Virgil and Dante encounter the gluttons.
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When I finally came to, having fainted at the pitiful sight of those two lovers who were also kin to each other – a sight that confused me to tears – new tortures and new suffering sinners now appeared everywhere, no matter where I looked.[1]Dante’s transitions are sometimes mysterious. Recall that he had also fainted at the end of Canto 3 and we weren’t told how he and Virgil arrived in Limbo in Canto 4. The same thing happens here: … Continue reading So, there I was in the third circle of Hell – where it rains! Eternally, cursed, cold, heavy, non-stop! Mixed together with this are torrents of thick, eternal hail, snow, and slush that raise a terrible stench from the soaked ground.[2]In this third circle of Hell, Dante will encounter another group of incontinent sinners who enslaved their reasons with their appetites – literally. The gluttons. It is no accident that the … Continue reading And there in that mess was Cerberus, the mythical dog-like beast with three heads.[3]In classical mythology, Cerberus was the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to the Underworld. He allowed souls to enter, but none could leave. He appears in the epics of Homer and Virgil. … Continue reading Out of his three throats he barked louder than all the drowning sinners. What a frightening sight with those red eyes, black slobbery beard, and bloated belly. And with his sharp claws he ripped and mangled the sinners there.[4]Ah! This is an additional aspect of the contrapasso in this place. The sinners are ripped and mangled, just as they ripped and mangled the food they ate, acting like ravenous dogs. Poor things – like Cerberus they lay in all that slushy muck howling wildly and turning over, this side and that side, trying to shelter themselves from that evil downpour.[5]At their luxurious repasts, the gluttons sat on cushioned chairs and couches. Here, hardly at repose, they lie in slop! Instead of their oh-so-pleasant dinner chatter, they howl like dogs.
When the slime-dog caught sight of us, he went into a rabid fit, showing all his long fangs as he snarled, his whole body shivering in fury. But my bold Virgil bent down and grabbed up heaping handfuls of the muck and threw it into his greedy mouths! How strange: just like a howling, hungry dog quiets down when he gets fed, so that demon, Cerberus, stopped his infernal barking over all those souls there – who surely wished they were deaf![6]Dante obviously had the Aeneid in mind when writing this: “Huge Cerberus sets these regions echoing with his triple-throated howling, crouching monstrously in a cave opposite. Seeing … Continue reading
With that creature silenced for the moment, we sloshed through a marsh of shades laying everywhere in that muck. They looked human enough, but we were walking right through them![7]For the first time in the poem we come to understand that the souls, while having the semblance of corporeality, actually have no real substance. This is ironic, of course, for the gluttons who had … Continue reading Every sinner was laid out in that reeking slush, except for one who sat up quickly as we passed him. He cried out to me: “O you there, being led through this Hell. Don’t you remember who I am? We were alive at the same time.”[8]This glutton is quite observant. He recognizes the difference between Dante and Virgil on three levels: he sees that Dante is alive, that he is being led (by Virgil), and that Dante was a … Continue reading
“I suspect the torture you suffer here has completely misshaped you,” I replied, “because I can’t remember who you might have been. But tell me who you are, here in this awful place, suffering so terribly? I bet there’s no worse place in Hell.”[9]This is the first time in the poem that Dante actually meets someone he knew, and his response here is clever, if not perhaps misplaced. That this sinner should be “completely misshaped” by his … Continue reading
“I lived the high life in your Florence, that wicked city overflowing with envy.[10]This is the first of many occasions throughout the poem that the wickedness of Dante’s (former) hometown will be highlighted – either by souls he meets or by himself. Ciacco’s phrase that … Continue reading You all gave me the nickname ‘Hog’ for my gluttony. Now I’m damned to lay here in this stinking muck. But I’m not alone – every one of us here was a glutton like me.”
