One and the selfsame tongue first wounded me,
so that it colored both my cheeks, and then
supplied me with the medicine required;
Achilles’ and his father’s lance, I hear,
was likewise wont to be the source of, first,
a sad, and, after, of a grateful gift.
We turned our backs upon the woeful vale
over the bank which girds it round about,
and passed across without a single word.
Here less than night it was, and less than day,
so that my sight advanced not far; but here
I heard a horn give forth so loud a sound,
that it had rendered any thunder faint;
this led mine eyes, as counter to its path
they followed, wholly to a single place.
After the woeful rout, when Charlemagne
the holy army of his knights had lost,
Roland blew not so terrible a blast.
I had not kept my head turned toward it long,
when many lofty towers I seemed to see;
I, therefore: “Teacher, say what town is this?”

“Since through the darkness from too far away
thou peerest,” he replied, “it comes about
that afterward thou errest in conceiving.
If yonder thou attain, thou ’lt clearly see
how from afar one’s senses are deceived;
hence onward urge thyself a little more.”
Thereat he took my hand with kindly care,
and said to me: “Ere further on we go,
so that the fact may seem less strange to thee,
know, then, that towers they are not, but Giants;
and all of them are standing in the well
around the bank, each from his navel down.”
As, when a fog is thinning off, one’s gaze
little by little giveth shape to that,
which, since it packs the air, the mist conceals;
even so, as through the dense, dark air I pierced,
and nearer drew and nearer to the brink,
error in me took flight, and fear increased;
for, as upon its round enclosing walls
Montereggione crowns itself with towers;
thus o’er the margin which surrounds the well
with one half of their bodies towered up
those frightful Giants, whom, when from the sky
he thunders, Jupiter is threatening still.
Already now was I distinguishing
the face of one, his shoulders and his breast,
most of his paunch, and, down his sides, both arms.

When Nature ceased from making animals
like these, and took such executioners
from Mars, she certainly did very well;
and ev’n if she of elephants and whales
repent her not, whoever subtly looks
holds her therein the more discreet and just;
for where the reasoning faculty is joined
to evil will equipped with power to act,
people can make against it no defence.
His face appeared to me as long and big
as is at Rome the pine-cone of Saint Peter’s,
and in proportion to it were his other bones;
so that the bank, which from his middle down
an apron was, showed quite so much of him
above it, that of reaching to his hair
three Frisians would have made a useless boast;
for I full thirty spans of him perceived,
down from the place at which one buckles cloaks.
“Rafel mai amech zabi et almi”
the frightful mouth, to which no sweeter psalms
were fitting, thereupon began to cry.
Then toward him cried my Leader: “Foolish soul,
keep to thy horn, and vent thyself therewith,
when wrath or other passion seizes thee!
Search at thy neck, and thou wilt find the cord
which holds it tied, O spirit of confusion,
and see it lying on thy mighty breast.”

To me then: “Self-accused he stands, for this
is Nimrod, to whose evil thought is due
that more than one tongue in the world is spoken.
Let us leave him alone, nor talk in vain;
for such is every tongue to him, as his
to others is, for that is known to none.
Then, turning to the left, we travelled on
much further; and within a crossbow’s shot
we found the next one far more large and fierce.
What was the master’s power who girded him,
I cannot say; but this one had in front
his left arm, and behind his back his right,
tied by a chain, which downward from his neck
held him so bound, that on the uncovered part
it wound around as far as the fifth coil.
My Leader said to me: “’Gainst Jove Most High
this proud soul wished to test his strength, and hence
hath this reward. Ephialtes is his name;
his haughty undertaking he attempted
what time the Giants caused the Gods to fear;
the arms he plied he moveth now no more.”
And I to him: “If possible it be,
I ’d gladly have these eyes of mine enjoy
experience of the measureless Briareus.”
Then he replied: “Antaeus thou ’lt behold
not far from here, who speaks, and, since unbound,
can set us at the bottom of all sin.

