By gadflies and by hornets that were there.
These did their faces irrigate with blood,
Which with their tears commingled at their feet
By the disgusting worms was gathered up.

- LONGFELLOW.

Surely the poet never saw men really undergoing such a torment for their sloth, but beasts of burden he certainly had seen, and it may be that some dull, toiling ass, blear-eyed from poor fodder, and stung to bleeding by the hot insects of some Italian highway, suggested to Dante this rather novel torture for the damned.

So dull an animal could surely not speak, and, indeed, Dante declares that if any one make objection as to the she-ass of Balaam, he will respond that the speaker was really an angel;1 and once more he says:2 'O Fathers, deem me not a phoenix in the world. For what I cry out is murmured or thought or dreamt by all. And wherefore bear they not witness to their discoveries? Some hang in astonishment. Are they, too, ever to be silent and never speak out for their Maker? The Lord liveth! and He who set going the tongue of Balaam's ass is Lord even of the brutes of to-day.'

1 Cf. Numbers xxii, 21-33, with De V. E. I, ii, 43–52: ‘Et si obiciatur de serpente loquente ad primam mulierem, vel de asina Balaam, quod locuti sint; ad hoc respondemus, quod angelus in illa, et diabolus in illo taliter operati sunt, quod ipsa animalia moverent organa sua, sic et vox resultavit inde distincta, tanquam vera locutio; non quod aliud esset asinæ illud quam rudere, nec quam sibillare serpenti.' For further treatment of Balaam's ass, see paragraph on language, pp. 23-25.

2 Epist. VIII, viii, 122–131.

The ass, then, in Dante's philosophy is not merely a sluggard without brains. It is also an automaton, an animated toy moved to speech, in one case by an angel (acting as a transmitting operator), and in the other by the Creator.

M

CHAPTER XXI

CATTLE

OF some fifteen references to cattle in Dante four are Biblical and six1 are drawn from Latin literature. All but one are singularly devoid of life; for they are either bookish or moral, or fail to create an illusion.

Ezekiel saw the likeness of four living creatures. 'As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.' 2 Again, the writer of the Apocalypse beheld four beasts, 'And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.' 3

By Dante's time Christian allegory had fixed upon four symbols for the Evangelists. St. Luke was the ox, and thus appears in countless manuscripts and sculptures or stained glass windows throughout medieval Christendom. Hence, in a letter to Henry the Emperor, Dante (after St. Luke ii, 1), declares that Augustus decreed all the world should be taxed 'as our evangelising

1 Vs. 18 of Dante's first Eclogue, '. . . dum lenta boves per gramina ludunt,' has a conventional Virgilian ring, and is at all events classic in manner.

2 Ezekiel i, 10.

8 Revelation iv, 7.

ox bellows, being kindled with the flame of an eternal fire.' 1

In Purgatory he saw a sculpture of the oxen drawing the ark.

There sculptured in the selfsame marble were
The cart and oxen, drawing the holy ark.2

- LONGFELLOW.

St. John in his vision saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns.3 Dante beheld an equally fantastic monster. He says that the allegorical car seen by him in Purgatory

Thrust forward heads upon the parts of it
Three on the pole and one at either corner.
The first were horned like oxen; but the four
Had but a single horn upon the forehead.1

- LONGFELLOW.

Purely classic and lifeless, both in Ovid and in Dante, is the Sicilian bull, a brazen device made by Perillus for Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum, to burn the tyrant's victims. Perillus was the first to get into that oven. Among the fraudulent counsellors in Hell whom the poet saw wrapped, each in a flame, was one from whom issued a confused sound:

1 Epist. VII, iii, 64-67, 'Et quum universaliter orbem describi edixisset Augustus (ut bos noster evangelizans, accensus ignis æterni flamma, remugit),' etc.

2 Purg. X, 55-56.

Purg. XXXII, 143-146.

8 Revelation xiii, 1.

Ars Amat. I, 653-656. Paget Toynbee thinks Dante may have got the story from Orosius (I, 20), or from Valerius Maximus (IX, 2). See Dante Dictionary, s.v. 'Perillo.'

Come il bue Cicilian che mugghiò prima
Col pianto di colui (e ciò fu dritto)
Che l' avea temperato con sua lima,
Mugghiava con la voce dell' afflitto,
Si che, con tutto ch' ei fosse di rame,
Pure e' pareva dal dolor traffitto.

As the Sicilian bull (that bellowed first
With the lament of him, and that was right,
Who with his file had modulated it)
Bellowed so with the voice of the afflicted
That, notwithstanding it was made of brass,
Still it appeared with agony transfixed.

LONGFELLOW.

Our poet also mentions the bull of Pasiphaë, known to him both from Ovid and Virgil.2 Though the Latin descriptions usually call the bull 'taurus,' Virgil once speaks of the young bull (iuvencus). Hence 'torello' rather than 'toro' in Dante's description. Whilst one group of rueful sinners in Purgatory cries 'Soddoma e Gomorra!' the other cries:

Nella vacca entra Pasife,

Perche il torello a sua lussuria corra.*

Into the cow enters Pasiphaë,

That the little bull unto her lust may run.

1 Inf. XXVII, 7-13.

2 Ecl. VI, 45-60; Æn. VI, 24-26, 447. OVID, Met. VIII, 131– 137; Ars Amat. I, 289 ff. See Dante Dictionary, s.v. ‘Pasife.'

* 'Pasiphaën nivei solatur amore iuvenci' (Ecl. VI, 46). Jacopo della Lana devotes much space to this unsavoury theme, emphasising the youth of the bull.

4

* Purg. XXVI, 41-42. The sua of vs. 42 may refer to Pasife or to the torello, both grammatically and in conformity with the legend.