1. Pape Satan … aleppe: This line has been much discussed. It is clearly intended to convey an impression of incomprehensibility and is connected with the idea of Hell as Babel. However, the early commentators agree in takingpape as an interjection expressing surprise (Latin, papae) and aleppe as the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; they disagree on whether aleppe is to be taken as equivalent to “alas,” or as meaning “first” (thus “God”). There may also be a mordant allusion, in the cry of pape, to the avarice of the popes (Latin, papa, papae,) explicitly attacked later in this canto and elsewhere. The name Satan occurs nowhere else in the Comedy.
2. Plutus: The name is discussed in the note to 6.115.
8. cursed wolf: The line establishes a special connection between avarice (or, more broadly, cupidity) and the she-wolf of Canto 1 (see especially lines 94—102). See also Purg. 20.10, where the she-wolf is explicitly identified as a symbol of avarice.
11. willed on high: Virgil’s formula defeats Plutus, as it silenced Charon and Minos. Here the claim of a providential reason for the pilgrim’s passage is the first hint of a main theme of the canto, the relation of Fortune and Providence, which becomes explicit in lines 73–96.
12. Michael … proud onslaught: The archangel Michael was traditionally the commander of the angelic host that expelled the rebel angels (cf. 3.7 and note).
13–15. As when sails … to earth: Plutus is being compared to a dismasted vessel in danger of shipwreck. For the Middle Ages, shipwreck was an instance of the Fortuna maris, the fortune of the sea. Although associated with avarice, Plutus’s puffed-up appearance (“swollen face,” line 6) and rabid behavior also suggest pride and wrath. For Dante’s scheme of sins in Cantos 5—8, see the note to lines 73–96.
18. bags: “Bagging” is of course suitable to the greedy. Compare the words of the simoniac Pope Nicholas III at 19.72: “I pocketed … myself down here.” Clerics, proverbial for their avarice, are conspicuous in many medieval visual representations of Hell, such as Giotto’s Last Judgment in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova (ca. 1306), which it is conceivable Dante helped plan: he was in the vicinity at what may have been the appropriate time.
22–25. As the waves … dance their round: Like Ulysses, Aeneas must sail near the whirlpool Charybdis and the monster Scylla: part-human, part-wolf, and part-dolphin. Ancient and medieval authorities located them in the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily (Aen. 3.420–23):
Dextrum Scylla latus, laevum implacata Charybdis
obsidet, atque imo barathri ter gurgite vastos
sorbet in abruptum fluctus rursusque sub auras
erigit alternos, et sidera verberat unda.
[On the right side Scylla, on the left implacable Charybdis
threatens and three times into the deep whirl of the abyss
it suddenly sucks a great flood and again into the air
spews it forth, and the wave lashes the stars.]
Dante’s simile compares the collision of the avaricious (on the left) with the prodigal (on the right) to that of the currents in the strait. The two phases of Charybdis’s cycle (“sucks into … spews forth,” emphasized also in Ovid’s descriptions in Met. 7.63 and 13.730) are reflected again in the contrasting reproaches of line 30, discussed in the note to line 32.
The concept of virtue as a middle path between extremes was early identified in Homer’s paired dangers; the identification of Charybdis with avarice/prodigality became proverbial. Dante’s conception depends on the fourth book of Aristotle’s Ethics, where liberality, a virtue, is explained as the mean between tightfistedness and prodigality. Although Canto 7 implies the Aristotelian view of virtue as a mean (discussed by Dante in Convivio 4.17.5—7), this does not seem true of Cantos 5, 6, and 8, on lechery, gluttony, and wrath.
24. dance their round: Dante’s word for “round” is ridda, a round dance in which the dancers go in a circle but also weave in and out.
25. people more numerous: That the avaricious are multitudinous is proverbial; see Aen. 6.610–11:
aut qui divitiis soli incubuere repertis nec partem posuere suis, quae maxima turba est.
[or those who, having found wealth, crouched over it nor shared any with relatives, which is the largest crowd.]
27. rolling weights: See Aen. 6.616: “saxum ingens volvunt alii” [others roll a huge rock], an allusion to the myth of Sisyphus, condemned for his robberies to roll a rock up a hill, only to have it endlessly roll back down.
33. shameful meter: The use of metro [meter], referring to verse—measured speech—sarcastically alludes to the lack of measure (i.e., moderation) inherent in avarice and prodigality.
36. my heart almost pierced through: Note the close parallel with 1.15.
39. tonsured ones to our left: All the avaricious the pilgrim sees are members of the clergy. The term clericus originally meant “chosen by lot,” and Dante seems to be ironically referring to the dominance of Fortune as well as to the fact that the cherici [clerics] are chercuti [tonsured]; compare “no hairy covering” in line 45: the shaving of a portion of the head signified the renunciation of worldly desires.
40–42. so cross-eyed … their spending: These terms, like “undiscerning” in line 52, imply that the avaricious and prodigal failed to discern the “mean,” the “right measure” between extremes (see the note to lines 22—25). One notes the recurrence of the in-vidia [non-seeing] theme (see the note to 6.91—93).
47. popes: In Italian, papi (see line 1, with note).
57. these with hair cut short: By the same logic as clerical tonsure, the shearing of the prodigals suggests mortification of the indulgence implied by abundant hair. The closed but empty fist and the shorn forelock suggest abortive economic transactions: the greedy can no longer seize, the lavish no longer proffer. Compare Dante, “Doglia mi reca ne lo core ardire,” lines 83—84, an attack on avarice: “you have gathered and hoarded with both hands that which so quickly slips from your grasp” (tr. Foster and Boyde).
