The Divine Comedy — Dante Alighieri

Ixx THE OBLIGATIONS OF DANTE TO VmOIL. " Thousands more Shadows he showed me, and their names he told Whom Love had hurried from our mortal shore.** Canto v., lines 67—9.

The sixth class, quique arma secuti Impia, are found in the second division of the lowest circle; and the last class, nee veriti dominorum fallere dextras, are sunk in the last division of all, where Judas, Oassius, and Brutus are mangled in the jaws of Lucifer, as the type of all who have betrayed their masters — in the eyes of Dante the worst and deadliest crime.

The Sibyl tells j^neas not to inquire too curiously into the nature of their punishments. She alludes to the tortures of Sisyphus, Ixion, and Theseus, and adds<-^ " Phlegyasque miserrimus omnis Admonet, et magna testatur voce per umbras : ' Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere Divos. '* Lines 618—20.

Dante places PhJegyas, the violator of the Temple of Apollo, as boatman on the Styx, himself the type of Wrath, over the spirits of wrath punished in the muddy lake : — " Saw muddy people standing in the mire All naked, and with looks where anger glowed. Striking themselves, so did their rage transpire, Not hands alone they used, but head and feet, Biting themselves to pieces in their ire.

My gentle master said, ' O son, now greet The souls of those whom anger overcame.* " " HeU," Canto VII., lines 110—16. In the lines of the Sibyl that follow Virgil is generally supposed to allude to Curio, who, bought over by Oeesar from Pompey's party, was the first to overcome his master*s scruples, and is introduced into Lucan's " Pharsalia'* prompting the passage of the Rubicon with the words " Telle moras : nocuit semper difierre paratis.

Yendidit hie auro patriam, dominumque potentem Imposuit ; fixit leges pretio atque refixit.'* Lines 621, 622. Dante places Curio with the creators of schism, where his tongue has been cut out by the Demon's sword :*-

THE OBLIGATIONS OF DAKTE TO VIRGIL. Ixii " ' 'Tis lie ; he cannot speak to you. This banished man, removed from Oeesar, loath, All doubt, affirming that when well prepared, Any delay to injury ever grows.' Ah ! how bewildered he to me appeared. There with his tongue shorn closely in his throat. Curio, who erst in speaking had so dared." " HeU," Canto XXVIII., lines 9a~102. With a rapid summary the Sibyl closes her account : — '' Ausi omnes immane nefas, ausoque potiti. Non mihi si linguse centum sint oraque centum, Ferrea vox, omnis scelerum comprendere formas, Omnia psenarum percurrere nomina possim." Lines 624 — 7. ^neas then lays down his golden bough before the Halls of Pluto, and advances to the fields of Elysium. It is seen that in Virgil's brief sketch of Tartarus there is hardly an allusion which Dante has not made his own and worked up in his elaborate structure. It is not necessary to follow so minutely the account which follows of the Elysian fields. I have shown that Dante takes it as described by Virgil, with but slight modification, and places it as one part of what he calls Limbo, in the first circle of the Inferno. But here also there are specific imitations* When j^neas meets his father's shade he attempts to embrace it ; — " Ter conatus ibi coUo dare bracchia circum, Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, Par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno.**j Lines 700-2. So when the soul of Statins first learns that it is the great Virgil whom he has met in Purgatory he wishes to fall down and embrace his feet, himself a shade forgetting the nothingness of both : — ** Already he bent down to embrace the feet Of my dear teacher : but he said, * Forbear, brother : you a shade, a shade do greet.' And he arising : * Now you are aware Of the great love, which towards you me does warm. When I forget we are but empty air. Treating a shadow like a solid form.' " " Purgatory," Canto XXI., lines 130—6.

Ixxii THE OBLIGATIONS OP DANTE TO VIRGIL. The doctrine of metempsycliosis, whicli Virgil makes use of as a poetical device to enable ^neas to see amongst the shades the future heroes of Eoman history, is alien to the true spirit of his Elysian fields as a place of happy repose, but the artifice introduces to us a foreshadowing of Purgatory, where the spirit goes through a course of purifying punishment to get rid of the ingrained stains of its former life before it enters on Elysium or is allowed to quaff Lethe, the water of oblivion, so as forgetful of the past to enter on life again. The remarkable passage in which Anchises explains these mysteries to his son was strongly impressed on Dante's mind, and bore fruit in his poem. In the following lines he explains how the stains of mortality blunt the divine essence of the spirit both before and after death : — " Igneus est ollis vigor et coelestis origo Seminibus, quautum non noxia corpora tardant Terrenique hebetant artus moribundaque membra. Hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gaudentque, neque auras Dispiciunt clausse tenebris et carcere cseco. Quin et supremo cum lumine vita reliquit, Non tamen omne malum miseris nee f unditus omnes CorporesB excedunt pestes, penitusque necesse est^ Multa diu concreta modis inolescere miris." Lines 730— 8. In the " Purgatory," where the spirits in the sixth cornice are purified, through leanness, of the sin of gluttony, Dante is puzzled to know how spirits who require no nourishment can grow lean ; and to solve his doubts Statins explains to him the mystery of humanity &om its generation to death, and shows how then the spirit is clothed with air, on which it stamps the seal of its mortal appearance and the characteristics of its mortal being : — " So the surrounding air has here selected That form which in effect the soul does claim With its own seal, which is on it reflected. And as the fire aye follows on the flame, There, where is shifted now the spirit's site. Follows upon that spirit the new frame.