Inferno 08.001-130: Longfellow Notes
Boccaccio and some other commentators think the words "I say, continuing," are a confirmation of the theory that the first seven cantos of the Inferno were written before Dante's banishment from Florence. Others maintain that the words suggest only the continuation of the subject of the last canto in this.
These two signal fires announce the arrival of two persons to be ferried over the wash, and the other in the distance is on the watch-tower of the City of Dis, answering these.
Phlegyas was the father of Ixion and Coronis. He was king of the Lapithae, and burned the temple of Apollo at Delphi to avenge the wrong done by the god to Coronis. His punishment in the infernal regions was to stand beneath a huge impending rock, always about to fall upon him. Virgil, Aeneid, VI., says of him: "Phlegyas, most wretched, is a monitor to all and with loud voice proclaims through the shades, `Being warned, learn righteousness, and not to contemn the gods.'"
Virgil, Aeneid, VI.:
"The boat of sewn hide groaned under the weight, and, being leaky, took in much water from the lake."
Mr. Wright here quotes Spenser, Ruins of Time: --
"How many great ones may remembered be,
Who in their days most famously did flourish,
Of whom no word we have, nor sign now see,
But as things wiped out with a sponge do perish."
Chaucer's "sclandre of his diffame."
Of Philippo Argenti little is known, and nothing to his credit. Dante seems to have an especial personal hatred of him, as if in memory of some disagreeable passage between them in the streets of Florence. Boccaccio says of him in his Comento: "This Philippo Argenti, as Coppo di Borghese Domenichi de' Cavicciuli was wont to say, was a very rich gentleman, so rich that he had the horse he used to ride shod with silver, and from this he had his surname; he was in person large, swarthy, muscular, of marvellous strength, and at the slightest provocation the most irascible of men; nor are any more known of his qualities than these two, each in itself very blameworthy." He was of the Adimari family, and of the Neri faction; while Dante was of the Bianchi party, and in banishment. Perhaps this fact may explain the bitterness of his invective.
This is the same Philippo Argenti who figures in Boccaccio's tale. See Inf. VI., note 52. The Ottimo Comento says of him: "He was a man of great pomp, and great ostentation, and much expenditure, and little virtue and worth; and therefore the author says, `Goodness is none that decks his memory.'"
And this is all that is known of the "Fiorentino spirito bizzaro," forgotten by history, and immortalized in song. "What a barbarous strength and confusion of ideas," exclaims Leigh Hunt, Italian Poets, p. 60, " is there in this whole passage about him! Arrogance punished by arrogance, a Christian mother blessed for the unchristian disdainfulness of her son, revenge boasted of and enjoyed, passion arguing in a circle."
The word "mosques" paints at once to the imagination the City of Unbelief.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI., Davidson's Translation: -- Aeneas on a sudden looks back, and under a rock on the left sees vast prisons inclosed with a triple wall, which Tartarean Phlegethon's rapid flood environs with torrents of flame, and whirls roaring rocks along. Fronting is a huge gate, with columns of solid adamant, that no strength of men, nor the gods themselves, can with steel demolish. An iron tower rises aloft; and there wakeful Tisiphone, with her bloody robe tucked up around her, sits to watch the vestibule both night and day."
This arrogance of theirs; tracotanza, oltracotanza; Brantome's outrecuidance; and Spenser's surquedrie.
The gate of the Inferno.
The coming of the Angel, whose approach is described in the next canto, beginning at line 64.