CANTO XXVI

Eighth circle: Malebolge. The eighth chasm: evil

counsellors. The swathing flames. Ulysses and
Diomedes. Of the last voyage of Ulysses.
Rejoice, O Florence, since thou are so great
That over land and sea thy pinions ply
And through all Hell thy name doth penetrate.
Five citizens of thine like these found I 4
Among the thieves, whence cometh shame o'er me,
Nor to great honour risest thou thereby.
But if toward morn our dreams have verity, 7
In no long time thou shalt become aware
What Prato, if no other, craves for thee.
And it were not too soon if now it were. 10
So might it be, since it must needs betide,
For as I age, 'twill grow the heavier!
Thence we set out; and up those stairs supplied 13
By juts of rock to our descending tread,
Mounted and drew me after him my guide.
And as our solitary way we made 16
Among the splinters of the crag, in vain
Had feet unhelped by hands that path essayed.

4. Five citizens of thine. And all of prominent families!

7. The old belief was that dreams in the early morning were especially
likely to be prophetic.
9. The Prato (pra'-to) that, not to go further and mention others,
would -delight in misfortune to Florence—misfortune which Dante feels
is inevitable and will but weigh heavier on him if deferred till his old
age—is perhaps the neighbouring town of Prato; or perhaps Cardinal
Niccolo da Prato, papal legate to Florence in 1304.
13-14. those stairs . . . tread. See Canto xxiv, 79-8i.

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I sorrowed then and sorrow now again 19

When unto what I saw is turned my thought,
And curb my genius with a tighter rein
Lest it should run where virtue guides it not; 22
So that I may not cheat myself if grace
Of star or better thing that gift hath brought.
As many as the glowworms when the face 25
Of him who lights the world is least concealed
The peasant resting on the hill surveys
(That hour when to the gnat the fly doth yield) 28
Below him in the valley where perchance
He gathers in his grapes or plows his field,—
With flames so many the eighth chasm's expanse 31
Gleamed, as I saw when I was come to where
Its bottom was revealed unto my glance.
And even as he the bears avenged whilere 34
Elias' departing chariot did espy
When straight toward Heaven the horses rose through air
(Nor could he follow it so that to his eye 37
Was other sight than of the fire vouchsafed,
Ascending like a tiny cloud on high)—
Thus moved along the gullet of the cleft 40
Those flames, and each of them doth closely cloak
A sinner, and not one betrays the theft.
I stood upon the bridge, uprisen to look, 43

19 ff. The eighth bolgia is occupied by givers of evil counsel. Dante's

sorrow is caused by his contemplation of men of great and noble
faculties who had misused their Heaven-bestowed gifts. The poet, con­
scious of his own powers, takes the lesson of their fate to heart.
25-26. when the face, etc. That is, at the time of year when the sun
is below the horizon for the shortest time.
28. In other words, at twilight.
34 ff. Elisha, having beheld Elijah (Elias) carried living to Heaven
in a chariot of fire, was mocked by some children, who were thereupon
devoured by bears. See Second Kings ii.
42. betrays the theft. Reveals the fact that it hides a sinner within.

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 CANTO XXVI

And should have fallen beneath (so far I leant)

Without being pushed, had I not clutched a rock.
My leader, who observed me thus attent, 46
Explained: "Within those fires the sinners bide.
All by the shrouds wherewith they burn are pent."
"Master, I feel more certain," I replied, 49
"Through hearing thee; but I had deemed it so
' Already, and fain would ask who doth reside
In yonder flame which cometh cloven as though 52
From off the pyre it were ascending where
Eteocles lay with his brother-foe."
He answered me: "Ulysses suffers there 55
His torture, and Diomed; and thus they speed
Together in punishment as in wrath they were.
Amid that blaze the ambush of the steed 58
They expiate by which the door was made
Whence issued forth the Romans' noble seed.
The craft whereby Deidamia dead 61
Still mourns Achilles, there do they deplore;
And there is the Palladium repaid."
"If they within those sparks possess the power 64
To speak," I said, "to thee I pray, dear lord,
And pray again with prayers a thousand more,
Forbid me not to wait while hitherward 67

52-54. When Eteocles, King of Thebes, and his brother Polynices, who
was leader of the legended expedition of the seven chiefs against him,
were slain by each other's hands, they were placed on one funeral pyre
together; but a divided flame rose from it.
55 ff- Ulysses suffers because of his many perfidious stratagems. Among
these were the capture of Troy by means of the Wooden Horse (as a
result of which the Trojan ancestors of the Romans went to Italy) ;
the decoying of Achilles from Scyros to the Trojan War, whereupon
Deidamia, whose lover that hero was, died of grief; and the theft of
the Palladium, a sacred image of Pallas, from Troy. Diomedes was
the most frequent companion of Ulysses in his enterprises (see, for
example, Iliad x ) .

