1–2. At the end of his words … the figs: Vanni Fucci makes with both hands the obscene gesture (signifying the female organ) made by placing the thumb between the middle and index fingers (Figure 5), pointed upward. The city of Prato in 1297 decreed “whoever makes the figs or shows his buttocks to heaven or to the image of God … to pay ten lire each time, or be whipped.” In 1228 the citizens of Pistoia fixed on the Carmignano tower two “figs” of marble, aimed at Florence (Villani, Chronicle 6.5).
Figure 5. A fist making the “fig.”
6. I won’t let him say more: Vanni Fucci is silenced, but the serpents “speak” by their action; another reference to speech and its loss (see 24.64—66, with note, and lines 25.16, 45, 88, 94, 97, and 137).
7. bound them up, tying itself so tight: Some commentators invoke Aen. 2.213—24, which describes Laocoon in the coils of the sea serpents sent by the gods; like Laocoon, Vanni Fucci has just prophesied.
10–12. Pistoia … surpass your sowers: The name Pistoia (see the note to 24.88) was sometimes said by its enemies to reflect its origin in the “pestilential” revolt of Catiline (see Villani, Chronicle 1.32); Dante connected the snakes/thieves with pestilence in 24.88 (see the note to 24.126). The invitation to self-incineration (line 11) echoes the immolation of Vanni Fucci (24.100–102).
15. him who fell from the wall at Thebes: Capaneus (14.46–72). Mention of fratricidal Thebes (see line 97: founded by Cadmus with the dragon’s teeth) follows on mention of Pistoia, where the feud between the White and Black Guelfs was said to originate.
17. a centaur, full of rage: Said in line 25 to be Cacus, although there is not much basis for representing Cacus as a centaur; according to Virgil he was semihomo [half-man, Aen. 8.194] and semifems [half-beast, 8.267], gigantic (8.199), covered with fur (8.266), and, as a son of Vulcan, able to breathe fire (8.198, 251—58). For Livy, he was merely a shepherd (1.7).
19. Maremma: This swampy coastal region was rife with snakes in Dante’s day (cf. 13.7–9).
21. where our shape begins: For the meaning of this division of the body, see 12.84 and 17.82, with notes.
23–24. a dragon … to any they meet: The dragon on Cacus’s shoulders seems to derive from the fire-breathing chimera on Turnus’s helmet (Aen. 7.785–88). For other references to smoke, see 24.49–51 and 25.91–93, 118, and 133–35, with notes.
25–33. That is Cacus … ten of them: In the story as told by Livy and Vergil, Cacus stole a number of bulls and heifers from Hercules’ herd; in order to conceal his theft, he dragged them by the tails into his cave under the Aventine (one of the seven hills of the future Rome). According to Vergil, Hercules tore open the mountain to find his stock, who were lowing in response to the others, and killed Cacus in spite of his smoke screen.
27. made a lake of blood: Vergil implies that Cacus both delighted in slaughter and ate human flesh (Aen. 8.195–97).
31. cross-eyed: More properly, “looking askance” (with envy; cf. 6.91, with note).
32. Hercules’ club: The first mention of Hercules’ name in Hell. Dante knew Livy’s account (1.7), in which Hercules clubs Cacus to death; in the Aeneid, he strangles him. For Hercules’ status as an analogue of Christ, see 9.54, 98, with notes.
33. gave him a hundred: The Italian means literally “gave him a hundred of them [i.e., blows].”
43. Where has Cianfa stayed: Most commentators understand Cianfa to reappear as the serpent of line 50. The early commentators identify him as Cianfa Donati, thus a member of the powerful Donati family, known from documents to have been alive in 1282 or 1283, dead by 1289. Nothing else is known about him.
45. stretched my finger from chin to nose: That is, he made the classic gesture enjoining silence, presumably because he recognizes the name Cianfa (another silencing; see the note to line 6). See Additional Note 10. For the pilgrim’s curiosity, see 22.37–39.
