The Eighth Circle. Fraud
The Seventh Trench. Thieves
The thief, at the conclusion of his words,
lifted his hands with both their figs, and cried:
“Take that, O God, for ’t is to Thee I show them!”
From that time onward snakes have been my friends,
for thereupon one coiled around his neck,
as if to say: “I ’d have thee speak no more;”
another, coiling, tied his arms together,
and clinched itself so well in front of him,
that he could make no use of them at all.
Pistoia, ah, Pistoia, why not will
to burn to ashes, and no longer last,
since in ill-doing thou excell’st thy seed?
In all of Hell’s dark rings I ’ve seen no spirit
so arrogant toward God; not even he,
who fell down headlong from the walls at Thebes.
Without another word he fled away;
whereat I saw a Centaur full of rage
come crying: “Where, where is the stubborn soul?”
Not ev’n Maremma has so many snakes,
I think, as on his crupper that one had,
as far as where our human form begins.
Upon his shoulders right behind his nape
there crouched a dragon with wide opened wings;
and he sets fire to whomsoe’er he meets.
My Teacher said: “He, yonder, Cacus is,
who ’neath the rocks that form Mount Aventine
oft made a lake of blood. He travels not
along the road o’er which his brethren go,
because of having fraudulently robbed
the famous herd which he as neighbor had;
this ended his sly deeds beneath the club
of Hercules, who may perhaps have dealt him
a hundred blows, whereof he felt but ten.”
While thus he spoke, that sinner, too, made off;
whereat three spirits came and stood below us,
whom neither I nor even my Leader noticed,
until they all cried out: “Who then are ye?”
because of which our conversation ceased,
for afterward we heeded them alone.
I knew them not; but so it happened then,
as it is wont to do in certain cases,
that one perforce employed another’s name,
saying: “But where can Cianfa have remained?”
Hence, that my Leader might give heed, I placed
my finger in a line from chin to nose.
If thou art slow now, Reader, to believe
what I shall tell, no marvel will it be,
for I, who saw it, hardly grant I did.
As toward them I was holding up my brows,
lo, a six-footed serpent hurls itself
in front of one, and clings to him all over;
with both its middle feet it clasped his paunch,
and with its fore feet seized upon his arms;
then with its teeth it wounded both his cheeks;
it spread its hind feet out along his thighs,
and thrusting next its tail between the two,
it stretched it upward all along his back.
Ivy was never rooted to a tree
so fast, as round about the other’s limbs
that horrible wild creature twined its own.
And thereupon, as if hot…
