Dante's Purgatorio: Canto XXII

Statius’ Denunciation of Avarice. The Sixth Circle: The Gluttonous. The Mystic Tree.

Already was the Angel left behind us,
   The Angel who to the sixth round had turned us,
   Having erased one mark from off my face;

And those who have in justice their desire
   Had said to us, "Beati," in their voices, 5
   With "sitio," and without more ended it.

And I, more light than through the other passes,
   Went onward so, that without any labour
   I followed upward the swift-footed spirits;

When thus Virgilius began: "The love 10
   Kindled by virtue aye another kindles,
   Provided outwardly its flame appear.

Hence from the hour that Juvenal descended
   Among us into the infernal Limbo,
   Who made apparent to me thy affection, 15

My kindliness towards thee was as great
   As ever bound one to an unseen person,
   So that these stairs will now seem short to me.

But tell me, and forgive me as a friend,
   If too great confidence let loose the rein, 20
   And as a friend now hold discourse with me;

How was it possible within thy breast
   For avarice to find place, 'mid so much wisdom
   As thou wast filled with by thy diligence?"

These words excited Statius at first 25
   Somewhat to laughter; afterward he answered:
   "Each word of thine is love's dear sign to me.

Verily oftentimes do things appear
   Which give fallacious matter to our doubts,
   Instead of the true causes which are hidden! 30

Thy question shows me thy belief to be
   That I was niggard in the other life,
   It may be from the circle where I was;

Therefore know thou, that avarice was removed
   Too far from me; and this extravagance 35
   Thousands of lunar periods have punished.

And were it not that I my thoughts uplifted,
   When I the passage heard where thou exclaimest,
   As if indignant, unto human nature,

'To what impellest thou not, O cursed hunger 40
   Of gold, the appetite of mortal men?'
   Revolving I should feel the dismal joustings.

Then I perceived the hands could spread too wide
   Their wings in spending, and repented me
   As well of that as of my other sins; 45

How many with shorn hair shall rise again
   Because of ignorance, which from this sin
   Cuts off repentance living and in death!

And know that the transgression which rebuts
   By direct opposition any sin 50
   Together with it here its verdure dries.

Therefore if I have been among that folk
   Which mourns its avarice, to purify me,
   For its opposite has this befallen me."

"Now when thou sangest the relentless weapons 55
   Of the twofold affliction of Jocasta,"
   The singer of the Songs Bucolic said,

"From that which Clio there with thee preludes,
   It does not seem that yet had made thee faithful
   That faith without which no good works suffice. 60

If this be so, what candles or what sun
   Scattered thy darkness so that thou didst trim
   Thy sails behind the Fisherman thereafter?"

And he to him: "Thou first directedst me
   Towards Parnassus, in its grots to drink, 65
   And first concerning God didst me enlighten.

Thou didst as he who walketh in the night,
   Who bears his light behind, which helps him not,
   But wary makes the persons after him,

When thou didst say: 'The age renews itself, 70
   Justice returns, and man's primeval time,
   And a new progeny descends from heaven.'

Through thee I Poet was, through thee a Christian;
   But that thou better see what I design,
   To colour it will I extend my hand. 75

Already was the world in every part
   Pregnant with the true creed, disseminated
   By messengers of the eternal kingdom;

And thy assertion, spoken of above,
   With the new preachers was in unison; 80
   Whence I to visit them the custom took.

Then they became so holy in my sight,
   That, when Domitian persecuted them,
   Not without tears of mine were their laments;

And all the while that I on earth remained, 85
   Them I befriended, and their upright customs
   Made me disparage all the other sects.

And ere I led the Greeks unto the rivers
   Of Thebes, in poetry, I was baptized,
   But out of fear was covertly a Christian, 90

For a long time professing paganism;
   And this lukewarmness caused me the fourth circle
   To circuit round more than four centuries.

Thou, therefore, who hast raised the covering
   That hid from me whatever good I speak of, 95
   While in ascending we have time to spare,

Tell me, in what place is our friend Terentius,
   Caecilius, Plautus, Varro, if thou knowest;
   Tell me if they are damned, and in what alley."

"These, Persius and myself, and others many," 100
   Replied my Leader, "with that Grecian are
   Whom more than all the rest the Muses suckled,

In the first circle of the prison blind;
   Ofttimes we of the mountain hold discourse
   Which has our nurses ever with itself. 105

Euripides is with us, Antiphon,
   Simonides, Agatho, and many other
   Greeks who of old their brows with laurel decked.

There some of thine own people may be seen,
   Antigone, Deiphile and Argia, 110
   And there Ismene mournful as of old.

There she is seen who pointed out Langia;
   There is Tiresias' daughter, and there Thetis,
   And there Deidamia with her sisters."

Silent already were the poets both, 115
   Attent once more in looking round about,
   From the ascent and from the walls released;

And four handmaidens of the day already
   Were left behind, and at the pole the fifth
   Was pointing upward still its burning horn, 120

What time my Guide: "I think that tow'rds the edge
   Our dexter shoulders it behoves us turn,
   Circling the mount as we are wont to do."

