Behold the middle one his bosom eyeing; When Virgil had explained to Chiron the cause and aim of their journey, asking guidance and a Centaur to bear Dante, Chiron turned to Nessus, and, mounted on him, our Florentine rode along the crimson pool. On the façade of the cathedral at Chartres in France may be seen another rider mounted on a Centaur, but there is some difference between what that sculpture means and the privilege vouchsafed to Dante. These Centaurs vary little from the antique. Cacus, however, whom Dante, misinterpreting Virgil,2 made also into a Centaur, is a monster. Dante met him in another region of Hell; for Cacus was in life not only violent, but violent with fraud. The poet saw him in pursuit of a sinner. On his back swarmed snakes up to the nape, and there lay a fiery dragon.3 So the Furies 1 1 Inf. XII, 52–82. See TOYNBEE, Dante Dictionary, s.v. 'Centauri.' 2 Æn. VIII, 193-199, especially 194. See TOYNBEE, Dante Dictionary, s.v. 'Caco.' 3 Inf. XXV, 17-33. had snakes for tresses, and snakes writhe on the Cerberus of Virgil, but no such Centaur as this snakeand dragon-ridden Caco has come down from ancient times. A bronze Centaur in the Louvre bears neither serpents nor a dragon, but a Cupid, whose graceful pose and air of happiness seem due to a friendship between him and the Centaur. - THE HARPIES After their encounter with 'the infamy of Crete' and the Centaurs, Virgil and Dante came to a pathless wood, not such a wood as those known to living men, but one where the fronds are dusky and the branches knotty and twisted. No fruits are there, but poisonous thorns. This is the abode of the Suicides, whose souls are in the weird plants, and here dwell the Harpies, - brooding thoughts embodied in ghastly, birdlike shapes that forever haunt and torture those who have done violence to themselves. There do the hideous Harpies make their nests, - LONGFELLOW. Now, when the soul of some suicide reaches this forest, it goes to no established place, but whither fortune wills, and there grows up in a plant. The Harpies, then, feeding on the leaves, create pain and for the pain an outlet.2 2 Inf. XIII, 94–102. 1 Inf. XIII, 10-15. In the Harpies Dante has made several important alterations. Not only has he removed them from the Strophades to Hell, but he has modified their looks and actions. Virgil gives them virginly faces, wings, befouling bellies, mouths pallid with hunger, hooked hands.1 In Dante's Hell they appear with broad wings and feet with claws. In giving them hooked hands (uncaeque manus2), Virgil was perhaps following the traditionary sculptural form which shows the Harpies with both feet and hands. Dante's description agrees perfectly with a Harpy carved on the capital of the first column to the right of the portal on the church called San Clemente at Cesauria. This sculpture antedates 1200 A.D., and may be as old as the ninth century. 1 Cf. Inf. XIII, 14, with Inf. VI, 17. See chapter on 'Cerbero,' pp. 47-49. 'Servatum ex undis Strophadum me litore primum Harpyiaeque colunt aliae. ... Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec saevior ulla Pestis et ira deum Stygiis sese extulit undis. Virginei volucrum vultus foedissima ventris Proluvies, uncaeque manus, et pallida semper Cf. also En. III, 225 ff. * See two designs on pp. 264 and 265, vol. I, of Histoire de la sculpture grecque, by M. COLLIGNON. 4 See H. W. SCHULTZ, Denkmäler der Kunst des Mittelalters in Unteritalien, Atlas, pl. lv. The two poets move forward to the left until they come to the brink of an abyss. How shall they get farther down? Virgil, well versed in magic and in the trickery to be used with demons, taking from Dante a certain cord, casts it into the void. Hardly has the charm fallen when there rises, swimming, a wondrous figure, the demon Geryon.' "Behold the wild beast with the pointed tail, that passes mountains, and breaks walls and weapons; behold him that infects all the world." Thus began my Leader to speak to me; and he beckoned to him that he should come to shore near the end of the trodden marbles. And that loathsome image of fraud came onward, and landed his head and his body, but drew not his tail upon the bank. His face was that of a just man (so benignant was its skin outwardly), and of a serpent all the trunk beside; he had two paws, hairy to the armpits; 1 Inf. XVI, 106-136. his back and breast and both his sides were painted with nooses and circles. With more colours of woof and warp Tartars or Turks never made cloth, nor were such webs woven by Arachne. 'As sometimes boats lie on the shore, so that they are partly in water and partly on the ground, and as yonder, among the gluttonous Germans, the beaver settles himself to make his war, so lay that worst of beasts upon the rim that closes in the sand with stone. In the void A DRAGON beast that is couching From a medieval manuscript. After there."'- NORTON. Cahier Virgil leaves Dante a moment in order to get Geryon to lend them his strong shoulders; meanwhile Dante speaks with the usurers; but, fearing to delay overlong, turns and finds Virgil mounted on the back of the 'wild animal' Geryon. At a word from Virgil to be sturdy and bold and to mount in front, for Virgil wishes himself to ward off the baneful tail,- Dante obediently seats himself on the great shoulders, shivering as if in a quartain fever. Then Virgil gives the word: 'Geryon, bestir thee now. Wide be the rings and the descent be slow. Mind that thou bearest strange freight.' 1 |