1. I say, continuing, that well before: The unusual “continuing” and the return to a narrative moment logically earlier than the end of the previous canto (7.130) have occasioned comment. Padoan (1993) argues that they are evidence that the first seven cantos of the Inferno had already been published (ca. 1315; see 3.95–96 with note) and therefore could no longer be revised.
According to Boccaccio’s Esposizioni and his biographies of Dante, Dante had written the first seven cantos of the poem before his exile but had left the manuscript behind in Florence, receiving it again only a number of years later. There is no other evidence for this idea, however, and it is extremely unlikely, on the evidence of Dante’s other works, that the Comedy was begun before 1306. An interruption at some later date may of course have taken place.
4–6. two small flames … hardly seize it: As will become clear later in the canto, the devils consider themselves still in a state of war, driven back into their city walls, with outposts like this tower in the surrounding countryside (like that surrounding an Italian city-state).
17. a single oarsman: Dante’s term is galeoto (from galea, galley), literally a slave rowing in a galley, not the same word as Galeotto in 5.137 (see note). There is no further reference to the boat’s means of locomotion.
18. Now you are caught, wicked soul: Phlegyas is presumably addressing the pilgrim, whom he mistakes for a soul condemned to the Styx.
19. Phlegyas: A figure in Greek mythology, a king of Thessaly who avenged his daughter’s rape by Apollo by burning the god’s temple at Delphi; Vergil makes him an exemplary figure (Aen. 6.618–20):
Phlegyasque miserrimus omnis admonet et magna testatur voce per umbras: discite iustitiam moniti et non temnere divos.
[And most wretched Phlegyas warns all and testifies with a great voice through the shadows: Learn justice being warned, and not to contemn the gods.]
Dante associated Phlegyas’s name with the Greek root phleg-, which he knew from Servius and elsewhere to refer to fire (as in the the name of the river Phlegethon, in Greek the present participle of a verb “to burn”).
27. only when I was aboard .. . laden: Only the pilgrim has a body to weight the boat. The incident derives from Aeneas’s crossing the Styx in Charon’s boat (Aen. 6.412–16):
Simul accipit alveo ingentem Aenean. Gemuit sub pondere cumba sutilis et multam accepit rimosa paludem. Tandem trans fluvium incolumis vatemque virumque informi limo glaucaque exponit in ulva.
[At once he accepts into his boat the gigantic Aeneas. The bark groans with the weight, being sewn together, and admits through its rifts much of the swamp. Finally beyond the river he deposits unharmed both the prophetess and the hero on the gray shore with its shapeless mud.]
29–30. cutting more … with others: It is lower in the water because of the pilgrim’s weight. Compare Aen. 5.2, of sailing: “fluctusque atros Aquilone secabat” [he cut the dark flood before the north wind].
32–51. before me rose up one … horrible dispraise of themselves: The
episode of Filippo Argenti (he is named in line 61) is the subject of a famous panting by the French painter Eugene Delacroix (1798–1863), Dante and Virgil Crossing the Styx, now in the Louvre.
36. You see that I am one who weeps: The line echoes a sonnet by Guido Cavalcanti, “Vedete ch’i’ son un che vo piangendo” [You see that I am one who go weeping]; like Filippo Argenti, Cavalcanti was notoriously quarrelsome.
43–45. My neck then … pregnant with you: Virgil’s enthusiasm for the pilgrim’s violent anger against Filippo Argenti seems to assert the difference between a justified anger against sin and the anger and sullenness punished here. Still, a major theme of the journey through Hell is that the pilgrim usually shares in the sin he is contemplating, at least in the sense of having the potentiality for it within himself (the most striking instance so far is in Canto 5).
A further peculiarity of these lines is that they seem to be the only reference in the entire poem to Dante’s mother and clearly, if somewhat diffusely, echo the “Ave Maria”: “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb …” (cf. Luke 1.28).
61. Filippo Argenti: This was a Florentine, according to Boccaccio a member of the Adimari family (Black partisans denounced by Dante in Par. 16.115– 20), who was so arrogant that he had his horse shod with silver, hence his surname; in Decameron 9.8 Boccaccio relates an incident involving his temper. Nothing more is known about the man, though several early commentators relate that his brother gained possession of some of Dante’s property when it was confiscated.
63. turned on himself with his teeth: Like the souls in 7.114.
65. shrieking: Dante hears the shrieking from within the City of Dis; in Aen. 6.557–61, Aeneas and the Sybil hear cries, blows, and rattling chains from inside the walls of Dis (see the note to line 68).
68. the city whose name is Dis: Dante’s division of Hell into two main parts (upper and lower Hell; cf. line 74) derives from Vergil’s. Within the “walls of Dis” (moenia Ditis [Aen. 6.541, 548–49]), which Aeneas and the Sybil do not enter, lies the pit of Tartarus, where the worst criminals and rebels against the gods are punished, described to Aeneas by the Sybil (Aen. 6.562–627). For the name Dis, see the note to 6.115.
