The Eighth Circle. Fraud. The Tenth Trench
Falsifiers of Persons, Money, and Words
When Juno, on account of Semele,
was angry with the royal blood of Thebes,
as several times she showed herself to be,
so fiercely mad did Athamas become,
that, when he saw his wife approaching him,
burdened by her two sons on either side,
“Spread we the nets,” he cried, “that I may take,
upon their passing, lioness and cubs!”
and thereupon stretched out his cruel claws,
and taking hold of one, Learchus named,
whirled him around, and dashed him ’gainst a rock;
his wife then with the other drowned herself.
Again, when Fortune so low down had brought
the Trojans’ arrogant, all-daring power,
that with their kingdom shattered was their king;
Hecuba, sad, forlorn, and captive now,
when she had seen her dead Polỳxena,
and in her painful anguish had perceived
her Polydorus lying on the beach,
out of her senses, barked as would a dog;
so greatly had her suffering turned her mind.
But ne’er did furies or of Thebes or Troy
reveal in any one such cruelty,
in goading beasts or, much less, human limbs,
as that which I beheld in two death-pale
and naked shades, who ran around, and bit,
as doth a boar, when from the sty let out.
One reached Capocchio, and so thrust his tusks
into his neck behind, that, dragging him,
he made his belly scrape the solid ground.
The Aretine, still trembling, said to me:
“That imp is Gianni Schicchi who, enraged,
goes all around ill-treating others thus.”
Then “Oh,” said I to him, “so may the other
not fix his teeth in thee, be not too tired
to tell me who he is, before he ‘skips’!”
And he to me: “That is the ancient soul
of wicked Myrrha, who, outside the bounds
of lawful love, became her father’s mistress.
She came to sin with him by counterfeiting
another’s person in herself, as dared
the other one who yonder goes away, —
that he might gain the lady of the stud, —
to counterfeit Buoso Donati’s self,
and make his will and give it legal form.”
When the two furious souls, on whom my eyes
were fixed, had passed away, I turned them round
to look upon the other evil born.
And one I saw, who like a lute were shaped,
if he had only had his groin cut off
down in the region where a man is forked.
The heavy dropsy which unmates the limbs
in such a way with ill-digested humor,
that face and paunch no longer correspond,
was causing him to keep his lips apart,
as doth the hectic, who, because of thirst,
turns one lip chinward, and the other up.
“O ye that are, and wherefore I know not,
free from all torment in this world of woe,”
said he to us, “behold, and pay attention
to Master Adam’s wretched misery!
When living, I had all that I desired,
and now, alas, I crave…
