1–3. Rejoice, Florence … through Hell: The text leaves it to the reader to infer the nature of the winged creature representing Florence in this bitter apostrophe. After the reptilian metamorphoses of the previous two cantos, it is natural to think of a reptile with wings: a dragon. The commentators note that an inscription in hexameters, dated 1255, still visible on the Florentine Palazzo del Bargello, describes Florence as “que mare, que terram, que totum possidet orbem” [who possesses the sea, the land, and the whole globe]; curiously, the phrase is a quotation from Lucan’s Pharsalia 1.109, where it describes the self-destructiveness of Rome (it is quoted by Dante in Monarchia 2.8). The inscription continues: “per quern regnantem fit felix Tuscia tota” [through whose reign all Tuscany is made happy], to which Dante seems to allude sarcastically in line 9.
Mention of Italian cities is frequent in the Malebolge: Mantua (Canto 20), Prato (25.1–3), Venice (Canto 21), various cities of Romagna (Canto 27), and Arezzo (Canto 29); there are many denunciations: 18.58–63 (Bologna), 21.37—42 (Lucca), 25.10–15 (Pistoia), and 29.121–32 (Siena); beyond Malebolge: 33.79–90 (Pisa), 33.151–57 (Genoa), and Purg. 6.127–51 (Florence) (cf. Luke 10.13–15 for Jesus’ denunciations of wicked cities.)
4. five such citizens of yours: Those identified in 25.43, 68, 140, 148, and 151.
7–12. But if near morning … the older I grow: The idea that early-morning dreams are prophetic is ancient; the commentators cite Ovid, Heroides 19.195—96: “namque sub auroram iam dormitante Lucina/ tempore quo cerni somnia vera solent” [for near the dawn, after the moon has set, in the time when true dreams are usually seen] (cf. Purg. 9.13–18 and 27.92–93). The disaster Dante predicts is not known (various possibilities have been suggested, but the text plainly states that when Dante was writing it had not yet taken place).
9. Prato: The reference is uncertain: it may be to the city of Prato, a few miles from Florence and traditionally under her control, or to Cardinal Niccolo di Prato, who excommunicated the city in 1304; we prefer the first alternative: even the traditionally most faithful subject city yearns to see Florence punished, for Tuscany is not happy.
13–15. We left … carrying me: In 24.79–80, the pilgrim and Virgil descended from the bridge to the bank.
19–24. Then I grieved … deprive myself of it: These lines, explicitly connecting grief in the moment of writing with the grief experienced in the journey (clearly penitential in nature in this instance), would seem to indicate a special relation of the poet to the sin even before it has been identified; the metaphor of spatial motion in line 22 already implicitly involves Ulysses’ last voyage, which must have something to do with unrestrained wit.
21. rein in my wit: For the meaning of “wit” (ingegno), see the note to 2.7–8; note the horse metaphor.
23. if a good star or something better: The influence of the stars in Dante’s nativity, to which Par. 22.112–14 attribute “all my wit … , whatever it may be” (see notes there); “or something better” refers to God’s grace.
24. what is good: This phrase (Italian, ‘I bene, literally, the good) cannot refer to salvation, since salvation is never owed to the stars; it must refer to the faculty of wit itself, which may be the gift either of nature or, in certain circumstances, of grace.
25–33. As many fireflies … depths were revealed: The vivid simile of the fireflies, implicitly contrasting the peaceful natural scene of dusk in summer with the intense suffering of the bolgia, creates a sense of distance between the hillside and the valley, reducing the sinners’ flames to minute proportions. Canto 24 began with an extended winter scene, also involving a peasant.
26. when he who lights the world … his face: When the sun is most visible, in the summertime; the first of many references to the sun in this canto.
34–39. And as he who avenged … rising up: A complex reference to the account of Elijah (Elias) and Elishah (Eliseus) in 2 Kings [Vulgate 4 Kings] 2.7–14:
… but they two stood by the Jordan. And Elias took his mantle and folded it together, and struck the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, and they both passed over on dry ground. And when they were gone over, Elias said to Eliseus: Ask what thou wilt have me to do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Eliseus said: I beseech thee that in me may be thy double spirit. And he answered: Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless if thou see me when I am taken from thee, thou shalt have what thou hast asked: but if thou see me not, thou shalt not have it. And as they went on, walking and talking together, behold a fiery chariot, and fiery horses parted them both asunder: and Elias went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Eliseus saw him, and cried: My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the driver thereof. And he saw him no more… . And he took up the mantle of Elias, that fell from him… .