I wanted to know more, so I pressed him: “Ciacco, I feel sorry for you. What’s happened to you makes me want to cry.[11]Has Dante learned his lesson? His pity got the better of him in the previous canto, and here he still seems prone to put his heart on his sleeve. A moment ago, Ciacco identified himself by his rather … Continue reading
But tell me, what’s going to happen to everyone in our home town? Does any honest man still live there? And why is it so plagued with strife?”[12]Dante’s loaded questions here are significant because they imply more than just the envy that Ciacco noted a few moments before. And Dante seems to be more interested in following up on Ciacco’s … Continue reading
He replied: “After so much wrangling among each other, there’s going to be plenty of bloodshed. Your White Guelfs will brutalize the Black Guelfs; but soon enough, the Blacks will rise up through treachery. They’ll hold their heads up high for a while, crushing the White Party no matter what you people try. As for your other question, there’s only a handful left there with any integrity, but no one will listen to them. Everyone’s heart burns with pride, envy, and greed.”[13]Ciacco’s answers to Dante’s three questions brings to the fore another significant structural aspect of Dante’s poem. Dante sets the action of his poem in the Spring of the year 1300, beginning … Continue reading
I wanted to hear more, so I asked him: “Please, Ciacco, tell me, what about men like Farinata and Tegghiaio – they were the good guys. How about Jacopo Rusticucci, or Arrigo, or even Mosca – I thought all of them were so intent on doing good. I’m dying to know what’s become of them. Are they in Heaven, or…down here?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” he said, lowering his eyes. “They’re all further down, with souls even blacker than mine! Different sins cause them to suffer at different depths in this place. If you keep going down, I suspect you’ll run into them.[14]Perhaps Dante was dissatisfied with Ciacco’s answer to his second question, whether any honest men still reside in Florence, so he presses him further – this time with names. One can imagine … Continue reading
But listen,” he pleaded, “please…when you get back to the sweet world above, I beg you to remember me to our friends. I’ve told you everything I can.”[15]Though Ciacco asks Dante to remember him, almost until the bottom of Hell – where it is thrown back in his face – Dante will, from time to time, entice the sinners to talk about themselves, … Continue reading As he stared at me for a while longer, his face contorted into a wild kind of squint. Then he bowed his head and fell backward into the slimy muck to rejoin the rest of his pigish companions there.[16]There is a certain pathos in this parting scene because Dante’s encounter with Ciacco has been as affable and pleasant as if they were both guests at a sumptuous meal sharing tidbits of gossip … Continue reading
At that, Virgil said to me: “He’ll never get up again till the last day, when the final trumpet blows, and that hostile Judge comes down here. Like everyone else, all the wicked souls here will resume their fleshly bodies, and then all of us in Hell will hear the words of our eternal condemnation.”[17]Virgil knows his Christian theology here and probably answers the question Dante was about to ask about the Last Judgment. As a matter of fact, throughout the poem Dante’s thoughts and questions … Continue reading
As we trudged haltingly through that filthy swamp of souls, talking about the afterlife, I asked Virgil: “Master, at the Last Judgment, will all the pain and suffering in this place get worse, or less, or just stay the same as it is now?”[18]As Virgil will remind him, Dante surely knew the answer to this question already. Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas – whom Dante had studied – all had reflections on the subject. Nevertheless, … Continue reading
He reminded me: “If you think about it, your philosophy states that the more perfect a thing is, the more it feels pleasure or pain. Although these accursed souls down here will never attain anything close to perfection, they will, nonetheless, suffer more pain than they do now.”[19]It’s an appropriate time for Dante the Pilgrim, and we who join him, to be reminded of this teaching. Thus far, we have had only a few examples of outright suffering. What Virgil is no doubt … Continue reading
And so we went along that curving road, still talking, until we came to the edge where it starts dropping downward. There we found Plutus – enemy to every living soul![20]Plutus was the god of wealth and money, and in the context of the following canto we can anticipate that Dante’s focus will be on the dangers of wealth and the misuse of money.
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Notes & Commentary
| ↑1 | Dante’s transitions are sometimes mysterious. Recall that he had also fainted at the end of Canto 3 and we weren’t told how he and Virgil arrived in Limbo in Canto 4. The same thing happens here: after Dante’s swoon at the end of the previous canto, we are not told how he arrives here. |
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| ↑2 | In this third circle of Hell, Dante will encounter another group of incontinent sinners who enslaved their reasons with their appetites – literally. The gluttons. It is no accident that the “weather” has changed drastically here. The torrential and eternal rain, snow, slush – and stench – are all part of the contrapasso for Gluttony, which often seems like a kind of convivial sin of partying, eating, drinking, merry-making, relaxing, making yourself at home. Instead of rich foods, these sinners feast on muck! |
| ↑3 | In classical mythology, Cerberus was the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to the Underworld. He allowed souls to enter, but none could leave. He appears in the epics of Homer and Virgil. Some legends made him even more terrible as a ravening beast that eats the bodies of the dead. Cerberus is another guardian of Hell that Dante has adapted from classical mythology. Furthermore, one cannot miss the parody of the Trinity in this three-headed monster. |
