Inferno: Canto XX

Of new punishment behooves me to make verses, and give matter for the twentieth canto of the first canzone, which concerns the sunken.

I now was all prepared to look into the depth discovered to me, which was bathed with tears of anguish;

and through the circular valley I saw a people coming silent and weeping, at the pace which the Litanies make in this world.

When my sight descended lower on them, each seemed wondrously distorted, [between] the chin [and] the commencement of the chest:

[for] the face was turned towards the loins; and they had to come backward, for to look before them was denied.

Perhaps by force of palsy some have been thus quite distorted; but I have not seen, nor do believe it to be so.

Reader, so God grant thee to take profit of thy reading, now think for thyself how I could keep my visage dry,

when near at hand I saw our image so contorted, that the weeping of the eyes bathed the hinder parts at their division?

Certainly I wept, leaning on one of the rocks of the hard cliff, so that my Escort said to me: “Art thou, too, like the other fools?

Here pity lives when it is altogether dead. Who more impious than he that sorrows at God’s judgment?

Raise up thy head, raise up, and see him for whom the earth opened herself before the eyes of the Thebans, whereat they all cried, ‘Whither rushest thou,

Amphiaraus? Why leavest thou the war?’ And he ceased not rushing headlong down to Minos, who lays hold on every sinner.

Mark how he has made a breast of his shoulders: because he wished to see too far before him, he now looks behind and goes backward.

Behold Tiresias who changed his aspect, when of male he was made woman, all his limbs transforming;

and afterwards he had again to strike the two involved serpents with his rod, before he could resume his manly plumes.

That is Aruns coming back before him, who in the mountains of Luni, where hoes the Carrarese that dwells beneath,

amongst [the] white marbles had the cave for his abode; from which he could observe the stars and the sea with unobstructed view.

And she that covers her bosom, which thou seest not, with her flowing tresses, and has all her hair[y skin] on the other side,

was Manto, who searched through many lands, then settled there where I was born: whence it pleases me a little to have thee listen to me.

After her father went out of life, and the city of Bacchus came to be enslaved, she for a long time roamed the world.

Up in beautiful Italy there lies a lake, at the foot of the Alps which shut in Germany above the Tyrol, [which] is called Benacus.

Through a thousand fountains, I believe, and more, the [A]pennine, between Garda and Val Camonica, is irrigated by the water which stagnates in that lake.

At the middle there is a place where the Trentine pastor, and he of Brescia, and the Veronese might bless, if they went that way.

Peschiera, a fortress beautiful and strong to front the Brescians and the Bergamese, sits where the shore around is lowest.

There all that in the bosom of Benacus cannot stay, has to descend and make itself a river, down through green pastures.

Soon as the water sets head to run, it is no longer named Benacus, but Mincio, to Governo where it falls into the Po.

Not far has it flowed, when it finds a level, on which it spreads and makes a marsh thereof, and is wont in summer to be at times unwholesome.

The cruel virgin, passing that way, saw land amidst the fen, uncultivated and naked of inhabitants.

There, to shun all human intercourse, she halted with her ministers to do her arts; and there she lived and left her body vacant.

Afterwards the men, that were scattered round, gathered together on that spot [which] was strong by reason of the marsh it had on every side.

They built the city over those dead bones; and for her who first chose the place, they called it Mantua without other augury.

Once the inhabitants were denser in it, ere the folly of Casalodi was cheated by Pinamonte.

Therefore I charge thee, if thou ever hearest other origin given to my city, let no falsehood defraud the truth.”

And I: “Master, thy words are to me so certain, and so take hold of my belief, that all others would be to me extinguished coals.

But tell me of the people that are passing, if thou seest any of them worthy of note: for to that alone my mind recurs.”

Then he said to me: “That one, who from the cheek stretches forth his beard upon his dusky shoulders, was an augur, when Greece was so empty of males,

that hardly they remained even in the cradles; and in Aulis he, with Calchas, gave the time for cutting the first cable.

Eurypylus his name; and my high Tragedy thus sings him in some place: well knowest it thou, who knowest the whole.

That other who is so small about the flanks was Michael Scott; and of a truth he knew the play of magic frauds.

See Guido Bonatti; see Asdente, who now would wish he had attended to his leather and his cord, but too late repents.

See the wretched women who left the needle, the shuttle, and the spindle, and made themselves divineresses; they wrought witchcraft with herbs and images.

But now come! for Cain and his thorns already holds the confine of both hemispheres, and under Seville touches the wave; and already yesternight the Moon was round;

well must thou remember: for she did not hurt thee any time in the deep wood.” Thus he spake to me, and we went on meanwhile.