Thus in that region custom was our ensign;
   And we resumed our way with less suspicion 125
   For the assenting of that worthy soul

They in advance went on, and I alone
   Behind them, and I listened to their speech,
   Which gave me lessons in the art of song.

But soon their sweet discourses interrupted 130
   A tree which midway in the road we found,
   With apples sweet and grateful to the smell.

And even as a fir-tree tapers upward
   From bough to bough, so downwardly did that;
   I think in order that no one might climb it. 135

On that side where our pathway was enclosed
   Fell from the lofty rock a limpid water,
   And spread itself abroad upon the leaves.

The Poets twain unto the tree drew near,
   And from among the foliage a voice 140
   Cried: "Of this food ye shall have scarcity."

Then said: "More thoughtful Mary was of making
   The marriage feast complete and honourable,
   Than of her mouth which now for you responds;

And for their drink the ancient Roman women 145
   With water were content; and Daniel
   Disparaged food, and understanding won.

The primal age was beautiful as gold;
   Acorns it made with hunger savorous,
   And nectar every rivulet with thirst. 150

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."

NOTES

1 - 1

The ascent to the Sixth Circle, where the sin of Gluttony is punished.

5 - 5

Matthew v. 6: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.”

13 - 13

The satirist Juvenal, who flourished at Rome during the last half of the first century of the Christian era, and died at the beginning of the second, aged eighty. He was a contemporary of Statius, and survived him some thirty years.

40 - 40

AEneid, III. 56: “O cursed hunger of gold, to what dost thou not drive the hearts of men.”

42 - 42

The punishment of the Avaricious and Prodigal. Inf. VII. 26: –

“With great howls Rolling weights forward by main force of chest.”

46 - 46

Dante says of the Avaricious and Prodigal, Inf. VII. 56: –

“These from the sepulchre shall rise again
With the fist closed, and these with tresses shorn.”

56 - 56

Her two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, of whom Statius sings in the Thebaid, and to whom Dante alludes by way of illustration, Inf. XXVI. 54. See also the Note.

58 - 58

Statius begins the Thebaid with an invocation of Clio, the Muse of History, whose office it was to record the heroic actions of brave men, I. 55: –

“What first, O Clio, shall adorn thy page,
The expiring prophet, or AEtolian's rage?
Say, wilt thou sing how, grim with hostile blood,
Hippomedon repelled the rushing flood,
Lament the Arcadian youth's untimely fate,
Or Jove, opposed by Capaneus, relate?

Skelton, Elegy on the Earl of Northumberland: –

”Of hevenly poems, O Clyo calde by name
In the college of musis goddess hystoriale.“

63 - 63

Saint Peter.

70 - 70

Virgil's Bucolics, Ecl. IV. 5, a passage supposed to foretell the birth of Christ: ”The last era of Camaean song is now arrived; the great series of ages begins anew; now the Virgin returns, returns the Saturnian reign; now a new progeny is sent down from the high heaven.“

92 - 92

The Fourth Circle of Purgatory, where Sloth is punished. Canto XVII. 85: –

”The love of good, remiss In what it should have done, is here restored; Here plied again the ill-belated oar,“

97 - 97

Some editions read in this line, instead of nostro amico, – nostro antico, our ancient Terence; but the epithet would be more appropriate to Plautus, who was the earlier writer. 97, 98. Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, the three principal Latin dramatists; Varro, ”the most learned of the Romans,“ the friend of Cicero, and author of some five hundred volumes, which made St. Augustine wonder how he who wrote so many books could find time to read so many; and how he who read so many could find time to write so many.

100 - 100

Persius, the Latin satirist.

101 - 101

Homer.

106 - 106

Mrs. Browning, Wine of Cyprus: –

”Our Euripides, the human, –
With his droppings of warm tears;
And his touches of things common,
Till they rose to touch the spheres.“

But why does Dante make no mention here of ”AEschyles the thunderous“ and ”Sophocles the royal“?

Antiphon was a tragic and epic poet of Attica, who was put to death by Dionysius because he would not praise the tyrant's writings. Some editions read Anacreon for Antiphon.

107 - 107

Simonides, the poet of Cos, who won a poetic prize at the age of eighty, and is said to be the first poet who wrote for money.

Agatho was an Athenian dramatist, of whom nothing remains but the name and a few passages quoted in other writers.

110 - 110

Some of the people that Statius introduces into his poems. Antigone, daughter of OEdipus; Deiphile, wife of Tideus; Argia, her sister, wife of Polynices; Ismene, another daughter of OEdipus, who is here represented as still lamenting the death of Atys, her betrothed.

112 - 112

Hypsipile, who pointed out to Adrastus the fountain of Langia, when his soldiers were perishing with thirst on their march against Thebes.

113 - 113

Of the three daughters of Tiresias only Manto is mentioned by Statius in the Thebaid. But Dante places Manto among the Soothsayers, Inf. XX. 55, and not in Limbo. Had he forgotten this?

113 - 114

Thetis, the mother of Achilles, and Deidamia, the daughter of Lycomedes. They are among the personages in the Achilleid of Statius.

118 - 118

Four hours of the day were already passed.