He is much further on, whom thou wouldst see,
and bound he is, and shaped like this one, save
that more ferocious in his looks he seems.”
There never was an earthquake strong enough
to shake a tower with so much violence,
as Ephialtes quickly shook at this.
Then more than ever yet did I fear death,
nor for it was there need of more than fear,
had it not been that I perceived his bonds.
We thereupon proceeded further still,
and to Antaeus came, who full five ells,
beside his head, protruded from the pit.
“O thou that in the valley fortune-blest,
which once caused Scipio to inherit glory
when with his followers Hannibal took flight,
once tookst a thousand lions as thy prey,
and who, hadst thou been at thy brethren’s war
on high, it seems that it is still believed
the Sons of Earth had been the victors there;
pray set us down below, nor let disdain
affect thee, where the cold locks up Cocytus.
Make us not go to Tìtyus or to Tìpheus;
this man can give what most is longed for here;
stoop, then, nor twist thy muzzle. He can still
give fame to thee on earth, since he is living,
and still looks forward to long life, if Grace
recall him not untimely to itself.”

The Teacher thus; then he in haste stretched out
the hands, whose mighty pressure Hercules
once felt, and took my Leader. Virgil then,
on feeling himself taken, said to me:
“Come here, that I may take thee up;” and then
so did, that he and I one bundle were.
Such as the Carisenda seems, when viewed
beneath its leaning side, whene’er a cloud
sails o’er it so, that opposite it hangs;
such did Antaeus seem to me, who watched
to see him stoop, and such a moment ’t was,
that I had gladly gone another road.
But lightly at the bottom, which devours
Judas and Lucifer, he set us down;
nor, thus bent over, did he linger there,
but raised himself, as on a ship a mast.

Courtney Langdon, translator. Full text is available at Liberty Fund.

If I had rhymes that were as harsh and hoarse
as would be fitting for the dismal hole,
on which lean all the other circling rocks,
I ’d squeeze the juice of my conception out
more fully; but because I have them not,
not without fear do I resolve to speak;
for to describe the bottom of the universe
is not an enterprise wherewith to jest,
nor for a tongue that says ‘mamma’ and ‘dad’;
let, then, those Ladies give my verse their aid,
who helped Amphion build the walls of Thebes,
that from the facts the telling differ not.
O rabble, that, ill-born beyond all people,
are in a place, to speak of which is hard,
far better had ye here been sheep or goats!
When we were down within the gloomy well,
beneath the Giant’s feet, though lower far,
and I still gazing at its lofty wall,
I heard one say to me: “Look where thou walkest!
and see that with thy feet thou trample not
the heads of us two wretched, weary brothers!”

Thereat I turned around, and saw before me,
and ’neath my feet, a lake which, being frozen,
seemed to be made of glass and not of water.
The Danube up in Austria never made
so thick a veil in winter for its course,
nor yonder ’neath the cold sky did the Don,
as what was here; for even if Tambernich
had fallen on it, or had Pietrapana,
it had not cracked even at its very edge.
And as a frog remains, to do its croaking,
with muzzle out of water, in the season
when oft the peasant dreams that she is gleaning;
even so, as far as where one’s shame is shown,
the woeful shades were livid in the ice,
as to the notes of storks they set their teeth.
Each kept his face turned downward; from his mouth,
the cold, and from his eyes, his saddened heart
provides itself a witness in their midst.
When I had gazed around a while, I looked
down at my feet, and two I saw with heads
so close together, that their hair was mixed.
“Ye that are pressing thus your breasts together,
say who ye are,” said I. They bent their necks,
and when their faces had been raised toward me,
their eyes, moist only inwardly before,
gushed upward though the lids; whereat the cold,
binding the tears between them, closed them up.