The episode of the bears is related in the same chapter, verses 23—24:
… as he was going up by the way, little boys came out of the city and mocked him, saying: Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And looking back, he saw them, and he cursed them in the name of the Lord: and there came forth two bears out of the forest, and tore of them two and forty boys.
Note the motifs important in our canto: fire, whirlwind, horses/vehicle, the crossing of a body of water, and the question of seeing Elijah in the flames (cf. Eccles. 48.1: “Elias the prophet stood up as fire, and his word burned like a torch”). Implicit in Dante’s comparison is the relevance to the context of the theme of prophecy, including that of the inheritance of the prophet’s mantle (see Mazzotta 1979). Eliseus/Elishah (Eliseo) was the name of the brother of Dante’s great-great-grandfather (Par. 15.136, another context involving Dante’s prophetic mission).
40–42. so each … a sinner: The basis of the comparison is Elijah’s being hidden by the flames. The metaphor of theft is discussed, in connection with line 48; it recurs in 27.127.
43–45. I was standing … grasped … without being pushed: These lines are often interpreted as being parallel to lines 21—24 (since “reining in” and “grasping” involve the hands), and thus as further emphasis on Dante’s sense of being drawn to this sin.
48. each is swathed … burns him inwardly: In other words, the flame that hides each sinner is the externalization of the fire within him: the fire of intellect, of the malice that motivated his counsels, and of the power of his rhetoric (called by Alain of Lille, in his Anticlaudianus, “ignis in ore” [fire in the mouth]). The Italian inceso [fired within] (cf. 22.18) is, like invola [steals away], line 42, compounded with the preposition “in”; it is derived from Latin incensus, used repeatedly by Vergil to describe the burning of Troy (Aen. 2.327, 353, 374, 555, and 764; cf. ardeo, ardere, used of warriors: Aen. 2.316, 475, 529, and 575).
52–54. who is in that fire … with his brother: In Statius’s Thebaid, Oedipus’s sons, Eteocles and Polynices, kill each other at the main gate of the city; their mutual hatred divides the fire of their funeral pyre. The clear implication is that Ulysses and Diomedes now hate each other also. Dante introduced the Theban material in Canto 14, with the figure of Capaneus (lines 46–72); explicit references to it (as well as to the saga of Troy) become increasingly frequent in Malebolge and Cocytus: 20.31–45 (Amphiaraus, Tiresias) and 52–93 (Manto), 25.97–99 (Cadmus and Harmonia), 30.1–12 (Athamas), 32.10–12 (Amphion), and 130–32 (Tydeus and Menalippus). In Dante’s adaptation of Augustine’s paradigm of the City of God versus the Earthly City, Thebes and its modem figura, Florence, have replaced Rome as exemplars of the strife-ridden Earthly City (for the foundation of Rome as the preparation of the Incarnation and the papacy, see 2.13—33).
55- 56. There within are punished Ulysses and Diomedes: Ulysses is the only major Homeric figure who speaks in the Comedy; Dante’s representation of him is an important focus of his effort to surpass the Aeneid.
56- 57. together they go … to anger: In other words, being paired intensifies their punishment, just as they fired each other when they were sinning, and so incurred God’s anger.
58–63. And within their flame … Palladium: Dante has Virgil ascribe three principal sinful acts to Ulysses and Diomedes (discussed in the next three notes); he clearly considers that Ulysses was their principal inventor, as in Met. 13.350–81. The first and third are based on the Aeneid, the second on Ovid and on Statius’s Achilleid. Note the insistently parallel syntax of the three independent clauses, each assigned to one sin, each emphasizing the internal nature of the suffering.
58–60. And within their flame … noble seed: According to Aeneid 2, in the tenth year of the Trojan War, the Greeks pretend to sail home; they leave behind the Trojan Horse and Sinon. Sinon pretends to have been marked for sacrifice (a repetition of the events at Aulis; see the note to 20.110—11) by the hostility of Ulysses, but to have escaped; gaining the Trojans’ confidence, and with many oaths to his veracity, he explains (falsely) that the theft of the Palladium (see the note to line 63) had displeased Athena, the horse being an offering to placate her. He also claims that Calchas has prophesied that if the horse is taken into Troy, Troy will bring war to Greece. The Trojans enlarge the gates vertically to admit the horse, filled with Greek soldiers, including Ulysses (medieval tradition, unlike Vergil, placed Diomedes in the horse also). Released by Sinon, Ulysses and the others open the gates to admit the rest of the Greeks. Vergil’s account describes the destruction of Troy in terms of the gradual, snakelike spread of fire (see Knox 1950). In addition, the hollow horse is repeatedly described as a pregnant belly (Aen. 2.38, 51, 238, and 243): a fair exterior, represented as a religious offering, but pregnant with destruction. See Additional Note 13.
