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The Tenth and last "cloister of Malebolge," where
"Justice infallible
Punishes forgers,"
and falsifiers of all kinds. This Canto is devoted to the alchemists.
Geri del Bello was a disreputable member of the Alighieri family, and was murdered by one of the Sacchetti. His death was afterwards avenged by his brother, who in turn slew one of the Sacchetti at the door of his house.
Bertrand de Born.
Like the ghost of Ajax in the Odyssey, XI. "He answered me not at all, but went to Erebus amongst the other souls of the dead."
Dante seems to share the feeling of the Italian vendetta, which required retaliation from some member of the injured family. "Among the Italians of this age," says Napier, Florentine Hist., I. Ch. VII., "and for centuries after, private offence was never forgotten until revenged, and generally involved a succession of mutual injuries; vengeance was not only considered lawful and just, but a positive duty, dishonorable to omit; and, as may be learned from ancient private journals, it was sometimes allowed to sleep for five-and-thirty years, and then suddently struck a victim who perhaps had not yet seen the light when the original injury was inflicted."
The Val di Chiana, near Arezzo, was in Dante's time marshy and pestilential. Now, by the effect of drainage, it is one of the most beautiful and fruitful of the Tuscan valleys. The Maremma was and is notoriously unhealthy; see Canto XIII. Note 9, and Sardinia would seem to have shared its ill repute.
Forgers or falsifiers in a general sense. The "false semblaunt" of Gower, Confes. Amant., II.: --
"Of fals semblaunt if I shall telle,
Above all other it is the welle
Out of the which deceipte floweth."
They are registered here on earth to be punished hereafter.
The plague of Aegina is described by Ovid, Metamorph. VII., Stonestreet's Tr.: --
"Their black dry tongues are swelled, and scarce can move,
And short thick sighs from panting lungs are drove.
They gape for air, with flatt'ring hopes t'abate
Their raging flames, but that augments their heat.
No bed, no cov'ring can the wretches bear,
But on the ground, exposed to open air,
They lie, and hope to find a pleasing coolness there.
The suff'ring earth, with that oppression curst,
Returns the heat which they imparted first.
Here one, with fainting steps, does slowly creep
O'er heaps of dead, and straight augments the heap;
Another, while his strength and tongue prevailed,
Bewails his friend, and falls himself bewailed;
This with imploring looks surveys the skies,
The last dear office of his closing eyes,
But finds the Heav'ns implacable, and dies."
The birth of the Myrmidons, "who still retain the thrift of ants, though now
transformed to men," is thus given in the same book: --
"As many ants the num'rous branches bear,
The same their labor, and their frugal care;
The branches too alike commotion found,
And shook th' industrious creatures on the ground,
Who by degrees (what's scarce to be believed)
A nobler form and larger bulk received,
And on the earth walked an unusual pace,
With manly strides, and an erected face;
Their num'rous legs, and former color lost
The insects could a human figure boast."
Latian, or Italian; any one of the Latin race.
The speaker is a certain Griffolino, an alchemist of Arezzo, who practised upon the credulity of Albert, a natural son of the Bishop of Siena. For this he was burned; but was "condemned to the last Bolgia of the ten for alchemy."
The inventor of the Cretan labyrinth. Ovid, Metamorph. VIII.: --
"Great Daedalus of Athens was the man
Who made the draught, and formed the wondrous plan."
Not being able to find his way out of the labyrinth, he made wings for himself and his son Icarus, and escaped by flight.
Speaking of the people of Siena, Forsyth, Italy, 532, says:
"Vain, flighty, fanciful, they want the judgment and penetration of their Florentine neighbors; who, nationally severe, call a nail without a head chiodo Sanese. The accomplished Signora Rinieri told me, that her father, while Governor of Siena, was once stopped in his carriage by a crowd at Florence, where the mob, recognizing him, called out: `Lasciate passare il Governatore de' matti.' A native of Siena is presently know at Florence; for his very walk, being formed to a hilly town, detects him on the plain."
The persons here mentioned gain a kind of immortality from Dante's verse. The Stricca, or Baldastricca, was a lawyer of Siena; and Niccolò dei Salimbeni, or Bonsignori, introduced the fashion of stuffing pheasants with cloves, or, as Benvenuto says, of roasting them at a fire of cloves. Though Dante mentions them apart, they seem, like the two others named afterwards, to have been members of the Brigata Spendereccia, or Prodigal Club, of Siena, whose extravagances are recorded by Benvenuto da Imola. This club consisted of "twelve very rich young gentlemen, who took it into their heads to do things that would make a great part of the world wonder." Accordingly each contributed eighteen thousand golden florins to a common fund, amounting in all to two hundred and sixteen thousand florins. They built a palace, in which each member had a splendid chamber, and they gave sumptuous dinners and suppers; ending their banquets sometimes by throwing all the dishes, table-ornaments, and knives of gold and silver out of the window. "This silly institution," continues Benvenuto, "lasted only ten months, the treasury being exhausted, and the wretched members became the fable and laughing-stock of all the world."
In honor of this club, Folgore da San Geminiano, a clever poet of the day (1260), wrote a series of twelve convivial sonnets, one for each month of the year, with Dedication and Conclusion. A translation of these sonnets may be found in D. G. Rossetti's Early Italian Poets. The Dedication runs as follows: --
"Unto the blithe and lordly Fellowship,
(I know not where, but wheresoe'er, I know,
Lordly and blithe,) be greeting; and thereto,
Dogs, hawks, and a full purse wherein to dip;
Quails struck i' the flight; nags mettled to the whip;
Hart-hounds, hare-hounds, and blood-hounds even so;
And o'er that realm, a crown for Niccolò,
Whose praise in Siena springs from lip to lip.
Tingoccio, Atuin di Togno, and Ancaiàn,
Bartolo, and Mugaro, and Fa,enot,
Who well might pass for children of King Ban,
Courteous and valiant more than Lancelot,
To each, God speed! How worthy every man
To hold high tournament in Camelot."
"This Capocchio," says the Ottimo, "was a very subtle alchemist; and because he was burned for practising alchemy in Siena, he exhibits his hatred to the Sienese, and gives us to understand that the author knew him."