A clamp ne’er bound so tightly board to board;
whereat, so great the anger mastering them,
like two he-goats, they butted one another.
And one who had, by reason of the cold,
lost both his ears, with face still lowered, said:
“Why dost thou mirror thee so much on us?
If thou wouldst know who those two near thee are,
the valley from which thy Bisenzio flows
belonged to their sire Albert and to them.
They issued from one body; and thou canst search
through all Caìna, but thou ’lt never find
a shade more worthy to be fixed in ice;
not he, whose breast and shadow broken were
by one same blow at Arthur’s hand; nor yet
Focaccia; nor this fellow here, whose head
so blocks me, that I cannot see beyond,
and who was Sàssol Mascheroni called;
who he was, thou, if Tuscan, now knowst well.
And that thou put me to no further speech,
know, then, that I was Camiciòn de’ Pazzi,
and that, to excuse me, I await Carlìn.”
Thereafter I beheld a thousand faces
made doglike by the cold; hence frozen ponds
cause me to shudder now, and always will.
And now, while toward that center we were moving,
whereto all heavy objects gravitate,
and I was trembling in the eternal cold;

I know not whether it were will, or fate,
or chance; but as I walked among the heads,
hard in the face of one I struck my foot.
Weeping he scolded: “Wherefore dost thou smite me?
Unless thou comest to increase the vengeance
for Mont’ Aperti, why dost thou molest me?”
And I said: “Teacher, wait now for me here,
that I through him may issue from a doubt;
then at thy pleasure shalt thou hurry me.”
My Leader stopped; and I to him, who still
was savagely blaspheming, said: “What sort
of man art thou, that scoldest people so?”
“Now who art thou, that goest” he replied,
“through Antenora, smiting cheeks so roughly,
that it would be too much, wert thou alive?”
“I am alive, and it may profit thee”
was my reply, “for me to place thy name,
if fame thou ask, among my other notes.”
And he: “I crave the contrary; away
with thee, and bother me no more; for ill
dost thou know how to flatter in this bog!”
Thereat I seized him by the nape, and said:
“It needs must be that thou reveal thy name,
or that no hair remain upon thee here!”
Then he to me: “Though thou pull out my hair,
I ’ll neither say, nor show thee, who I am,
fall thou upon my head a thousand times.”

I had his hair wrapped round my hand already,
and more than one shock had I plucked from him,
while he was barking, with his eyes turned down;
when here another cried: “What ails thee, Bocca?
Is making noise with jawbones not enough,
unless thou bark? What devil touches thee?”
“Henceforth” said I, “I would not have thee speak,
perfidious traitor; for true news of thee
I ’ll carry with me to thy lasting shame.”
“Begone, and tell whate’er thou wilt;” he answered,
but be not silent, if thou issue hence,
of him who had just now his tongue so ready.
He here bewails the money of the French;
‘Him of Duera’ thou canst say, ‘I saw
where cold the days are for the sinful folk.’
And if thou shouldst be asked who else was there,
thou hast beside thee him of Beccherìa,
who had his gorget cut in two by Florence.
Gianni de’ Soldanier is further on,
I think, with Ganellon, and Tebaldello,
who, while its people slept, unlocked Faenza.”
From him we had departed now, when two
I saw, so frozen in a single hole,
that one man’s head served as the other’s cap.
And as because of hunger bread is eaten,
even so the upper on the other set
his teeth, where to the nape the brain is joined.

Not otherwise did Tydeus gnaw the temples
of Menalippus out of spite, than this one
was gnawing at the skull and other parts.
“O thou that showest by a sign so beastly
hatred toward him thou eatest, tell me why,”
said I to him, “on this express condition,
that shouldst thou rightfully of him complain,
I, knowing who ye are, and that one’s sin,
may quit thee for it in the world above,
if that, wherewith I speak, be not dried up.”

Courtney Langdon, translator. Full text is available at Liberty Fund.