In Vergil’s account, as in Dante’s, the destruction of Troy is, of course, necessary for the founding of the new Troy, Rome, by the descendants of Aeneas (the noble seed of the Romans, line 60). The Romans eventually do take war to Greece, which they subjugate. Thus this clause, hinging on the “gate” (porta) that leads both into the city and out of it, shows the ultimate futility of Ulysses’ and Diomedes’ sin, from which God’s Providence will bring forth good.
61–62. there within … grieve for Achilles: In Statius’s version of the Achilles story (Achilleid 1), Achilles’ mother, the sea nymph Thetis, knows of the prophecy that Achilles will die at Troy; she persuades the beardless boy to dress as a girl and hide among the daughters of King Lycomedes of the island of Scyros; Achilles agrees because he has seen the king’s daughter Deidamia, whom he soon impregnates. Calchas has seen in a trance that Achilles, necessary for the conquest of Troy, is on Scyros, and Ulysses and Diomedes go to recruit him. Posing as merchants and pretending to be spying on the Trojans, they are entertained by the king; they soon single Achilles out: their task is to persuade him to drop his own pretense (still motivated by love for Deidamia). At dinner, Ulysses’ glowing account of the glories of the war visibly affects Achilles, and the next day, among many harmless gifts for the young women, Ulysses includes a spear and shield; as Achilles greedily handles them, Ulysses has a trumpet sounded; Achilles’ true nature blazes forth: he burns with desire for war. Deidamia’s pregnancy and the birth of Neoptolemus have so far been concealed; now the baby is brought forth, the king accepts Achilles, the wedding is celebrated, and the next morning Achilles sails off with Ulysses and Diomedes, never to see Deidamia again (Purg. 22.114 places her in Limbo). Ulysses’ art makes Deidamia grieve, clearly, because it led to her husband’s death.
Dante accurately saw that Statius, following suggestions by Ovid in Met. 13.162—70, established a parallel between this stratagem of Ulysses’ and the Trojan Horse, involving the penetration of defenses and the bringing forth of fire from where it is hidden. Both Vergil and Ovid represent Ulysses, even more than Achilles, as the principal cause of the fall of Troy. In Met. 13.123—380, Ovid has Ulysses claim (rightly) that at every turning point in the war his counsel led to success; though he was only one man, he was the Greeks’ steering oar (see the note to lines 85—90).
63. and there … Palladium: According to the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses, Ulysses and Diomedes entered Troy at night and by stealth, penetrating as far as the highest citadel, from which, after killing the guards, they carried off the statue of Pallas Athena (goddess of wisdom) on whose possession the safety of Troy was supposed to depend. According to Sinon’s (lying) account in Aeneid 2, this act caused Athena to turn against the Greeks; he reports that when the statue was set up in the Greek camp, its eyes emitted flames and it brandished its spear and shield three times, and that from then on the Greeks’ fortunes declined. Thompson (1972) suggests that Dante follows the later account according to which Ulysses and Diomedes did not steal the Palladium themselves but counseled the traitor Antenor to do so. In either case, this third sin also involves the motif of the emergence of hidden fire, as well as the use of stealth; Virgil’s phrasing here is sufficiently general for the line to refer to Sinon’s deceptive account of the Palladium as well as to the theft itself.
64–69. If they can speak … with desire: The next lines suggest that Virgil sees in the pilgrim’s words only the laudable desire to hear a great Homeric figure speak. However, one should note the parallel between the pilgrim’s bending toward the flame with desire and his earlier need to prevent himself from falling.
73–75. Let me speak … your words: The usual explanation for Virgil’s idea that Ulysses and Diomedes would be repelled by Dante’s speech is the traditional attribution of arrogance (including linguistic) to the Greeks. But it is always Virgil who addresses figures from classical antiquity, not the pilgrim; here there is a sharp focus on Virgil’s special relation to Ulysses and Diomedes as the poet of the Aeneid, thus the mediator of Dante’s knowledge. (Vergil’s treatment of Ulysses and Diomedes in the Aeneid is entirely negative.)
80. if I deserved: An echo of Dido’s words to Aeneas in Aen. 4.317–18: “si bene quid de te merui, fuit aut tibi quicquam/ duke meum” [if I have deserved at all well of you, or anything of mine has ever been sweet to you].
84. let one of you … to die: Since Diomedes was supposed to have migrated to Italy and to have died there, this can only refer to Ulysses; perduto [lost] can refer to the fact that Ulysses’ fate had been unknown, as well as to his having lost his way or being damned (cf. the fact that Elijah’s body is not found: 2 Kings [Vulgate 4 Kings] 2.15–17).