46–48. If now, reader … allow it: The sixth address to the reader in the Inferno (see 8.94, with note), again stressing the incredibility of the events and the narrator’s reliability (cf. 16.124—29 with notes, and 13.25–51).
50— 138. a serpent with six feet … spits as he speaks after him: The precise logic of the metamorphoses as punishment of the thieves has not been fully explained; several scholars suggest that given the scholastic view of property as an extension of the person (see the note to 11.29–51), theft of the property of another would thus be appropriately punished with loss of the thief’s person—that is, body. See Additional Note 10.
51- 72. embraced him closely … were lost: For this “parodic love-kiss” (Gmelin) and its sequel, Dante draws on Ovid’s narrative of the nymph Salmacis and the boy Hermaphroditus fusing into a single ambisexual being (Met. 4.356— 88). The parallels are close; note especially Dante’s simile of vine and tree (lines 58—60), and the fusion of the two forms (lines 69—72), and compare with:
utve solent hederae longos intexere truncos
sic ubi complexu coierunt membra tenaci,
nec duo sunt sed forma duplex, nec femina dici
nec puer ut possit, neutrumque utrumque videtur
[as ivies are wont to weave around tall trunks
thus when the limbs cohered in tight embrace
they are not two, but a double form, so that it can be called
neither woman nor boy, and it seems neither and both] (4.365—79)
Medieval commentators on Ovid took the episode of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus to be a representation of coitus, the fusion of the two signifying the fusing of the sperm with the mother’s blood in the womb.
64. as, when paper burns … the white is dying: In 24.100, Vanni Fucci’s reconstitution was compared to the writing of letters; here the comparison is drawn from the support for writing.
68. Agnel: The early commentators identify him as Agnello dei Brunelleschi, member of another prominent noble family. See also the note to lines 140–41.
69. you are neither two nor one: A line clearly alluding to Ovid’s “neutrumque utrumque videtur” [seemed neither and both] quoted in the note to lines 51—72. For Dante, this confusion of forms parodies the union of two natures, human and divine, in Christ (see the notes to 12.12 and 83—84). There may be another reference to the Phoenix (24.107): Lactantius adapts Ovid’s lines quoted above to the Phoenix as “femina seu mas … seu neutrum seu … utrumque” [female or male … or neither or… both] (the allusion is to the hermaphroditism often attributed to the risen Christ) (see 28.125).
75. members never before seen: Compare to the poet’s boast of showing something never before seen (line 100) and the “novelty” (line 144) of the bolgia.
77–78. two and none the perverse image seemed: A variation on line 69, closer to Ovid’s phrasing.
79–80. the great scourge of the dog days: The dog days, mid-July to mid-September, when the star Sirius, in Canis Major (“the greater dog,” one of the hounds of Orion), rises and sets with the sun: their joining was thought responsible for the hot weather. Again, the sun’s heat is associated with the thieves’ punishment, as if driving the ceaseless changes (see the note to lines 91–93).
82. toward the bellies: Translating epe [livers]. In the Platonic tradition, the liver is the seat of appetites relating to nourishment and reproduction (see the note to 30.102).
83–84. an inflamed little serpent … like a grain of pepper: The pepper grain was thought to contain fire because of its sharp taste and its color (most peppercorns, originally white, green, or pink, were charred before shipping). For the association of fire and snakes, see the notes to 24.86–87 and 101—2.
85–86. the place where our first nourishment is taken: The navel. Here begins the third of the major metamorphoses in the bolgia (24.97—105, 25.49— 78, and 25.85—138). In each, the victim is bitten at a different point: in the first, at the juncture of shoulders and neck; in the second, in the face (and the tail is thrust through the legs of the victim); and in the third, at the navel, where the fetus is nourished. Each subsequent transformation is slower and more elaborate: the first, all but instantaneous, as if a figure for the violent brevity of human life; the second is deliberate and involved, like sexual union; and the third hallucinated, laborious, and protracted, gestating unheard-of beings.
