Nessus spake: “Return, and be their guide.
And if ye chance to cross another troop,
Command them keep aloof.” Onward we mov’d,
The faithful escort by our side, along
The border of the crimson-seething flood,
Whence from those steep’d within loud shrieks arose.
Some there I mark’d, as high as to their brow
Immers’d, of whom the mighty Centaur thus:
“These are the souls of tyrants, who were given
To blood and rapine. Here they wail aloud
Their merciless wrongs. Here Alexander dwells,
And Dionysius fell, who many a year
Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. That brow
Whereon the hair so jetty clust’ring hangs,
Is Azzolino;8 that with flaxen locks
Obizzo’9 of Este, in the world destroy’d
By his foul step-son.” To the bard rever’d
I turned me round, and thus he spake; “Let him
Be to thee now first leader, me but next
To him in rank.” Then farther on a space
The Centaur paus’d, near some, who at the throat
Were extant from the wave; and showing us
A spirit by itself apart retir’d,
Exclaim’d: “He10 in God’s bosom smote the heart,
Which yet is honour’d on the bank of Thames.”
A race I next espied, who held the head,
And even all the bust above the stream.
’Midst these I many a face remember’d well.
Thus shallow more and more the blood became,
So that at last it but imbru’d the feet;
And there our passage lay athwart the foss.
“As ever on this side the boiling wave
Thou seest diminishing,” the Centaur said,
“So on the other, be thou well assur’d,
It lower still and lower sinks its bed,
Till in that part it reuniting join,
Where ’t is the lot of tyranny to mourn.
There Heav’n’s stern justice lays chastising hand
On Attila, who was the scourge of earth,
On Sextus, and on Pyrrhus,11 and extracts
Tears ever by the seething flood unlock’d
From the Rinieri, of Corneto this,
Pazzo the other nam’d,12 who fill’d the ways
With violence and war.” This said, he turn’d,
And quitting us, alone repass’d the ford.
Footnotes
1 “Adice’s stream.” After a great deal having been said on the subject, it still appears very uncertain at what part of the river this fall of the mountain happened.
2 “The infamy of Crete.” The Minotaur.
3 “The feign’d heifer.” Pasiphaë.
4 “The King of Athens.” Theseus, who was enabled by the instruction of Ariadne, the sister of the Minotaur, to destroy that monster.
5 “Thy sister’s art.” Ariadne.
6 Our Saviour, who, according to Dante, when he ascended from Hell, carried with him the souls of the Patriarchs, and of other just men, out of the first circle. See Canto iv.
7 Nessus, when dying by the hand of Hercules, charged Deïanira to preserve the gore from his wound; for that if the affections of Hercules should at any time be estranged from her, it would recall them. Deïanira had occasion to try the experiment; and the venom, as Nessus had intended, caused Hercules to expire in torments.
8 Azzolino, or Ezzolino di Romano, Lord of Padua, Vicenza, Verona, and Brescia, who died in 1260. His atrocities form the subject of a Latin tragedy, Eccerinis, by Albertino Mussato, of Padua, contemporary of Dante, and the most elegant writer of Latin verse of that age.
9 “Obizzo of Este.” Marquis of Ferrara and of the Marca d’ Ancona, was murdered by his own son (whom, for that most unnatural act, Dante calls his stepson) for the sake of the treasures which his rapacity had amassed.
10 “He.” “Henrie, the brother of this Edmund, and son to the foresaid King of Almaine (Richard, brother of Henry III of England), as he returned from Affrike, where he had been with Prince Edward, was slain at Viterbo in Italy by the hand of Guy de Montfort, the son of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in revenge of the same Simon’s death. The murther was committed afore the high altar, as the same Henrie kneeled there to hear divine service.” A. D. 1272.—Holinshed’s Chron., p. 275. See also Giov. Villani, “Hist.” lib. vii. c. xl., where it is said “that the heart of Henry was put into a golden cup, and placed on a pillar at London Bridge for a memorial to the English of the said outrage.”
11 Sextus, either the son of Tarquin the Proud or of Pompey the Great; and Pyrrhus, King of Epirus.
12 Two noted marauders, by whose depredations the public ways were infested. The latter was of the noble family of Pazzi in Florence.
Canto XIII
ARGUMENT.—Still in the seventh circle, Dante enters its second compartment, which contains both those who have done violence on their own persons and those who have violently consumed their goods; the first changed into rough and knotted trees whereon the harpies build their nests, the latter chased and torn by black female mastiffs. Among the former, Piero delle Vigne is one who tells him the cause of his having committed suicide, and moreover in what manner the souls are transformed into those trunks. Of the