutting the first
cable. Eurypylus was his name, and thus my lofty Tragedy sings
him in some place;[1] well knowest thou this, who knowest the
whole of it. That other who is so small in the flanks was Michael
Scott,[2] who verily knew the game of magical deceptions. See
Guido Bonatti,[3] see Asdente,[4] who now would wish he had
attended to his leather and his thread, but late repents. See the
forlorn women who left the needle, the spool, and the spindle,
and became fortune-tellers; they wrought spells with herb and
with image.

[1] Suspensi Eurypylum scitantem oracula Phoebi
Mittimus. Aeneid, ii. 112.

[2] A wizard of such dreaded fame
That, when in Salamanca's cave
Him listed his magic wand to wave,
The bells would ring in Notre Dame.
Lay of the Lost Minstrel, Canto ii.

[3] A famous astrologer of Forli, in the thirteenth century.

[4] Dante, in the Canvito, trattato iv. c. 16, says that if
NOBLE meant being widely known, then "Asdente, the shoemaker of
Parma, would be more noble than any of his fellow-citizens."


"But come on now, for already Cain with his thorns [1] holds the
confines of both the hemispheres, and touches the wave below
Seville. And already yesternight was the moon round; well
shouldst thou remember it, for it did thee no harm sometimes in
the deep wood." Thus he spoke to me, and we went on the while.

[1] The Man in the Moon, according to an old popular legend.



CANTO XXI. Eighth Circle: fifth pit: barrators.--A magistrate of
Lucca.--The Malebranche.--Parley with them.

So from bridge to bridge we went, speaking other things, which my
Comedy careth not to sing, and held the suffimit, when we stopped
to see the next cleft of Malebolge and the next vain
lamentations; and I saw it wonderfully dark.

As in the Arsenal of the Venetians, in winter, the sticky pitch
for smearing their unsound vessels is boiling, because they
cannot go to sea, and, instead thereof, one builds him a new
bark, and one caulks the sides of that which hath made many a
voyage; one hammers at the prow, and one at the stern; another
makes oars, and another twists the cordage; and one the foresail
and the mainsail patches,--so, not by fire, but by divine art, a
thick pitch was boiling there below, which belimed the bank on
every side. I saw it, but saw not in it aught but the bubbles
which the boiling raised, and all of it swelling up and again
sinking compressed.

While I was gazing down there fixedly, my Leader, saying, "Take
heed! take heed!" drew me to himself from the place where I was
standing. Then I turned as one who is slow to see what it behoves
him to fly, and whom a sudden fear unnerves, and delays not to
depart in order to see. And I saw behind us a black devil come
running up along the crag. Ah! how fell he was in aspect, and how
rough he seemed to me in action, with wings open, and light upon
his feet! His shoulder, which was sharp and high, was laden by a
sinner with both haunches, the sinew of whose feet he held
clutched. "O Malebranche[1] of our bridge," he said, "lo, one of
the Ancients of Saint Zita[2] put him under, for I return again
to that city, which I have furnished well with them; every man
there is a barrator,[3] except Bonturo:[4] there, for money, of
No they make Ay." He hurled him down, and along the hard crag he
turned, and never mastiff loosed was in such haste to follow a
thief.

[1] Malebranche means Evil-claws.

[2] One of the chief magistrates of Lucca, whose special
protectress was Santa Zita.

[3] A corrupt official, selling justice or office for bribes; in
general, a peculator or cheat.

[4] Ironical.


That one sank under, and came up back uppermost, but the demons
that had shelter of the bridge cried out, "Here the Holy Face[1]
avails not; here one swims otherwise than in the Serchio;[2]
therefore, if thou dost not want our grapples, make no show above
the pitch." Then they struck him with more than a hundred prongs,
and said, "Covered must thou dance here, so that, if thou canst,


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