From his grim meal that sinner raised his mouth,
and wiped it on the hair of that same head,
which he had spoiled behind. He then began:
“Thou wouldst that I renew a hopeless grief,
the thought of which already breaks my heart,
before I speak of it. But if my words
are likely to be seeds, and bear the fruit
of infamy upon the traitor whom I gnaw,
speaking and weeping shalt thou see together.
I know not who thou art, nor by what means
thou ’rt come down here, but when I hear thee speak,
thou truly seemst to me a Florentine.
Know, then, that I Count Ugolino was,
and this man here Ruggieri, the Archbishop;
and now I ’ll tell thee why I ’m thus his neighbor.
That, as the outcome of his evil thoughts,
I, trusting him, was seized, and afterward
was put to death, there is no need to say;
but that which thou canst not have heard, that is,
how cruel was my death, thou now shalt hear,
and whether he have wronged me thou shalt know.

A narrow slit within the moulting-tower,
which bears, because of me, the name of Hunger,
and in whose walls still others must be locked,
had through its opening shown me many a moon
already, when I had the evil dream,
which rent apart the curtain of the future.
This one therein a lord and huntsman seemed,
chasing the wolf and wolfings toward the mount
which hinders Pisans from beholding Lucca,
with bitches lean and eager and well trained;
for he had set before him in his van
Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfranchi.
After a little run both father and sons
seemed weary to me; then methought I saw
their flanks torn open by sharp-pointed fangs.
When, just before the morning, I awoke,
I heard my children, who were with me there,
sob in their sleep, and ask me for their bread.
Cruel indeed thou art, if, thinking what
my heart forebode, thou grievest not already;
and if thou weepest not, at what art wont
to weep? Awake they were, and now the hour
was drawing nigh when food was brought to us,
hence each, by reason of his dream, was worried;
and then I heard the dread tower’s lower door
nailed up; whereat, without a word, I looked
my children in the face. I did not weep,

so like a stone had I become within;
they wept; and my poor little Anselm said:
‘Father, thou lookest so! What aileth thee?’
But still I did not weep, nor did I answer
through all that day, or through the following night,
till on the world another sun had dawned.
Then, when a little beam had made its way
into our woeful prison, and I perceived
by their four faces, how I looked myself,
I bit in anguish both my hands. And they,
thinking it done because I craved to eat,
immediately stood up, and said to me:
‘Father, much less shall we be pained, if us
thou eat; thou with this wretched flesh didst clothe us,
do thou, then, strip it from us now.’ Thereat,
to sadden them no more, I calmed myself;
through that day and the next we all kept mute.
Ah, why, hard earth, didst thou not open up?
Then Gaddo, when the fourth day we had reached,
stretched himself out at length before my feet,
and said: “My father, why dost thou not help me?”
And there he died; and, ev’n as thou seest me,
between the fifth day and the sixth I saw
the three fall one by one; and, blind already,
I gave myself to groping over each,
and two days called them, after they were dead;
then fasting proved more powerful than pain.”

When he had spoken thus, with eyes awry,
he seized again the wretched skull with teeth,
which for the bone were strong as are a dog’s.
Ah, Pisa, foul reproach of those that dwell
in that fair country where the sì is heard;
since slow thy neighbors are to punish thee,
then let Caprara and Gorgona move,
and make a hedge across the Arno’s mouth,
that every person in thee may be drowned!
for though Count Ugolino had the name
of traitor to thee in thy castle-towns,
thou shouldst not thus have crucified his sons.
Their youthful age had made, thou modern Thebes,
Brigata and Uguccione innocent,
and the other two my canto names above.
Further along we went, to where the ice
roughly enswathes another class of people,
not downward turned, but wholly on their backs.
Weeping itself allows not weeping there,
and tears, which find a barrier in their eyes,
turn back, to cause their suffering to increase;
because the first ones form a solid block,
and thus like crystal visors wholly fill
the hollow cup beneath the brow. And though,
as in a callous spot,
because of cold
all feeling had departed from my face,