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Draweth the horned flame. Thou surely seest

How with desire do I incline theretoward."
And he: "Praiseworthy indeed is thy request, 70
And hence I grant it; but hold thou in check
Thy tongue, and since to me is manifest
What thou wouldst have, be it my part to speak; 73
For they, mayhap, might be despiteous
To words of thine, since they themselves were Greek."
After the fire had come so near to us 76
That time and place were in my leader's view
Now fit, I heard him make beginning thus:
"O ye that in a single blaze are two, 79
If aught of you deserved, while living, I—
If much or little I deserved of you
When in the world I wrote the verses high— 82
Move not, but let one tell the tale he hath
Of whither, being lost, he went to die."
The greater horn of ancient flame therewith 85
Began to waver, murmuring, even like
A struggling fire which the wind wearieth;
Then, swaying to and fro its very peak 88
As though it were a tongue for utterance, threw
Out voice and words, and thus began to speak:
"When I left Circe, who had near unto 91

74-75- As mighty figures of ancient Greece, Ulysses and Diomedes

would respect Virgil, a poet of classical antiquity who wrote of affairs
connected with their exploits, more than they would Dante, a modern.
82. the verses high. The Aeneid. It is written with Trojan sympathies,
but celebrates in some measure the great deeds of these great men
and helps to immortalize them.
85. The greater horn. That containing Ulysses, the more eminent of
the two heroes.
91 ff. This famous and exquisite story of the last voyage of Ulysses
seems to be Dante's own invention. Tennyson's poem Ulysses was
obviously inspired by it, and a comparison of the two will show how
great the indebtedness in both detail and spirit.

1196!

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 CANTO XXVI

Caieta past a year sequestered me

Before Aeneas gave the name thereto,
Nor fondness for my son, nor piety 94
For my old father, nor to these combined
The love that should have cheered Penelope,
Could conquer the desire in me to find 97
Experience of the world, and verily
To know the vice and virtues of mankind.
I put forth on the deep and open sea 100
With but a single ship and that small band
Which even till then had not deserted me.
Both sides as far as Spain I saw the land, 103
Far as Morocco, and Sardinia so
And many another wave-girt island scanned.
My company and I were old and slow 106
When of that narrow strait we came in sight
Where Hercules set up his bounds to show
That no man should essay a farther flight; 109
And having already on my left hand passed
Ceuta, I passed Seville upon my right.
Ό brothers,' said I, 'who unto the West 112
Have through a hundred thousand perils come,—
In this brief waking-time, the very last
That for your senses yet remains to run, 115
Be willing nowise to renounce the view
Of the unpeopled world behind the sun.
92-93. Dante follows Virgil in placing the home of the enchantress
Circe at Cape Circello, on the southeastern coast of Italy, near the
town of Caieta (modern Gaeta), named by Aeneas for his nurse.
100. the deep and open sea. The Mediterranean.
107. that narrow strait. The Straits of Gibraltar, whose rock and the
eminence opposite it on the African shore were called "the Pillars of
Hercules/' being fabled to have been set there by that hero to mark
the western limits of the world of men.
i n . Ceuta. In Africa, opposite Gibraltar. Ulysses had passed through
the Straits and entered the Atlantic.

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Think of the seed from which ye sprang; for you 118

Were never born like brutes your ease to take,
But manliness and knowledge to pursue.'
So eager for the voyage did I make 121
My comrades with this utterance brief and burning,
That scarcely could I then have held them back;
And having set our stern unto the morning, 124
W e sped with oars for wings on that mad flight,
Ever and ever more to leftward turning.
Now all the stars of the other pole the night 127
Beheld, and ours so low they never shone
Above the ocean floor. Five times the light
Upon the under surface of the moon 130
Had been rekindled, as many times to die,
Since we that arduous quest had entered on,
When there appeared to us against the sky 133
A mountain dim with distance, and methought
That never any had I seen so high.
Then we rejoiced, but weeping soon were taught, 136
Because a tempest came from that new shore
And on the forepart of the vessel smote.
Three times it whirled her round with all the stour 139
Of waters; the fourth time the poop exposed
And sank the prow, as willed a Higher Power,
Until above our heads the sea had closed." 142

124^. They started westward, but continually bent their course more
and more to the south. Presently the night displayed all the stars of
the southern hemisphere, and after voyaging for five full months they
espied a mountain of enormous height. This was the Mount of Purgatory,
which, according to the poet's geography, was the only land in the
southern hemisphere.
141. a Higher Power. Unlike the blasphemous Vanni Fucci, Ulysses
observes the taboo against the utterance of God's name in Hell.

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