"Within the land which the Adige and the Po water, valor and
courtesy were wont to be found before Frederick had his
quarrel;[1] now safely anyone may pass there who out of shame
would cease discoursing with the good, or drawing near them.
Truly three old men are still there in whom the antique age
rebukes the new, and it seems late to them ere God restore them
to the better life; Currado da Palazzo, and the good Gherardo,[2]
and Guido da Castel, who is better named, after the manner of the
French, the simple Lombard.[3]

[1] Before the Emperor Frederick II. had his quarrel with the
Pope; that is, before Emperor and Pope had failed in their
respective duties to each other.

[2] Gherardo da Camino, "who was noble in his life, and whose
memory will always be noble," says Dante in the Convito, iv. 14.

[3] "The French," says Benvenuto da Linda, "call all Italians
Lombards, and repute them very astute."


"Say thou henceforth, that the Church of Rome, through
confounding in itself two modes of rule,[1] falls in the mire,
and defiles itself and its burden."

[1] The spiritual and the temporal.


"O Marco mine," said I, "thou reasonest well; and now I discern
why the sons of Levi were excluded from the heritage;[1] but what
Gherardo is that, who, thou sayest, remains for sample of the
extinct folk, in reproach of the barbarous age?" "Either thy
speech deceives me, or it is making trial of me," he replied to
me, "in that, speaking Tuscan to me, it seems that of the good
Gherardo thou knowest naught. By other added name I know him not,
unless I should take it from his daughter Gaia.[2] May God be
with you! for further I come not with you. Behold the brightness
which rays already glimmering through the smoke, and it behoves
me to depart--the Angel is there--ere I appear to him."[3] So he
turned, and would not hear me more.

[1] "The Lord separated the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the
covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister unto
him, and to bless in his name, unto this day. Wherefore Levi hath
no part nor inheritance with his brethren; the Lord is his
inheritance."--Deuteronomy, x. 8-9.

[2] Famed for her virtues, says Buti; for her vices, say the
Ottimo and Benvenuto.

[3] His time of purgation is not yet finished; not yet is he
ready to meet the Angel of the Pass.



CANTO XVII. Third Ledge the Wrathful.--Issue from the
Smoke.--Vision of examples of Anger.--Ascent to the Fourth Ledge,
where Sloth is purged.--Second Nightfall.--Virgil explains how
Love is the root of Virtue and of Sin.


Recall to mind, reader, if ever on the alps a cloud closed round
thee, through which thou couldst not see otherwise than the mole
through its skin, how, when the humid and dense vapors begin to
dissipate, the ball of the sun enters feebly through them: and
thy imagination will easily come to see, how at first I saw again
the sun, which was already at its setting. So, matching mine to
the trusty steps of my Master, I issued forth from such a cloud
to rays already dead on the low shores.

O power imaginative, that dost sometimes so steal us from outward
things that a man heeds it not, although around him a thousand
trumpets sound, who moveth thee if the sense afford thee naught?
A light, that in the heavens is formed, moveth thee by itself, or
by a will that downward guides it?

[1] If the imagination is not stirred by some object of sense, it
is moved by the influence of the stars, or directly by the Divine
will.


In my imagination appeared the impress of the impiety of her[1]
who changed her form into the bird that most delights in singing.
And here was my mind so shut up within itself that from without
came nothing which then might he received by it. Then rained down
within my high fantasy, one crucified,[2] scornful and fierce in
his look, and thus was dying. Around him were the great
Ahasuerus, Esther his wife, and the just Mordecai, who was in
speech and action so blameless. And when this imagination burst
of itself, like a bubble for which the water fails, beneath which
it was made, there rose in my vision a maiden,[3] weeping
bitterly, and she was saying, "O queen, wherefore through anger
hast thou willed to be naught? Thou hast killed thyself in order
not to lose Lavinia: now thou hast lost me: I am she who mourns,
mother, at thine, before another's ruin.

[1] Progne or Philomela, according to one or the other version of
the tragic myth, was changed into the nightingale, after her
anger had led her to take cruel vengeance on Tereus.



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