The Fourth Circle. Intemperance in Wealth
Misers and Prodigals. The Fifth Circle
“Papè Satàn, papè Satàn, alèppë!”
thus Plutus with his clucking voice began;
that noble Sage, then, who knew everything,
said, to encourage me: “Let not thy fear
distress thee, for, whatever power he have,
he ’ll not prevent our going down this rock.”
Then to those swollen lips he turned around,
and said: “Be silent, thou accursèd wolf;
with thine own rage consume thyself within!
Not causeless is our going to the bottom;
there is it willed on high, where Michael wrought
vengeance upon the arrogant rebellion.”
As sails, when swollen by the wind, fall down
entangled, when the mast breaks; even so,
down to the ground the cruel monster fell.
Into the fourth ditch we descended thus,
advancing further o’er the woeful edge,
which bags all evil in the universe.
Justice of God, alas! who heapeth up
the many unheard of toils and pains I saw,
and wherefore doth our sin torment us so?
As yonder o’er Charybdis doth the sea,
which breaks against the one it runs to meet,
so must the people dance a ring-dance here.
I here saw folk, more numerous than elsewhere,
on one side and the other, with great howls
rolling big weights around by strength of chest;
they struck against each other; then, right there
each turned, and rolling back his weight, cried out:
“Why keepest thou?” and “Wherefore throw away?”
They circled thus around the gloomy ring
on either hand unto the point opposed,
still shouting each to each their vile refrain;
then each turned back, when through his own half-ring
he had attained the other butting place.
And I, whose heart was well nigh broken, said:
“Now, Teacher, show me who these people are,
and tell me whether all these tonsured ones
upon our left ecclesiastics were.”
And he replied to me: “They each and all
were in their first life so squint-eyed in mind,
that they with measure used no money there.
Clearly enough their voices bark it forth,
whene’er they reach the two points of the ring,
where difference in fault unmateth them.
These churchmen were, who have no hairy covering
upon their heads, and Popes and Cardinals,
among whom avarice works its mastery.”
And I to him: “Among such men as these
I surely, Teacher, ought to recognize
a few, who by these sins polluted were.”
And he to me: “Thou shapest a vain thought;
the undiscerning life which made them foul,
now to all recognition makes them dark.
To these two shocks they ’ll come eternally;
these from the sepulchre will rise again
close-fisted; these, shorn of their very hair.
Ill-giving and ill-keeping took from them
the lovely world, and set them at this fray;
to qualify it I ’ll not use fair words.
Now canst thou, son, behold the short-lived cheat
of riches that are put in Fortune’s care,
and for whose sake the human race contends;
for, all the gold there is beneath…