131 - 131

Cowley, The Tree of Knowledge: –

”The sacred tree 'midst the fair orchard grew,
The phoenix Truth did on it rest
And built his perfumed nest,
That right Porphyrian tree which did true Logic show;
Each leaf did learned notions give
And th'apples were demonstrative;
So clear their color and divine
The very shade they cast did other lights outshine.“

This tree of Temptation, however, is hardly the tree of Knowledge, though sprung from it, as Dante says of the next, in Canto XXIV. 117. It is meant only to increase the torment of the starving souls beneath it, by holding its fresh and dewy fruit beyond their reach.

142 - 142

John ii. 3: ”And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.“

146 - 146

Daniel i. 12: ”Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days; and let them give up pulse to eat and water to drink.....And Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.“

148 - 148

Compare the description of the Golden Age in Ovid, Met., I: –

”The golden age was first; when man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew,
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere;
Needless was written law, where none opprest:
The law of man was written in his breast:
No suppliant crowds before the judge appeared,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard:
But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.
The mountain-trees is distant prospect please,
Ere yet the pine descended to the seas;
Ere sails were spread, new oceans to explore;
And happy mortals, unconcerned for more,
Confined their wishes to their native shore.
No walls were yet: nor fence, nor mote, nor mound,
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound:
Nor swords were forged; but, void of care and crime,
The soft creation slept away their time.
The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow:
Content with food, which nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed;
Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnished out a feast.
The flowers unsown in fields and meadows reigned;
And western winds immortal spring maintained.
In following years, the bearded corn ensued
From earth unasked, nor was that earth renewed.
From veins of valleys milk and nectar broke,
And honey sweating through the pores of oak.“

Also Boëthius, Book II. Met. 5, and the Ode in Tasso's Aminta, Leigh Hunt's Tr., beginning: –

”O lovely age of gold!
Nor that the rivers rolled
With milk, or that the woods wept honeydew;
Nor that the ready ground
Produced without a wound,
Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew;
Not that a cloudless blue
Forever was in sight,
Or that the heaven which burns,
And now is cold by turns,
Looked out in glad and everlasting light;
No, nor that even the insolent ships from far
Brought war to no new lands, nor riches
worse than war:

“But solely that that vain
And breath-invented pain,
That idol of mistake, that worshipped cheat,
That Honor, – since so called
By vulgar minds appalled, –
Played not the tyrant with our nature yet.
It had not come to fret
The sweet and happy fold
Of gentle human-kind;
Nor did its hard law bind
Souls nursed in freedom; but that law of gold,
That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,
Which Nature's own hand wrote, – What pleases, is permitted.”

Also Don Quixote's address to the goatherds, Don Quix., Book II Ch. 3, Jarvis's Tr.: –

“After Don Quixote had satisfied his hunger, he took up an
handful of acorns, and, looking on them attentively, gave
utterance to expressions like these: –

”'Happy times, and happy ages! those to which the ancients
gave the name of golden, not because gold (which, in this
our iron age, is so much esteemed) was to be had, in that
fortunate period, without toil and labor; but because they
who then lived were ignorant of these two words, Meum and
Tuum. In that age of innocence, all things were in common;
no one needed to take any other pains for his ordinary
sustenance, than to lift up his hand and take it from the
sturdy oaks, which stood inviting him liberally to taste of
their sweet and relishing fruit. The limpid fountains, and
running streams offered them, in magnificent abundance,
their delicious and transparent waters. In the clefts of
rocks, and in the hollow of trees, did the industrious and
provident bees from their commonwealths, offering to every
hand, without usury, the fertile produce of their most
delicious toil. The stout cork-trees, without any other
inducement than that of their own courtesy, divested
themselves of their light and expanded bark, with which men
began to cover their houses, supported by rough poles, only
for a defence against the inclemency of the seasons. All
then was peace, all amity, all concord. As yet the heavy
coulter of the crooked plough had not dared to force open,
and searth into, the render bowels of our first mother, who
unconstrained offered, from every part of her fertile and
spacious bosom, whatever might feed, sustain, and delight
those her children, who then had her in possession. Then did
the simple and beauteous young shepherdesses trip it from
dale to dale, and from hill to hill, their tresses sometimes
plaited, sometimes lóosely flowing, with no more clothing
than was necessary modestly to cover what modesty has always
required to be concealed; nor were there ornaments like
those now-a-days in fashion, to which the Tyrian purple and
the so-many-ways martyred silk give a value; but compared of
green dock-leaves and ivy interwoven; with which, perhaps,
they went as splendidly and elegantly decked as our court
ladies do now, with all those rare and foreign inventions
which idle curiosity hath taught them. Then were the
amorous conceptions of the soul clothed in simple and
sincere expressions, in the same way and manner they were
conceived, without seeking artificial phrases to set them
off. Nor as yet were fraud, deceit, and malice intermixed
with truth and plain-dealing. Justice kept within her
proper bounds; favor and interest, which now so much
depreciate, confound, and persecute her, not daring then to
disturb or offend her. As yet the judge did not make his
own will the measure of justice; for then there was neither
cause nor person to be judged.'“