85–90. The greater horn … cast out a voice: The emphasis on Ulysses’ struggle to impart to the flame the articulatory motions of a tongue (closely related to Pier delle Vigne’s struggle to speak, 13.91—92—including the references to wind) becomes even greater in the case of Guido da Montefeltro (27.7—18); note the insistent sound effects involvingm: maggior, mormorando; see Met. 14.280—81 (of Circe’s transformation of Ulysses’ men): “nec iam posse loqui, pro verbis edere raucum/ murmur” [already I could no longer speak, but instead of words I produce a hoarse murmur]. The idea of the tongue as a flame is fundamental to the whole episode; a number of commentators have pointed to James 3.3—6:
For we put bits into the mouths of horses, that they may obey us, and we turn about their whole body. Behold also ships, whereas they are great, and are driven by strong winds, yet are they turned about with a small helm, whithersoever the force of the governor willeth. Even so the tongue is indeed a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold how small a fire kindleth a great wood. And the tongue is a fire… .
All four major motifs of the canto appear in this passage: tongue, fire, horse, and ship. For the connection of flame and wind with Pentecost, see Mazzotta 1979.
90–142. When I departed … closed over us: Ulysses’ last voyage is discussed in Additional Note 11.
90–93. When I departed … that name: Dante knew Ovid’s account of Ulysses’ stay with Circe, put in the mouth of a former follower, Macareus (Met. 14.233–440); line 308 states: “annua nos illic tenuit mora” [a yearlong stay held us there]. According to both Vergil and Ovid, Aeneas repeats several parts of Ulysses’ voyage: he encounters the Cyclops, nears Scylla and Charybdis, and sails near Circe’s dwelling, near both Cumae (where Aeneas is taken by the Sybil to the underworld) and the promontory of Gaeta, named by him for his nurse, who died there. The mention of Aeneas here calls attention to the parallel/contrast between his voyage and Ulysses’.
97. ardor: Italian ardore [literally, burning]. This is an important instance of the fire imagery that dominates the canto, and a major interpretive issue is whether it is to be seen as the same fire that now envelops him and has its origin within him.
98–99. to gain … vices and worth: Dante is adapting Horace’s quotation of the beginning of the Odyssey (Ars poetica 141—42): “virum …/ qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes” [the man … who saw the customs of many men, and their cities]. Compare also Epistles 1.2.17—22.
101–2. but I put out … deserted: Macareus’s account states that when he arrived at Circe’s dwelling Ulysses had lost almost all his men and all but one ship (a principal element of the contrast between Aeneas and Ulysses established by Vergil is that Aeneas is accompanied by his entire fleet and most of his followers).
103–5. The one shore … by that sea: In other words, he saw all of the northern and all of the southern shore of the Mediterranean; the implication is that he circumnavigated the entire Mediterranean. No cities are mentioned (though cf. lines 110–11), nor any “human vices and worth.”
107–9. that narrow strait … not go further: The Straits of Gibraltar. The tradition that Hercules set pillars there (the two opposing mountains) is ancient, as is the tradition that they were a prohibition, which appears, for instance, in Pindar’s Fourth Nemean Ode (Kay 1980; Boitani 1992). See Additional Note 11.
110–11. on the right … Ceuta: Seville is on the south shore of Spain, just east of Gibraltar; Ceuta is at the tip of the African promontory opposite Gibraltar. The passage derives from Ovid’s description of Daedalus’s and Icarus’s flight (Met. 8.220–25):
… et iam Iunonia laeva
parte Samos—fuerant Delosque Parosque relictae—
dextra Lebinthos erat fecundaque melle Calymne:
cum puer audaci coepit gaudere volatu
deseruitque ducem caelique cupidine tractus
altius egit iter… .
[… and already on the left
hand was Iuno’s Samos—they had left Delos and Paros behind—
and on the right Lebynthos and Calymne rich with honey:
when the boy began to delight in the audacious flight
and abandoned his guide and, drawn by greed for the sky,
flew higher… .]
Audaci … volatu [in audacious flight] lies behind Dante’s folle volo (line 125).
