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In this Canto begins the Ninth and last Circle of the Inferno, where Traitors are punished.
"Hence in the smallest circle, at the point
Of all the Universe, where Dis is seated,
Whoe'er betrays forever is consumed."
The word thrust is here used in its architectural sense, as the thrust of a bridge against its abutments, and the like.
Still using the babble of childhood.
The Muses; the poetic tradition being that Amphion built the walls of Thebes by the sound of his lyre; and the prosaic interpretation, that he did it by his persuasive eloquence.
Matthew xxvi. 24:
"Woe unto that man by whom the son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born."
Tambernich is a mountain of Sclavonia, and Pietrapana another near Lucca.
These two "miserable brothers" are Alessandro and Napoleone, sons of Alberto degli Alberti, lord of Falterona in the valley of the Bisenzio. After their father's death they quarrelled, and one treacherously slew the other.
Caina is the first of the four divisions of this Circle, and takes its name from the first fratricide.
Sir Mordred, son of King Arthur. See La Mort d'Arthure, III. ch. 167: "And there King Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield with a foine of his speare throughout the body more than a fadom."
Nothing is said here of the sun's shining through the wound, so as to break the shadow on the ground, but that incident is mentioned in the Italian version of the Romance of Launcelot of the Lake, L'illustre e famosa istoria di Lancillotto del Lago, III. ch. 162: "Behind the opening made by the lance there passed through the wound a ray of the sun so manifestly, that Girflet saw it."
Focaccia was one of the Cancellieri Bianchi, of Pistoia, and was engaged in the affair of cutting off the hand of his half-brother. See Note 65, Canto VI. He is said also to have killed his uncle.
Sassol Mascheroni, according to Benvenuto, was one of the Toschi family of Florence. He murdered his nephew in order to get possession of his property; for which crime he was carried through the streets of Florence nailed up in a cask, and then beheaded.
Camicion de' Pazzi of Valdarno, who murdered his kinsman Ubertino. But his crime will seem small and excusable when compared with that of another kinsman, Carlino de' Pazzi, who treacherously surrendered the castle of Piano in Valdarno, wherein many Florentine exiles were taken and put to death.
The speaker is Bocca degli Abati, whose treason caused the defeat of the Guelfs at the famous battle of Montaperti in 1260. See Note 86, Canto X.
"Messer Bocca degli Abati, the traitor," says Malispini, Storia, ch. 171, "with his sword in hand, smote and cut off the hand of Messer Jacopo de' Pazzi of Florence, who bore the standard of the cavalry of the Commune of Florence. And the knights and the people, seeing the standard down, and the treachery, were put to rout."
The second division of the Circle, called Antenora, from Antenor, the Trojan prince, who betrayed his country by keeping up a secret correspondence with the Greeks. Virgil, Aeneid, I. 242, makes him founder of Padua.
See Note 81 of this Canto.
Buoso da Duera of Cremona, being bribed, suffered the French cavalry under Guido da Monforte to pass through Lombardy on their way to Apulia, without opposing them as he had been commanded.
There is a double meaning in the Italian expression sta fresco, which is well rendered by the vulgarism, left out in the cold, so familiar in American politics.
Beccaria of Pavia, Abbot of Vallombrosa, and Papal Legate at Florence, where he was beheaded in 1258 for plotting against the Guelfs.
Gianni de' Soldanieri, of Florence, a Ghibelline, who betrayed his party. Villani, VII, 14, says: "Messer Gianni de' Soldanieri put himself at the head of the populace from motives of ambition, regardless of consequences which were injurious to the Ghibelline party, and to his own detriment, which seems always to have been the case in Florence with those who became popular leaders."
The traitor Ganellon, or Ganalon, who betrayed the Christian cause at Roncesvalles, persuading Charlemagne not to go to the assistance of Orlando. See Canto XXXI. Note 18.
Tebaldello de' Manfredi treacherously opened the gates of Faenza to the French in the night.
Tydeus, son of the king of Calydon, slew Menalippus at the siege of Thebes and was himself mortally wounded. Statius, Thebaid, VIII., thus describes what followed: --
O'ercome with joy and anger, Tydeus tries
To raise himself, and meets with eager eyes
The deathful object, pleased as he surveyed
His own condition in his foe's portrayed.
The severed head impatient he demands,
And grasps with fever in his trembling hands,
While he remarks the restless balls of sight
That sought and shunned alternately the light.
Contented now, his wrath began to cease,
And the fierce warrior had expired in peace;
But the fell fiend a thought of vengeance bred,
Unworthy of himself and of the dead.
Meanwhile, her sire unmoved, Tritonia came,
To crown her hero with immortal fame;
But when she saw his jaws besprinkled o'er
With spattered brains, and tinged with living gore,
Whilst his imploring friends attempt in vain
To calm his fury, and his rage restrain,
Again, recoiling from the loathsome view,
The sculptur'd target o'er her face she threw."