69. the weighty citizens, the great host: The devils, angels fallen from Heaven (Apoc. 12.7–9), still continuing the war.
70. mosques: Dante is repeating the common medieval Christian slander that Islam was a form of devil worship and that the characteristic architecture of the mosque and minaret was inspired by the devils.
77. that unconsolable city: See 3.1, “THE GRIEVING CITY,” with note.
78. the walls seemed … of iron: So Vergil says of the gate of the walls of Dis: Aen. 6.554 (ferrea turris, iron tower) and Aen. 6.630–31 (spoken by the Sybil):
Cyclopum educta caminis moenia conspicio atque adverso fornice portas… .
[I discern the walls brought forth from the Cyclops’s furnaces and the gates with their projecting vaults… .]
82–117. I saw more than a thousand … with slow steps: This initial phase of the exciting episode of Virgil’s being blocked at the city of Dis (the entire episode takes up most of Cantos 8 and 9), in addition to emphasizing the obstinacy characteristic of the devils and of the sins of malice punished within the city (see 11.22–66), is also a comment on the fact that in the Aeneid Aeneas and the Sybil may not enter there. The Sybil’s explanation for this is that no virtuous person may cross its threshold. Virgil is blocked here because, in Dante’s view, this is where Vergil was blocked in life, as the sixth book of the Aeneid shows (see the note to 9.38–42); the question of the relevance of this episode to Virgil’s damnation is discussed in the notes to Purgatorio 22.
What the Sybil tells Aeneas in Aen. 6.553–54, that “not even the power of the heaven dwellers can beat down in war” the gates of Dis, is untrue for the Christian Dante. In the context of the entire Inferno, Dante is establishing an important difference between Vergil’s imperfect knowledge of the underworld and his own Christian reliance on God, which enables the believer, with God’s help, to confront the lowest depths of evil, including Satan himself; see Romans 8.38–39:
For I am confident that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Compare Matt. 16.18:
Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.
87. he wished to speak with them secretly: Discussed in the note on lines 118–23.
90. so boldly … his foolhardy path: The devils’ phrases echo the dialogue about the pilgrim’s fears in Canto 2 (cf. 2.35folle, and 2.123 ardire), as they perhaps know.
94–96. Think, reader . .. ever return here: The first apostrophe of the reader in the poem, signaling the importance of the episode. Gmelin pointed out that there are seven such apostrophes in each cantica. The others in the Inferno are 9.61–63, 16.127–30, 20.19–22, 22.118, 25.46–48, and 34.22–24. The present episode is the only one in the Inferno to have two such heightenings of tone (here and at 9.61–63) (see the notes to 9.61–63 and 34.22–24).
96. I did not believe: The phrase is obviously not to be taken in the strong sense of despair, the utter loss of faith and hope, which would in itself constitute damnation, but in a state of doubt. The possibility of despair may, however, be the ultimate threat of the Medusa (9.52–63).
97. more than seven times: This is a biblical turn of phrase, but the statement is accurate, as the reader can verify.
115. adversaries: “Adversary” is the literal meaning of the Greek diabolos [devil], literally, one who throws (something) against one or opposes one; the shutting of the gate is a literal enactment of the root idea of the term.
116. in my lord’s face: The Italian nel petto cd mio segnor means literally “in (or against) my lord’s breast,” helping suggest the significance of the walls of Dis in the overall body analogy discussed in Additional Note 2.
118–22. His eyes were on the ground … I will overcome this test:Virgil’s discouragement and his repeated references to himself (“Who has denied me,” line 120; “I will overcome this test,” line 122) suggest that he has been overconfident, has supposed that his own strength would be sufficient to overcome the rebellious devils here, as it had been with Charon, Plutus, and others.
124–26. This overweening … still cannot be barred: A reference to the resistance of the devils to the Harrowing of Hell by Christ (see the notes to 4.52–63), of which this episode in its entirety is a figural reenactment (see Musa 1974).
127. the dead writing: The writing proclaiming death (i.e., damnation) in 3.1–9. At the beginning of the Purgatorio, the Inferno will be referred to as “la morta poesi” [dead poetry]. Note the connection between “Abandon every hope, you who enter” and the present episode.
128–30. already, on this side of it … the city will be opened to us:Virgil’s thought has moved from his own defeat here to the Harrowing of Hell—that is, from his human helplessness to a chief instance of God’s omnipotence—and he suddenly has what can only be called a visionary moment: he knows, perhaps sees, that the one who will open the city (the next canto will show this to be an angel) is already some distance within the outer gate. Virgil’s knowledge is discussed further in the notes to 9.7–9, 38–42, 61–63, and 10.100–108.