112–20. O brothers … virtue and knowledge: Ulysses’ “little oration” is clearly crucial to Dante’s conception, but critics are sharply divided between those who accept Ulysses’ characterization of the voyage—that it is a pursuit of the noble goals of virtue and knowledge (here critics divide further into those who applaud the pursuit and those who identify Ulysses’ quite generic terms with some particular philosophical school or position Dante is rejecting: variously Neoplatonism, “humanism,” and radical Aristotelianism)—and those who regard it as fraudulent, arguing that no wisdom, no knowledge of men is to be had in the “world without people,” citing Seneca’s Epistle 88, in terms of which Dante’s Ulysses would have to be seen as abandoning his duties. One may reflect that Ulysses travels only on the surface of the globe, while the pilgrim goes through the center, always in contact with human souls.
113. the west: Dante’s term is I’occidente, still close to its Latin meaning, “setting of the sun.”
117. following the sun: Toward its setting.
118. Consider your sowing: That is, your descent as human beings; compare “the Romans’ noble seed” (line 60).
121. sharp: There is a strong suggestion of fire imagery here; in the wake of Plato’s Timaeus 56, fire was often identified as sharp (hence its destructiveness).
124. turning our stern toward the morning: Since the ship must be turned, its direction has not been determined until this point: they could have turned east rather than west. Iconographically, of course, the east is the direction from which illumination comes.
125. of our oars … flight: Many commentators have noticed the parallel of the phrase/o//e volo [mad flight] with the pilgrim’s fear of a venuta …folle [mad journey] in 2.35 (also with Par. 27.82–83: “il varco folle d’Ulisse” [the mad path of Ulysses]). Dante is adapting a line of Vergil’s describing Daedalus’s flight from Crete to Italy (Aen. 6.18–19): “sacravit/ remigium alarum” [he consecrated the oars of his wings]. Modern scholars (Freccero 1966a; Shankland 1977) connect the reference to wings (and the reference to Daedalus) with Neoplatonic allegories of the ascent of the soul. Shankland discusses Dante’s conception of the significance of his family name, Alager [wing-bearer], as one of the reasons for the importance of the Ulysses antitype.
126. always gaining on the left side: Why this should be the case is not explained, but in medieval symbolic terms it is a very bad sign, no doubt to be connected with the pilgrim’s dragging left foot (1.30) and the fact that Virgil and the pilgrim usually turn to the left in Hell, to the right in Purgatory. Of course, a southwest course is necessary if Ulysses and his men are to approach the only island Dante places in the hemisphere of water, at the antipodes of Jerusalem.
127–29. All the stars … floor of the sea: They have passed the equator.
130–32. Five times … deep pass: Five months have elapsed. Commentators have pointed out that there are no references to the light of the sun after line 124, as if the voyage were taking place entirely at night.
132. the deep pass: Dante has associated the term pass with damnation since the beginning of the poem (“the pass that has never yet left anyone alive,” 1.26—27, would seem to be the one where Ulysses perishes; cf. 5.114); the phrase I’alto passo [the deep pass] occurs verbatim in 2.12, referring to the pilgrim’s journey to the other world.
133–35. a mountain … I had seen: This is, as we learn in the Purgatorio, the mountain at whose summit is the Garden of Eden, forbidden to man (Gen. 3.24); it also recalls the mountain of Canto 1.
136. We rejoiced … weeping: The line echoes James 4.9.
138. the forequarter of the ship: The Italian, “del legno il primo canto,” puns on canto; in the first canto of the poem the pilgrim was metaphorically shipwrecked, too.
140–41. stern aloft … prow … down: Note the progression from line 124.
141. another: God.
142. until the sea had closed over us: Lines 58—60, on the Trojan Horse, draw a parallel between its penetration of the gate of Troy and the escape of Aeneas and his followers; they also establish a parallel between the Trojan Horse and Aeneas’s ship: one moves inward, the other outward; one carries the seeds of destruction, the other the seeds of Rome; as Clausen (1987) points out, several of Vergil’s terms for the horse are borrowed from shipbuilding. This parallei mediates a further one, fundamental to the canto, between the Trojan Horse and Ulysses’ ship: both carry Greeks; both carry Ulysses and his fiery speech; one moves inward, the other outward; and both cause death.
In the sins listed in lines 58—63, Ulysses’ characteristic activity has been that of imparting the fire within himself to others, for the sake of the destruction of Troy (cf. James 3.5: “Behold how small a flame sets fire to a great forest”). Ulysses’ going out through the Pillars—the gate—of Hercules, to him a violent act, because forbidden, is a kind of inversion of the violent entrance of the Trojan Horse into Troy, and also, in its results, a negative parallel to Aeneas’s passage out the gate of Troy. Thus when the waters close around Ulysses there is a kind of implosion: the fire that he has loosed upon the world returns upon him, first in the form of water, then in the fire of the Malebolge. This is perhaps Dante’s most elaborate version of the idea that the devices of the fraudulent are the snares that catch and punish them.