Inferno XVIII — The Two Ranks

Before reading

Geryon has set the poets down at the bottom of the cliff. The canto opens with the architecture of the eighth circle laid out in plain prose: a great stone amphitheatre divided into ten concentric ditches, each a bolgia, joined by stone causeways like the bridges that cross the moats of a castle. The reader needs the map. From here on, the Inferno will move from ditch to ditch in a methodical descending tour, and the canto is the introduction to the whole structure.

Where the canto sits

This is the first canto of Malebolge — Evil Pockets — Dante's name for the eighth circle, which punishes the ten species of fraud. The canto walks the pilgrim across the first two ditches:

Panders and seducers — those who used their tongues or their authority to procure another person for sexual exploitation, walking in two ranks under the lashes of horned devils.
Flatterers — those who used their tongues to deceive others by praise, submerged in human excrement.

The eight remaining ditches will be opened one or two per canto across the next thirteen cantos. Read this one as the first of a long methodical descent.

What it helps to know

The single most important visual in the canto is borrowed from Dante's own world. Describing the panders' two-rank traffic across the bolgia, he draws an explicit comparison to the Jubilee crowds of 1300 — the great pilgrimage year called by Pope Boniface VIII, in which (Dante reports) the Roman authorities organised pedestrian traffic across the Bridge of Castel Sant'Angelo in two lanes, one going to St Peter's and one returning toward the Monte Giordano. The poem is dated to Easter 1300. Dante would have been in Rome that year. The simile is therefore reportage as much as comparison: he describes the contemporary city's busiest day of the century in order to describe Hell.

The first named soul is a Bolognese, Venedico Caccianemico of the Caccianemico family, who admits to having pimped his own sister Ghisola to a Marquis of Este in exchange for political favour. His confession is also a piece of regional satire: Bologna, he says, has so many panders in Hell that they outnumber the people now alive in the city who use the Bolognese word sipa for yes.

The second-named is Jason, leader of the Argonauts — the great hero of Apollonius and Ovid — who first seduced and abandoned Hypsipyle on Lemnos and later did the same to Medea. The pairing of a contemporary Bolognese politician with the classical Greek hero is part of the canto's quiet method: the small Italian crime and the great mythological one stand on the same dirt floor.

In the second ditch, the flatterers, the canto names two figures only: Alessio Interminei of Lucca (otherwise obscure) and Thaïs. Thaïs is not the historical Athenian courtesan but the character from Terence's Latin comedy Eunuchus, who, when asked by her paramour whether she is grateful, answers Marvellously. Dante read the line in Cicero's De Amicitia as the supreme example of adulatio, court flattery, and damns the character of Terence rather than any historical woman. The detail matters: Dante is willing to send a fictional character to Hell, on the grounds that the fiction itself was a piece of true moral observation.

What to read for

Notice the traffic. The whole canto is organised around movement: the panders walking in two ranks under whips, the poets ascending the first bridge, the flatterers wallowing below in the second bolgia. Malebolge will be a place of constant motion and the canto establishes the kinetic logic.

Notice the demons. From this point forward, the punishments in Hell are administered not by inanimate forces (wind, rain, ice) but by horned devils with scourges and other weapons. The poem is descending into a more anthropomorphic, almost slapstick layer of the otherworld — and one that will turn, in cantos XXI and XXII, into something close to comedy.

And listen for smell. The flatterers' bolgia is the Inferno's first explicit appeal to the nose: a stench so strong the margins of the ditch are encrusted with its exhalation. The canto wants the reader to feel that lower Hell is, increasingly, a place that one would smell before one saw.

From here on: illustrations and analysis. The three images below are scenes from the canto, and after them comes the close reading — famous lines quoted in full, paradoxes explained, political and theological freight unpacked. If you have not yet read the canto, stop here — read it, then come back.

After reading

What the canto did

The canto did three things in succession. It opened with a long prose paragraph of architectural description — the map of Malebolge, the ten ditches, the well at the centre, the stone bridges crossing every ditch — so that the reader who is about to spend thirteen cantos in this circle has a working diagram of the geography. It then walked the pilgrim across the first bolgia, where panders and seducers run in two ranks under the whips of horned devils, and gave the reader two named figures: one contemporary Bolognese politician and one classical Greek hero, stood side by side. And finally it opened the second bolgia — the bolgia of flatterers, submerged in human excrement — and gave two figures there as well: one obscure Lucchese and one fictional character lifted out of a Latin comedy. The canto's method is the canto's argument. Hell makes no distinction between a small civic crime and a great epic one, between an actual person and a literary creation. A flatterer is a flatterer; a pander is a pander; the dirt is the same.

The map and the Jubilee

The opening paragraph is one of the few passages of straight expository prose in the Inferno. Dante explains, plainly, that Malebolge is wholly of stone and of an iron color, that it is concentric, that it has ten bolge, that a great well sits at the centre, and that stone bridges cross from the outer wall to the well across all ten ditches. The diagram matters because the reader needs to see the cone of Hell narrowing. Without the diagram, the next thirteen cantos would lose their architectural rhythm.

The simile by which the canto describes the two-rank traffic of the panders is one of the few places in the Inferno where Dante reaches directly for his own present. Even as the Romans, for the mighty host, / The year of Jubilee, upon the bridge, / Have chosen a mode to pass the people over. In 1300, Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the first Roman Jubilee — a vast plenary indulgence that drew, by Villani's later report, two hundred thousand pilgrims to Rome for the year. The crowds on the Ponte Sant'Angelo (between the city and St Peter's) were so dense that the Romans organised two lanes of foot traffic. Dante was almost certainly in Rome that year on a Florentine embassy. He uses the most spectacular contemporary scene in Christendom to picture the first of the ten ditches of fraud. The Jubilee crowd and the crowd of panders are walking the same dirt. The reader is meant to feel the small shock.