it seemed to me that now I felt some wind;
whence I to him: “My Teacher, who moves this?
Is not all moving air quenched here below?”
And he: “Ere long shalt thou be where thine eyes,
seeing the cause which raineth down the blast,
will make an answer to thee as to this.”
One of the wretches of the icy crust
called out to us thereat: “O souls, so cruel,
that unto you the last place is assigned,
remove for me the hard veils on my face,
that I may somewhat vent the pain that fills
my heart, before the tears freeze up again.”
Whence I to him: “If thou wouldst have me help thee,
say who thou art; and should I not relieve thee,
may I needs reach the bottom of the ice!”
Then he: “I Frate Alberigo am,
he of the evil garden’s fruit, who here
for every fig I gave get back a date.”
Then “Oh!” said I, “art thou already dead?”
And he to me replied: “I have no knowledge
how in the world above my body fares.
Such is the privilege of this Ptolomèa,
that frequently a soul falls into it,
ere Atropos have caused it to move on.
But that thou scrape more gladly from my face
these glassy tears, know, then, that just as soon
as any soul betrays, as I betrayed,

its body is taken from it by a demon,
who then takes charge of it, until its time
be all revolved. Into a well like this
it rushes headlong down; and so, perhaps,
the body of the shade that winters here
behind me, is still visible above.
This thou shouldst know, if just come down, for he
Ser Branca d’ Oria is, and many years
have now gone by, since he was thus shut up.”
“I think” said I, “that thou deceivest me,
for Branca d’ Oria is not dead as yet,
but eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and dons his clothes.”
“Above us, in the Malebranche’s ditch,”
he said, “there, where the sticky pitch is boiling,
not yet had Michel Zanche’s soul arrived,
when in his stead this fellow left behind
a devil in his body, as did also
one of his kinsmen, who with him performed
the treachery. But stretch thy hand here now,
and ope mine eyes!” And yet I oped them not,
for rudeness shown to him was courtesy.
Ah, Genoese! ye men estranged from all
morality, and full of every vice,
why from the earth are ye not wholly driven?
for with the meanest spirit of Romagna,
I found one such of you, that, for his deeds,
in soul he bathes already in Cocytus,
and seems in body still alive above.

Courtney Langdon, translator. Full text is available at Liberty Fund.

“The banners of the King of Hell advance
toward us; now, therefore, look ahead of thee,”
my Teacher said, “and see if thou perceive him.”
As, when a heavy fog is breathed abroad,
or when at night our hemisphere grows dark,
a windmill looks when seen from far away;
even such a structure seemed I now to see;
then, for the wind, I shrank behind my Leader,
for other shelter was there none. I now —
and ’t is with fear I put it into verse, —
was where the shades were wholly covered up,
and visible as is a straw in glass;
some lying are; and some are standing up,
one on his head, the other on his soles;
one, like a bow, bends toward his feet his face.
When we had gone so far ahead, that now
it pleased my Teacher to reveal to me
the Creature who once seemed so beautiful,
he stepped from where he was in front of me,
stopped me, and said: “Lo Dis, and lo the place,
where thou must arm thyself with fortitude!”

How frozen and how weak I then became,
ask thou not, Reader, for I write it not,
because all speech would be of small avail.
I did not die, nor yet remained alive;
think for thyself now, hast thou any wit,
what I became, of both of these deprived.
The Emperor of the Realm of Woe stood forth
out of the ice from midway up his breast;
and I compare more closely with a Giant,
than merely with his arms the Giants do;
consider now how great that whole must be,
that with such parts as these may be compared.
If, once as beautiful as ugly now,
he still raised up his brows against his Maker,
justly doth every woe proceed from him.
Oh, what a marvel it appeared to me,
when I beheld three faces to his head!
One was in front of us, and that was red;
the other two were to the latter joined
right o’er the middle of each shoulder-blade,
and met each other where he had his crest;
that on the right twixt white and yellow seemed;
the left one such to look at, as are those
who come from there, where valeward flows the Nile.
Under each face two mighty wings stretched out,
of size proportioned to so huge a bird;
sails of the sea I never saw so large.

