fault than thine hath been," said the Master; therefore disburden
thyself of all regret, and make reckoning that I am always at thy
side, if again it happen that fortune find thee where people are
in similar brawl; for the wish to hear it is a base wish."



CANTO XXXI. The Giants around the Eighth Circle.--Nimrod.
--Ephialtes.--Antaeus sets the Poets down in the Ninth Circle.

One and the same tongue first stung me, so that it tinged both
my cheeks, and then supplied the medicine to me. Thus do I
hear[1] that the lance of Achilles and of his father was wont to
be cause first of a sad and then of a good gift. We turned our
back to the wretched valley,[2] up along the bank that girds it
round, crossing without any speech. Here it was less than night
and less than day, so that my sight went little forward; but I
heard a horn sounding so loud that it would have made every
thunder faint, which directed my eyes, following its course
counter to it,[3] wholly to one place.

[1] Probably from Ovid, who more than once refers to the magic
power of the spear which had been given to Peleus by Chiron.
Shakespeare too had heard of it, and applies it, precisely as
Dante does, to one

Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles' spear,
Is able with the charge to kill and cure.
2 Henry VI. v. i.

[2] The tenth and last pit. My eyes went in the direction whence
the sound came.


After the dolorous rout when Charlemagne lost the holy gest,
Roland sounded not so terribly.[1] Shortwhile did I carry my head
turned thitherward, when it seemed to me I saw many high towers;
whereon I, "Master, say, what city is this?" And he to me,
"Because too far away thou peerest through the darkness, it
happens that thou dost err in thy imagining. Thou shalt see well,
if thou arrivest there, how much the sense at distance is
deceived; therefore somewhat more spur thyself on;" Then
tenderly he took me by the hand, and said, "Before we go further
forward, in order that the fact may seem less strange to thee,
know that they are not towers, but giants, and they are in the
abyss[2] round about the bank, from the navel downward, one and
all of them."

[1] At Roncesvalles.

Rollanz ad mis l'olifan a sa buche,
Empeint le bien, par grant vertut le sunet.
Halt sunt li pui e la voiz est mult lunge,
Granz xxx. liwes l'oirent-il respundre,
Carles l'oit e ses cumpaignes tutes.

Chanson de Roland, 1753-57.

[2] The central deep of Hell, dividing the eighth circle from
the ninth,--the lowest.


As when the mist is dissipating, the look little by little shapes
out what the vapor that thickens the air conceals, so, as I
pierced the gross and dark air as we drew nearer and nearer to
the verge, error fled from me and fear grew upon me. For as above
its circular enclosure Montereggione [1] crowns itself with
towers, so with half their body the horrible giants, whom Jove
still threatens from heaven when he thunders, betowered the bank
that surrounds the abyss.

[1] The towers of Montereggione in ruin still crown its broken
wall, and may be seen from the railroad not far from Siena, on
the way to Florence.


And I discerned now the face of one, his shoulders, and his
breast, and great part of his belly, and down along his sides
both his arms. Nature, surely, when she left the art of such like
creatures, did exceeding well in taking such executers from Mars;
and if she repent not of elephants and of whales, he who looks
subtly holds her more just and more discreet therefor;[1] for
where the faculty of the mind is added to evil will and to power,
the human race can make no defense against it. His face seemed to
me long and huge as the pine-cone[2] of St. Peter at Rome, and in
its proportion were his other bones; so that the bank, which was
an apron from his middle downward, showed of him fully so much
above, that to reach to his hair three Frieslanders[3] would have
made ill vaunt. For I saw of him thirty great palms down from the
place where one buckles his cloak.

[1] For no longer creating giants.

[2] Of bronze, that came from the Mausoleum of Hadrian, and
in Dante's time stood in the fore-court of St. Peter's, and is
now in the Vatican gardens.

[3] Supposed to be tall men.




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