Inferno: Canto XXVIII

Who, even with words set free, could ever fully tell, by oft relating, the blood and the wounds that I now saw?

Every tongue assuredly would fail, because of our speech and our memory that have small capacity to comprehend so much.

If all the people too were gathered, who of old upon Apulia’s fateful land wailed for their blood,

by [reason of the Trojans], and [of] that long war which made so vast a spoil of rings, as Livy writes, who errs not;

with those who, by withstanding Guiscard, felt the pains of blows; and the rest whose bones are gathered still at Ceperano, where each Apulian proved false;

and there at Tagliacozzo, where old Alardo conquered without weapons;

and one should shew his limbs transpierced, and another his cut off: it were nought to equal the hideous mode of the ninth chasm.

Even a cask, through loss of middle-piece or cant, yawns not so wide as one I saw, ripped from the chin down to the part that utters vilest sound:

between his legs the entrails hung; the pluck appeared, and the wretched sack that makes excrement of what it swallowed.

Whilst I stood all occupied in seeing him, he looked at me, and with his hands opened his breast, saying: “Now see how I dilacerate myself!

See how Mahomet is mangled! Before me Ali weeping goes, cleft in the face from chin to forelock;

and all the others, whom thou seest here, were in their lifetime sowers of scandal and of schism; and therefore are they thus cleft.

A Devil is here behind, who splits us thus cruelly, reapplying each of this class to his sword’s edge,

when we have wandered round the doleful road; for the wounds heal up ere any goes again before him.

But who art thou, that musest on the cliff, perhaps in order to delay thy going to the punishment, adjudged upon thy accusations?”

“Not yet has death come to him; nor does guilt lead him,” replied my Master, “to torment him; but to give him full experience,

it behooves me, who am dead, to lead him through the Hell down here, from round to round; and this is true as that I speak to thee.”

More than a hundred, when they heard him, stopped in the foss to look at me, through wonder forgetting their torment.

“Well, then, thou who perhaps shalt see the Sun ere long, tell Fra Dolcino, if he wish not speedily to follow me down here,

so to arm himself with victuals, that stress of snow may not bring victory to the Novarese, which otherwise would not be easy to attain.”

After lifting up one foot to go away, said this to me; then on the ground he stretched it to depart.

Another, who had his throat pierced through, and nose cut off up to the eyebrows, and had but one single ear,

standing to gaze in wonder with the rest, before the rest opened his weasand, which outwardly was red on every part,

and said: “Thou! whom guilt condemns not, and whom I have seen above on Latian ground, unless too much resemblance deceive me;

remember Pier da Medicina, if ever thou return to see the gentle plain that from Vercelli slopes to Marcabò.

And make known to the worthiest two of Fano, to Messer Guido and to Angiolello likewise, that, unless our foresight here be vain,

they shall be cast out of their ship, and drowned near the Cattolica, by a fell tyrant’s treachery.

Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca, Neptune never saw so great a crime—not even with Pirates, not even with Argives.

That traitor who sees with but one eye, and holds the land which one who is here with me would wish that he had never seen.

will make them come to parley with him; then act so, that they shall need no vow nor prayer for Focara’s wind.”

And I to him: “Shew me and explain, so thou wouldst have me carry tidings up of thee, who he is that rues that sight.”

Then he laid his hand upon the jaw of one of his companions; and opened the mouth of him, saying: “This is he, and he speaks not;

this outcast quenched the doubt in Cæsar, affirming that to men prepared delay is always hurtful.”

Oh, how dejected, with tongue slit in his gorge, seemed Curio to me, who was so daring in his speech!

And one who had both hands cut off, raising the stumps through the dim air so that their blood defiled his face,

said: “Thou wilt recollect the Mosca, too, ah me! who said, ‘A thing done has an end!’ which was the seed of evil to the Tuscan people.”

“And death to thy kindred!” I added [thereto]; wherefore he, accumulating pain on pain, went away as one distressed and mad.

But I remained to view the troop, and saw a thing which I should be afraid even to relate, without more proof;

but that conscience reassures me, that good companion which fortifies a man beneath the hauberk of his self-felt purity.

Certainly I saw, and still seem to see [it,] a trunk going without a head, as the others of that dismal herd were going.

And it was holding by the hair the severed head, swinging in his hand like a lantern; and that looked at us and said: “O me!”

Of itself it made for itself a lamp, and they were two in one, and one in two; how this can be, He knows who so ordains.

When it was just at the foot of our bridge, it raised its arm high up, with all the head, to bring near to us its words,

which were: “Now see the grievous penalty, thou, who breathing goest to view the dead; see if any be as great as this!

And that thou mayest carry tidings of me, know, that I am Bertran de Born, he who to the Young King gave evil counsels.

I made the father and the son rebels to each other; Ahithophel did not do more with Absalom and David by his malicious instigations.

Because I parted persons thus united, I carry my brain, ah me! parted from its source which is in this trunk. Thus the law of retribution is observed in me.”