Honour'd by all—on him all eyes are cast.
Nearest, amid the sage assembly, stood

Plato and Socrates, before the rest.
Him who attributed the world to chance,
Diogenes, and Thales too I view'd;
Dioscorides, who science did advance.

There saw I Zeno, and Empedocles,
Orpheus the bard, and Seneca the wise;
With Livy, Tully, and Hippocrates,
Galieno, Avicen, and more of note:
Euclid and Ptolemy there met mine eyes,
Averroes, who the learned comment wrote.
I cannot now the names of more detail;—
Spurr'd on to haste by all I fain would say,
Full oft my pen must in description fail.
In twain the band of six divided there:
My guide conducts me by another way

Forth from the tranquil to the trembling air;

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And now I came where all in darkness lay.

151

INFERNO.

CANTO V.

ARGUMENT.

ENTERING the second circle, Dante sees Minos, the infernal judge. He witnesses the punishment of carnal sinners, who, wrapt in darkness, are swept along by a violent hurricane. Semiramis, Dido, Helen, Paris, Francesca of Rimini, who at Dante's request relates her misfortunes.

INFERNO.

CANTO V.

FROM the first circle made we our descent

Down to the second,-which, though less in size,
Holds greater grief, that bursts in loud lament.
Grinding his teeth-there Minos dreadful stands :
The culprits, as they enter in, he tries;
Awards their sentence-issues his commands.

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The guilty soul confesses all its crimes,

When brought before him: then the judge decrees

Its proper place in hell: as many times

As he himself encircles with his tail,

Such is the destined number of degrees

The souls are plunged within th' infernal scale.

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