| ↑4 | Ah! This is an additional aspect of the contrapasso in this place. The sinners are ripped and mangled, just as they ripped and mangled the food they ate, acting like ravenous dogs. |
| ↑5 | At their luxurious repasts, the gluttons sat on cushioned chairs and couches. Here, hardly at repose, they lie in slop! Instead of their oh-so-pleasant dinner chatter, they howl like dogs. |
| ↑6 |
Dante obviously had the Aeneid in mind when writing this: “Huge Cerberus sets these regions echoing with his triple-throated howling, crouching monstrously in a cave opposite. Seeing the snakes rearing round his neck, the prophetess threw him a pellet, a soporific of honey and drugged wheat. Opening his three throats, in rabid hunger, he seized what she threw and, flexing his massive spine, sank to earth spreading his giant bulk over the whole cave-floor” (6:417ff). But instead of a honeyed-morsel, Virgil – and this is wonderful – reenacts a scene in his own epic and throws handfuls of muck into Cerberus’ greedy gullets. Dante calls Cerberus il gran vermo – the great worm. This is an appropriate word for a monstrous beast who makes its home in the slime and muck. And the fact that Cerberus eats the muck – a rather irrational thing to do – points also to the irrational nature of the sin he represents. |
| ↑7 | For the first time in the poem we come to understand that the souls, while having the semblance of corporeality, actually have no real substance. This is ironic, of course, for the gluttons who had an overabundance of substance! We will encounter this phenomenon again and we will also have a fine explanation of how it actually works in the Purgatorio. Because the final resurrection and judgment have not taken place yet, none of the souls that Dante will see or encounter in the poem will have their bodies yet (with the exception of the Virgin Mary, who he will see in the Paradiso). |
| ↑8 | This glutton is quite observant. He recognizes the difference between Dante and Virgil on three levels: he sees that Dante is alive, that he is being led (by Virgil), and that Dante was a contemporary of his. |
| ↑9 | This is the first time in the poem that Dante actually meets someone he knew, and his response here is clever, if not perhaps misplaced. That this sinner should be “completely misshaped” by his sufferings in Hell may be Dante’s polite way of recognizing that the mis-shaping effects of gluttony had already started when this sinner was still alive. Dante’s suggestion that this might be the worst place in Hell contrasts with the pleasures enjoyed by the gluttons at their comfortable banquets. Perhaps this gives new meaning to the phrase “comfort-food.” |
| ↑10 | This is the first of many occasions throughout the poem that the wickedness of Dante’s (former) hometown will be highlighted – either by souls he meets or by himself. Ciacco’s phrase that Florence is “overflowing with envy” is ironic. Ciacco the glutton knows well the meaning of “overflowing.” That he led the “high-life” contrasts with his eternal punishment to live the “low-life” in the muck and slop of Hell. That he first identifies himself with his bestial nickname indicates that his attachment to his sin virtually erased his true identity – such that Dante tells him he doesn’t recognize him because he is “completely misshaped.” |
| ↑11 | Has Dante learned his lesson? His pity got the better of him in the previous canto, and here he still seems prone to put his heart on his sleeve. A moment ago, Ciacco identified himself by his rather disgusting nickname – Hog. Dante must have known him, or known of him because here he calls him by name. Hardly a thing is known about this person, except that – if we take Dante at his word here – he lived in Florence and was well-known there as a bon vivant. In Chapter 6 of his Commento, Boccaccio writes of him as:
“…a noted diner-out in Florence, who frequented the gentry and the rich, and particularly those who ate and drank sumptuously and delicately; and when he was invited by them to dine, he went; and likewise when he was not invited by them, he invited himself; and for this vice he was well known to all Florentines; though apart from this he was a well-bred man according to his condition, eloquent, affable, and of good feeling; on account of which he was welcomed by every gentleman.” And in the Decameron (Day 9, Novel 8) he writes: “There dwelt sometime in Florence one that was generally called by the name of Ciacco, a man being the greatest Gourmand and the grossest Feeder as ever was seen in any Countrey, all his means and procurements meerly unable to maintain expenses for filling his belly. But otherwise he was of sufficient and commendable carriage, fairly demeaned, and well discoursing on any Argument: yet not as a curious and spruce Courtier, but rather a frequenter of rich men’s Tables, where choice of good cheer is seldom wanting, and such should have his Company, albeit not invited, he had the Courage to bid himself welcome.” |
| ↑12 | Dante’s loaded questions here are significant because they imply more than just the envy that Ciacco noted a few moments before. And Dante seems to be more interested in following up on Ciacco’s nasty remark about Florence than he is in finding out more about Ciacco himself and how he got here. |
| ↑13 | Ciacco’s answers to Dante’s three questions brings to the fore another significant structural aspect of Dante’s poem. Dante sets the action of his poem in the Spring of the year 1300, beginning on the eve of Good Friday (April 7) and ending during the following week of Easter (dates according to the Julian Calendar). Thus, the Inferno begins when he is 35 years old – in the middle of his life (Inferno 1:1). Dante was exiled from Florence in 1302, and by setting the poem a few years before his exile, he can have his characters speak about historical events as though they will happen, turning responses like Ciacco’s here into a kind of prophecy. This will happen several times in the poem.