87. it fell stretched out: Ovid’s Cadmus (see line 97) falls down as he is changed into a snake: “in longam tenditur alvum” [his belly became long] (Met. 4.576); “in pectusque cadit pronus” [and he fell prone on his breast] (579) (see the note to line 121). For the repeated falling down in this bolgia, see 24.54 and 25.15, 121.
89–90. yawned … as if sleep or fever assailed him: Sleepiness and stupefaction are symptoms of snakebite poisoning, according to Albertus Magnus (De animalibus 25.7). See also Lucan, Pharsalia 9.815—18.
91–93. He was gazing … the smoke met: The reciprocal gaze and the mingling smoke seem to be mechanisms whereby the shades exchange shapes: analogies with erotic viewing, approach, embrace, consummation, and gestation are implicit. The “smoke” seems almost an active agent (perhaps related to the “spirit” that in medieval views of conception is the active principle in semen); here it pours from breaches in the body, mouth or wound. The reciprocal gazing suggests that the changing is also effected by seeing, the form of one thief being passed to the other via the light (“lanterns,” line 122), as the light of the stars was thought to impose form on sublunary things. See also the note to lines 100–135.
94–102. Let Lucan … let Ovid … exchange their matter: The poet’s boast here is an instance of a well-established literary topos in which the poet proclaims his novelty and modernity and his surpassing his models (e.g., Claudian, In Rufinum line 283: “taceat superata vetustas” [let antiquity, surpassed, be silent]; cited in Curtius 1953).
95. Sabellus and Nasidius: Two soldiers in Lucan’s Pharsalia who die horrible deaths from snakebite (9.761–804): Sabellus’s body is liquefied, and Nasidius’s is bloated to enormous size. Sabellus’s fate (compared to melting snow) may be echoed in that of Arethusa (see the note to line 97), while the loss of features in Nasidius is perhaps reflected in the current transformations.
97. Cadmus and Arethusa: Ovid’s account (Met. 4.563–603) of the transformation into serpents of Cadmus and his wife Harmonia is Dante’s principal model for the third transformation (see the notes to lines 100—135). The nymph Arethusa melted into a stream in order to escape Alpheus; but he, too, became a river and joined her (Met. 5.572–641).
98–99. he converts … I do not envy him: The line (separated in the translation, but a single line in the Italian) indicates the close identification of the portrayal of metamorphosis with the poet’s linguistic power (cf. line 144 and see Additional Note 10).
100–135. two natures face to face … the smoke stops: Dante’s order for the “exchange of matter” of the two thieves is related to the order of the transformation of Cadmus (rear legs, arms, hands, and tongue: Met. 4.576–89), mirroring Ovid’s text as the thieves mirror each other. Dante’s order is: rear legs, forelegs, hands, and penis; body hair, heads, and tongues (the stopping point; see the note to line 133). For details of Cadmus’s transformation utilized in the canto, see the notes to lines 76–77, 86, 121, 123, and 133.
116. the member which a man hides: The penis (related to the figs of line 2), hidden in the rhetorical periphrasis. The hiding began with the use of fig-leaf aprons by Adam and Eve after the Fall (Gen. 3.7).
118. the smoke veils both: Compare the spewing of smoke by Cacus (see the note to line 24), allegorized as the concealment required by thieves (Fulgentius).
121. one stood up and the other fell down: The difference between erect and prone posture, or upward and downward gaze, often mentioned in these two cantos (see 24.54, 112, and 131; 25.15, 49, and 86), traditionally distinguishes human from animal; see Met. 1.84—86:
pronaque cum spectent animalia cetera terram,
os homini sublime dedit caelumque videre
iussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.
[while other animals, prone, gaze on the earth,
he (Prometheus) gave man a face erect, bade him see
the heaven and lift his brow to the stars.]