They had no feathers, but were like a bat’s
in fashion; these he flapped in such a way,
that three winds issued forth from him; thereby
Cocytus was completely frozen up.
With six eyes he was weeping, and his tears
and bloody slaver trickled o’er three chins.
In each mouth, as a heckle would have done,
a sinner he was crushing with his teeth,
and thus was causing pain to three of them.
To him who was in front of us the biting
was nothing to the clawing, for at times
his back remained completely stripped of skin.
“That soul up there which hath the greatest pain
Judas Iscariot is,” my Teacher said,
“who hath his head within, and plies his legs
without. Of the other two, whose heads are down,
Brutus is he who from the black snout hangs;
see how he writhes, and utters not a word!
Cassius the other is, who so big-limbed
appears. But night is coming up again,
and now ’t is time to leave, for we ’ve seen all.”
Then, as it pleased him, I embraced his neck,
and he availed himself of time and place,
and when the wings were opened wide enough,
he firmly grasped the shaggy flanks, and then
from tuft to tuft he afterward descended
between the matted hair and frozen crusts.

When we were come to where the thigh turns round,
just at the thick part of the hips, my Leader
with tiring effort and with stress of breath
turned his head round to where his legs had been,
and seized the hair as one would who ascends;
hence I thought we were going back to Hell.
“Hold fast to me, for by such stairs as these”
panting like one worn out, my Teacher said,
“must such great wickedness be left behind.”
Then, through an opening in the rock he issued,
and, after seating me upon its edge,
over toward me advanced his cautious step.
Raising mine eyes, I thought that I should still
see Lucifer the same as when I left him;
but I beheld him with his legs held up.
And thereupon, if I became perplexed,
let those dull people think, who do not see
what kind of point that was which I had passed.
“Stand up” my Teacher said, “upon thy feet!
the way is long and difficult the road,
and now to middle-tierce the sun returns.”
It was no palace hallway where we were,
but just a natural passage under ground,
which had a wretched floor and lack of light.
“Before I tear myself from this abyss,
Teacher,” said I on rising, “talk to me
a little, and correct my wrong ideas.

Where is the ice? And how is this one fixed
thus upside down? And in so short a time
how hath the sun from evening crossed to morn?”
Then he to me: “Thou thinkest thou art still
beyond the center where I seized the hair
of that bad Worm who perforates the world.
While I was going down, thou wast beyond it;
but when I turned, thou then didst pass the point
to which all weights are drawn on every side;
thou now art come beneath the hemisphere
opposed to that the great dry land o’ercovers,
and ’neath whose zenith was destroyed the Man,
who without sinfulness was born and died;
thy feet thou hast upon the little sphere,
which forms the other surface of Judecca.
’T is morning here, whenever evening there;
and he who made our ladder with his hair,
is still fixed fast, ev’n as he was before.
He fell on this side out of Heaven; whereat,
the land, which hitherto was spread out here,
through fear of him made of the sea a veil,
and came into our hemisphere; perhaps
to flee from him, what is on this side seen
left the place empty here, and upward rushed.”
There is a place down there, as far removed
from Beelzebub, as e’er his tomb extends,
not known by sight, but by a brooklet’s sound,

which flows down through a hole there in the rock,
gnawed in it by the water’s spiral course,
which slightly slopes. My Leader then, and I,
in order to regain the world of light,
entered upon that dark and hidden path;
and, without caring for repose, went up,
he going on ahead, and I behind,
till through a rounded opening I beheld
some of the lovely things the sky contains;
thence we came out, and saw again the stars.

Courtney Langdon, translator. Full text is available at Liberty Fund.