58. Bad giving and bad keeping: See Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 4.1.1121a: “prodigality and meanness are excesses and deficiencies, and in two things: in giving and in taking.”
64. for all the gold … the moon: The universe beneath the sphere of the moon (the sublunar) is the domain of mutable riches and honors (see the note to 2.78). The goddess Fortuna (discussed in the note to lines 73—96) and the everchanging moon were commonly associated, and this passage and Par. 16.82—83 associate Fortune’s wheel (see line 96) with the lunar sphere (Figure 1). The passage reflects Boethius, Consolation 2.2.1—14.
64–66. all the gold … weary souls: On God as the natural object of human desire, see 4.42, with note.
69. its clutches: The pejorative term for Fortune’s grip sets off Virgil’s exposition of Fortune as the instrument of Providence. Reference to Fortune’s “claws” (branche) may be an echo of Fortune-as-Scylla.
72. drink in my judgment: Virgil offers the milk of elementary knowledge, like that given when Philosophy instructs Boethius about Fortune (Consolation 1.2.2).
Figure 1. Fortune and her wheel. (Based on a drawing in Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber Scivias)
73–96. He whose wisdom … rejoices in her blessedness: Virgil’s account of Fortune rests on the analogy between earthly wealth and power (“splendors” in that they make people illustrious) and the bright heavenly bodies, whose influence governs all natural change. As the heavenly spheres are governed by the angels, so “worldly splendors” are governed by Fortune. The analogy implies a seriously intended parallel between the structure of society and that of the universe, supported by the many references in the canto to the cycles and circles that characterize the movement of the heavens as Dante understood them. Despite human condemnation of Fortune, her work is providential: there is no discontinuity between apparent chance and divine order (see Aquinas on Providence: Summa theol. la, q. 22, a. 2–3; Summa contra gentiles 3.94). Virgil’s condensed account draws on Boethius’s in Consolation 4.6, where Philosophy explains the divine causality of seemingly random events. Appearing just before the passage to the second subdivision of Hell (see Cantos 8–9), the cosmic order revealed in Virgil’s speech also reflects the order of the poem thus far. Fortune’s power is implicit in the circles of the lustful and the gluttonous; the Trojan War, remembered in 5.64–65, was for the Middle Ages perhaps the most frequently cited instance of Fortune’s domination in history (cf. 30.13–15); while the alternating rule of parties in Florence (cf. 6.67—69: one party rising, the other falling) exemplifies the shifting of power among groups. But the sequence of Cantos 5, 6, and 7 is also one of growing scope: the domestic tragedy of Francesca in Canto 5 is followed in Canto 6 by civic disturbances in Florence, and in Canto 7 by the universal pattern by which Fortune distributes good and ill to the world.
74. governors: These are the angels, identified in medieval thought with the intelligences Aristotle saw as governing the celestial spheres. Aquinas (Summa contra gentiles 3.80) notes that the principalities, an angelic order, are especially charged with transferring political domination among peoples (Gmelin).
84. like the snake in grass: See Vergil’s Eclogues 3.93, where a “snake lurks in the grass,” threatening pastoral tranquillity.
87. the other gods: For Dante’s references to the angels (or “intelligences”) as “gods,” see Purg. 32.8 and Par. 28.121; he explains the usage in Convivio 2.4.4–6.
90. so thick come those … their turns: Compare 5.13–14 (the souls before Minos).
91. she who is so crucified: The complaint against Fortune is a medieval commonplace; see Boethius, Consolation 2.1.26, 2.2.29–31, 2.m.l.5—6, and Dante’s Convivio 4.11.6—9, where Fortune’s gifts are said to take no account of merit.
96. turns her sphere: Usually referred to as a wheel, the “sphere” is important for the analogy with the heavenly intelligences. The chief source for the image of Fortune’s wheel (the rotating heavens are often called a wheel) is Boethius; see Consolation 2.1.60—62: “Can you really try to stop the momentum of her flying wheel?” and 2.2.29–31: “For this is my strength, this game I continually play: I turn my wheel in swift cycles, I enjoy shifting the lowest to the highest, the highest to the lowest.” Manuscripts of the Consolation had a rich tradition of illustrations of such images (Courcelle 1967).
98. every star is falling that was rising: The reference to the whirling of the outermost visible cosmic wheel closes Virgil’s account of Fortune as a celestial minister on a cosmic note that contrasts strongly with the violent half-circles of the avaricious and prodigal. See also the conclusion to Canto 11.
105. the swamp called Styx: Servius, on Aen. 6.323, notes that the name of the Styx means “sorrow” (tristitia). Macrobius interprets it as “whatever immerses human souls in the gulf of hatreds”; these allegories are discussed in Additional Note 2.
116. those whom anger vanquished: The phrase recalls the self-defeating wrath of Plutus, the monster of avarice, at the beginning of the canto.
123. the fumes of sullenness: Whether Dante wished to subdivide the angry into two groups, those “whom anger vanquished” and the passively angry (or sullen), or whether the second group represent another category of deadly sin, the slothful (referred to in Italian as accidiosi, here translated “sullen”), has caused much disagreement. We incline to the view of Russo (1967), in which the unifying category of the fifth circle is tristitia [sorrow, grief], which is a passion that includes as its “effects” pride, envy, wrath, and accidia or sloth. See the discussion of incontinence in the notes to 11.70–75.
125–26. This hymn they gurgle in their throats: A final reference to singing, “music,” and distorted language.
130. at the last: The canto ends with a word of finality; we are approaching one of the principal divisions of Hell (see 11.70—90).