122. their pitiless lanterns: See Matt. 6.22: “The light [lucerna] of thy body is thy eye.” The reciprocal gazing here is another reference to the transformations of Cadmus and Harmonía (see line 97 and note), who must watch each other; it had been foretold that Cadmus would one day be seen as a snake (“et tu spectabere serpens,” Met. 3.98). The pitiless gaze is related to the Medusa (see the notes to 32.130–31 and 33.55–57).
128. excess … a nose: Note the puns on Ovid’s Latin names (Publius Ovidius Naso, the last name meaning “nose”) here and at lines 45 and 97 (Sowell 1991); the name of one of Dante’s chief models is repeatedly inscribed in the text.
133–35. tongue … is split. .. the smoke stops: Also the last act of Cadmus’s transformation (Met. 4.586—87): “lingua repente/ in partes est fissa duas” [the tongue is suddenly split in two] (see 24.64—66 and note). The splitting of the instrument of rational speech is the end point of the third transformation. Benvenuto wisecracks that humans, not snakes, are truly “bilingual” (bilinguis)— that is, have lying tongues.
137. hissing … spits: One thief, now a serpent, hisses; the other spits clumsily with its new tongue, as if still trying to spew poison. Bestiary lore had it that human spittle was venomous to serpents, and spitting was used as an exorcistic gesture against the devil (see Boccaccio, Decameron 7.1.27—28).
140–41. I want Buoso to run, as I have, on all sixes: Dante’s car-pone normally means “on all fours.” Buoso is variously identified by the early commentators; modern opinion inclines to see him as Buoso Donati, another member of this powerful family (see the note to line 43), a nephew of the one impersonated by Gianni Schicchi (30.40–45). L’Anonimo says that Buoso, having stolen while in office, induced the sinner speaking here, Francesco de’ Cavalcanti (see the note to line 151), to steal in his place, perhaps explaining Francesco’s thirst for vengeance (Momigliano in Mazzoni 1972); compare with the note to 24.99.
142. seventh cargo: The metaphor is based on the concavity of the bolgia, curved like a ship’s hull, and the previous reference to the Libyan desert; in antiquity and the Middle Ages, sand and gravel were used as ballast for ships.
143. change and change again: In Italian, mutare [change] and trasmutare [transmute] capture the dominant note of the bolgia (see note to 24.1—21) and a fundamental condition of fallen humanity. After the conclusion of the previous canto (24.144) with a Florence that “makes new its laws and people,” the presence here of five Florentines, three of them Black Guelfs and several from families who had converted to the Guelfs or to the Black faction, suggests that political transformation is thematized here as well.
144. if my pen ever falters: Slips of the pen are analogous, in scholastic discussions, to nature’s failure to realize fully the forms imposed by the stars: “for although art acts for the sake of something, still it happens that in things made according to art mistakes are found; for sometimes the grammarian writes incorrectly” (Aquinas, In Aristotelis Physicam 2.14); see 24.6, the blunted “pen” of the writing of frost, and 24.100, with notes.
145. my eyes were somewhat confused: The pilgrim, gazing on so many transformations, is dazed, like the thieves themselves; for other instances in Malebolge of the pilgrim’s fascination with what he sees, see 26.43–45 (implicit), 29.4–6, and 30.131–32.
148. Puccio Sciancato: This third thief (see line 35) is Puccio Galigai, called “the lame” (sciancato), roughly contemporaneous with the others; he had the reputation of committing “elegant” thefts and was notable for having changed parties from the Ghibellines to the Guelfs.
151. the one that makes you, Gaville, weep: The reference to Gaville identifies this thief, formerly the small serpent (line 83), as Francesco de’ Cavalcanti, known as Guercio [cross-eyed]. He was murdered by people from Gaville, near Figline in the upper valley of the Arno; his death was savagely avenged by his powerful family, making the town “weep.”