CHAPTER LXIII

THE FIREFLY-LA LUCCIOLA

By a single touch of nature not only does Dante make time visible, reminding us (as mere arithmetic cannot) of the evening hour, but he has hit on the only image in all nature perfectly fitted to its end. Moving lights far off in the gloom are the flames that envelop and hide the Evil Counsellors. Dante scans them from a high bridge, as he must many a time have looked out upon his own Italian landscape in the growing darkness. This is the image of those flames:

Quante il villan, ch' al poggio si riposa,
Nel tempo che colui che il mondo schiara
La faccia sua a noi tien meno ascosa,
Come la mosca cede alla zenzara,

Vede lucciole giù per la vallea,
Forse colà dove vendemmia ed ara;
Di tante fiamme tutta risplendea
L'ottava bolgia, sì com' io m' accorsi,
Tosto ch' io fui là 've il fondo parea.

As in that season, when with less concealed
A face he shines who floods the world with light,
When to the gnat the weary fly doth yield,

The peasant, resting on some neighbour height,
Beholds the fireflies in the vale below,

1 Inf. XXVI, 25-33. Cf. Æn. XI, 207 ff.

Wherein he ploughs, or trims his vines, perchance,
So many flames this eighth pit, all aglow,
Showed when its depths I fathomed with my glance.

It is only a touch, but the touch is true.1

1 VERNON, in his Readings (Inf. vol. I, p. 357), remarks on the conspicuousness of these insects in Italy. He has lived there, and is good authority for those who have not observed this phenomenon at home. The commentary called 'Ottimo,' and Longfellow, take Dante's lucciole to mean glowworms, an interpretation not very adequately warranted by the details of Dante's description.

CHAPTER LXIV

THE LOCUST OR GRASSHOPPER

Mele e locuste furon le vivande
Che nutriro il Battista nel diserto;
Perch' egli è glorioso, e tanto grande,
Quanto per l'Evangelio v'è aperto.

Honey and locusts were the aliments
That fed the Baptist in the wilderness;
Whence he is glorious, and so magnified
As by the Evangel is revealed to you.

DANIELLO2 comments thus, 'Not grasshoppers, as some foolishly believe, for it would be a mistake to believe that so great a saint nourished himself on such food; but he [Dante] means the very tender tips of trees, shrubs, and herbs.' Sancta simplicitas ! Not only is there no warrant in any other passage for thus

1 Purg. XXII, 151–154.

2 Cited by Scartazzini. ST. AMBROSE (Expos. in Lucam, lib. II) explains why locusts were so proper a food for the saint, dissenting from the opinion of various wiseacres who declared that the åkpídes (Vulgate locustas) were sprouts, grass, or shrubbery. Indeed, these locusts were, by a widely popular allegory, conceived as meaning the peoples once without 'King Christ,' without a prophet, without a teacher, now gathered in the faith and hastening to the spiritual onslaught against the devil. See the VENERABLE BEDE on Proverbs xxx and Ecclesiastes xii, and Gregory the GREAT, Moral. in Job, xxxix, 20, lib. xxxi, 25 (No. 45 sq. t. III, 287).

interpreting the Latin locustas, but there is, furthermore, no evidence in the Latin vocabulary to justify Daniello, much less Dante. The poet, no doubt, understood that John the Baptist fed on honey and grasshoppers, not so revolting a diet to certain Orientals as to a European.2 The line in Dante shows, not that the poet looked upon such fare as loathsome, but as ennobling because of its ascetic simplicity. It hardly seems as if Dante could have been in a prophetic mood when he said:

Daniello

Dispregiò cibo, ed acquistò sapere.3

1Locustas et mel silvestre edebat.' Mark i, 6; Matthew iii, 4. 2 See citations in comment of Scartazzini.

8 Purg. XXII, 146-147, 'Daniel despised food and acquired learning.'

CHAPTER LXV

THE SPIDER

IN his letter to the Italian cardinals,' Dante declares that cupidity is getting the better of men, then says, Jacet Gregorius tuus in telis aranearum2 (Thy Gregory is lying amidst cobwebs). So, in Proverbs (xxx, 28) it is said that the spider taketh hold with her hands and is in kings' palaces. Since Dante is bemoaning the decline of theology and the popularity of law, he clearly means, not that Gregory the Great has fallen victim to spiders, but that he lies neglected and forgotten.

Once more, borrowing from Ovid for the adornment of his Purgatory, he refers to the metamorphosis of Arachne into a spider. Having mentioned alternately various characters from Hebrew or pagan mythology whose pride had caused them to be sculptured in Purgatory, Dante cries:

O folle Aragne, si vedea io te

Già mezza aragna3 trista in su gli stracci
Dell' opera che mal per te si fe'

1 Oxford Dante, pp. 411-413.

2 vii, 114.

3 As Scartazzini has pointed out, this form is a Latinism due to the desire to maintain the classic pun, which, by the way, was much more obvious in the two identical words of the Greek than in the Ovidian imitation.

Purg. XII, 43-45. This passage has no bearing on Dante's knowledge of nature. Whether he believed in the actuality of the