Answering Dante’s first question (What’s going to happen to everyone in our home town?), Ciacco briefly outlines the political situation that led to Dante’s exile. The Guelf party had split into two factions not long after the defeat of the Ghibelline party had been defeated, one calling itself the White party (to which Dante belonged) and the other calling itself the Black Party (white and black being the color of their respective party banners). After considerable feuding among families and outright civil strife, the White Party drove the Blacks out of Florence. But soon enough, with the help of Pope Boniface VIII and Charles of Valois (the treachery Ciacco refers to), the Blacks turned the tables on the Whites and drove them out. This marks the beginning of Dante’s exile. As for Dante’s second question, whether any honest men still reside in Florence, we really have no facts to rely on as to their identity. A few commentators suggest that this may refer to Dante himself and his friend Guido Cavalcanti, but this is only speculation. And in answer to the third question, why Florence is so plagued with strife, Ciacco simply lists three major sins, pride, envy, and greed – the first of which Dante will accuse himself of in the Purgatorio (13:133ff): My sight one day shall be sewn up,” I said, “but not for long; my eyes have seldom sinned in casting envious looks on other folk. It is a greater fear that shakes my soul: that of the penance done below – already I feel on me the weight those souls must bear.” |
| ↑14 | Perhaps Dante was dissatisfied with Ciacco’s answer to his second question, whether any honest men still reside in Florence, so he presses him further – this time with names. One can imagine Dante’s distress, however, when he learns that all those he listed as being famous and of exemplary conduct are in the lower parts of Hell. He obviously knew of their civic deeds but knew nothing of their private lives. In the Paradiso (13:137ff) he will hear the following aphorism from St. Thomas Aquinas:
“No Mr. or Miss Know-It-All should think, when they see one man steal and one give alms that they are seeing them through God’s own eyes, for one may yet rise up, the other fall.” As it turns out, Farinata degli Uberti was a member of the Ghibelline party and was involved twice in expelling the Guelphs from Florence. He is in the circle of the heretics and we will meet him in Canto 10. Tegghiaio Aldobrandi was a member of the Guelph party and fought in the famous battle of Montaperti in which Florence was defeated, though he had tried to persuade them not to engage the Sienese. Not much is known of Jacopo Rusticucci, who was also a member of the Guelph faction and may have been a diplomat. Both Tegghaio and Jacopo will be found in the circle of the sodomites in Canto 16. Mosca dei Lamberti is a particularly despicable character in Florentine history because the long period of civil strife between the Guelphs and Ghibellines is owing to a murder of revenge that he instigated. He is among the sowers of discord in Canto 28. Unfortunately, we know nothing of Arrigo but his name, and he is never mentioned after this. |
| ↑15 | Though Ciacco asks Dante to remember him, almost until the bottom of Hell – where it is thrown back in his face – Dante will, from time to time, entice the sinners to talk about themselves, promising that he will bring back their stories when he returns to the world above. For those in Hell, this memento mori may be the only way they can stay alive. |
| ↑16 | There is a certain pathos in this parting scene because Dante’s encounter with Ciacco has been as affable and pleasant as if they were both guests at a sumptuous meal sharing tidbits of gossip across the table. But then the film breaks in the projector, the lights go on, and we discover that all the while we’ve been in Hell! We squint in the brightness of the sudden light – as Ciacco may have squinted at the realization that this was but a momentary distraction from the reality of Hell. The party is over and it’s back to the muck. |
| ↑17 | Virgil knows his Christian theology here and probably answers the question Dante was about to ask about the Last Judgment. As a matter of fact, throughout the poem Dante’s thoughts and questions will often be revealed by the souls he meets. The “final trumpet” which will summon all souls to judgment is an image found in several places in the New Testament. In Matthew’s Gospel (24:31) we read: “And he shall send his angels with the great sound of a trumpet.” At this time the souls will be rejoined with their bodies. To the sinners in Hell, of course, the Judge (Christ) will be “hostile.” Even the kindly guide Virgil must include himself in this scene of condemnation. To be reminded of this is painful, which is why he probably neglected to mention all those who will be saved. Needless to say, the Final Judgment is the subject of numerous works of art throughout Christian history. |
| ↑18 | As Virgil will remind him, Dante surely knew the answer to this question already. Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas – whom Dante had studied – all had reflections on the subject. Nevertheless, it’s a natural question to arise given the context. |
| ↑19 | It’s an appropriate time for Dante the Pilgrim, and we who join him, to be reminded of this teaching. Thus far, we have had only a few examples of outright suffering. What Virgil is no doubt hinting at is that the sufferings in the succeeding circles is going to get worse, but none of that will compare to the suffering of the souls when they are rejoined with their body. That near perfection will bring with it exquisite suffering. |
| ↑20 | Plutus was the god of wealth and money, and in the context of the following canto we can anticipate that Dante’s focus will be on the dangers of wealth and the misuse of money. |