The Seventh Circle. The Third Ring
Violence against Art. Usurers
“Behold the wild beast with the pointed tail,
which, crossing mountains, breaks through walls and armor;
behold who sickens all the world with stench!”
My Leader thus began to speak to me,
and signalled to it to approach the edge,
near where the marble we had traversed ended.
And that foul image of deceit came on,
and landed on the bank its head and chest;
but o’er the edge it drew not up its tail.
Its face was as the face of a just man,
so pleasing outwardly was its complexion;
the body of a serpent all the rest.
Two paws it had, all hairy to the arm-pits;
its back and breast, as well as both its sides,
were painted o’er with snares and wheel-like shields.
Ne’er with more colors in its woof and warp
did Turks or Tartars manufacture cloth,
nor by Arachnne were such webs designed.
As flat-boats sometimes lie upon the shore,
in water partly, partly on the land;
and as among the greedy Germans yonder,
the beaver seats himself to wage his war;
so lay that worst of beasts upon the edge
which closes in the sandy plain with stone.
All of its tail was quivering in the void,
and twisting upward its envenomed fork,
which like a scorpion’s weapon armed its tip.
“Our path must turn aside a little now,”
my Leader said to me, “until we reach
that wicked beast reclining over there.”
Around our right breast, therefore, we went down,
and took ten paces on the very edge,
thus surely to avoid both sand and fire;
and after we had come to it, I saw,
upon the sand a little further on,
some people sitting near the precipice.
My Teacher then: “That thou mayst take with thee
a full experience of this ring, go on,
and see the nature of the life they lead.
There be thy conversation brief; meanwhile,
till thou return, I ’ll talk with this wild beast,
that its strong shoulders may be yielded us.”
Thus further on, along the outer edge
of that seventh circle, all alone I went,
to where the melancholy people sat.
Out of their eyes their woe was bursting forth;
first here, then there, they helped them with their hands,
now from the flames, now from the heated soil.
Not otherwise do dogs in summer-time,
now with their paws, and with their muzzles now,
whene’er by flees, or flies, or gadflies bitten.
When on the face of some I set mine eyes,
on whom the woeful fire is falling there,
I knew not one of them; but I perceived
that from the neck of each there hung a pouch,
which had a certain color and design,
wherewith their eyes appeared to feed themselves.
And as I, looking, came into their midst,
azure upon a yellow pouch I saw,
which had the form and semblance of a lion.
Then, as my gaze continued on its course,