What Pier delle Vigne was for the seventh circle, Venedico is not

The canto's first named soul, Venedico Caccianemico, is brief and unflattering. He confesses without rhetoric. He pimped his sister Ghisola to Obizzo II of Este, the Marquis of Ferrara, for political favour — howe'er the shameless story may be told. The phrase is curt because the act is curt. And his speech is interrupted by a devil's blow and an insult: Get thee gone, pander, there are no women here for coin. Unlike Pier delle Vigne in canto XIII, Venedico is given no soliloquy of self-defence. The lower Hell is, increasingly, a place where the damned are not allowed time to construct their cases. They appear, they identify themselves, they are struck and silenced. The economy of attention is the economy of judgement.

Jason as the type of the seducer

The pairing of Venedico (contemporary, small, political) with Jason (mythological, vast, epic) is the canto's quietest assertion of its method. Jason walks past with a royal aspect, refusing to weep under the lash. He is the type of the seducer — first of Hypsipyle on Lemnos, abandoned pregnant; then of Medea in Colchis, also abandoned. Dante's classical sources are Ovid and Statius, but the moral structure is his own: the great hero of the Argonautica is here as the pattern of every man who used his prestige and his eloquence to take what he wanted from a woman and walk away. The canto does not give Jason a speech. He passes through the picture, named by Virgil, given the heroic posture, and let pass. The poem's most economical small instance of damnation by walk-past.

The flatterers and the canto's first explicit smell

The second bolgia introduces a new sensory register to Inferno. The bolgia stinks so badly that the margins of the trench are encrusted with a yellow mould — by exhalation from below, that sticks there, / and with the eyes and nostrils wages war. The damned are submerged in human excrement. The two named figures are deliberately humble: Alessio Interminei of Lucca, an otherwise unknown member of the Lucchese white Guelph faction, and Thaïs the courtesan. Alessio identifies himself with a small despairing self-blow to his own fouled head; Thaïs is given the canto's last image, scratching at herself in the muck.

Thaïs is not the historical fourth-century Athenian Thaïs (mistress of Alexander, later supposed to have been the saint who reformed under Paphnutius); she is the character of that name in Terence's Latin comedy Eunuchus, who, when her paramour boasts of the gift of an Ethiopian slave girl and asks whether she is grateful, replies ingentis — Marvellously. Dante reads the line as the Inferno's exemplary instance of adulatio. The astonishing detail: he is willing to damn a literary character on the strength of a flattering remark in a Roman comedy. The reading is mediated by Cicero's De Amicitia, which Dante had read closely; Cicero cites the line as the type of court flattery. The decision to send a fiction to Hell tells the reader something about Dante's poetics. A character who has been read as a flatterer for fifteen hundred years has been a flatterer; the moral observation contained in the comedy is true, and a true moral observation has consequences for the soul of the figure it observes.

Famous and meaningful passages

The architecture announced.

There is a place in Hell called Malebolge, Wholly of stone and of an iron color, As is the circle that around it turns. Right in the middle of the field malign There yawns a well exceeding wide and deep, Of which its place the structure will recount. Round, then, is that enclosure which remains Between the well and foot of the high, hard bank, And has distinct in valleys ten its bottom. (Inf. XVIII.1–9)

The map of the eighth circle in nine lines. The well will not be reached until canto XXXI; the ten valleys will fill the cantos in between.

The Jubilee simile.

Even as the Romans, for the mighty host, The year of Jubilee, upon the bridge, Have chosen a mode to pass the people over; For all upon one side towards the Castle Their faces have, and go unto Saint Peter's; On the other side they go towards the Mountain. (Inf. XVIII.28–33)

The most direct piece of contemporary Roman reportage in the Inferno. The crowd of the Jubilee 1300 and the crowd of panders use the same pattern of traffic management.

Venedico interrupted.

While speaking in this manner, with his scourge A demon smote him, and said: Get thee gone, Pander, there are no women here for coin. (Inf. XVIII.64–66)

The lower Hell allowing no speech to last. The devils, who will become significant characters in cantos XXI–XXII, here make their first speaking appearance with a single contemptuous line.

Jason's royal aspect.

See that tall one who is coming, And for his pain seems not to shed a tear; Still what a royal aspect he retains! That Jason is, who by his heart and cunning The Colchians of the Ram made destitute. (Inf. XVIII.83–87)

The great hero damned, and given the heroic carriage. Dante is willing to let the seducer keep his bearing. The bearing does not save him.

Hypsipyle abandoned.

There with his tokens and with ornate words Did he deceive Hypsipyle, the maiden Who first, herself, had all the rest deceived. There did he leave her pregnant and forlorn. (Inf. XVIII.91–94)

The case against Jason in four lines. The detail pregnant and forlorn is the canto's most economical small charge: the consequence of the seducer's walk-away is left for the woman to carry.

The stench announced.

The margins were encrusted with a mould By exhalation from below, that sticks there, And with the eyes and nostrils wages war. (Inf. XVIII.106–108)

The first explicit appeal to the nose in the Inferno. The lower Hell will, from here on, increasingly be a place that smells before it sees.

Alessio's self-judgement.

The flatteries have submerged me here below, Wherewith my tongue was never surfeited. (Inf. XVIII.125–126)

Self-diagnosis as the only available speech. The damned of the lower Hell tend to deliver the moral judgement on themselves.

Thaïs as the type of the flatterer.

Thais the harlot is it, who replied Unto her paramour, when he said, Have I Great gratitude from thee?—Nay, marvellous. (Inf. XVIII.133–135)

The line from Terence's Eunuchus, mediated by Cicero, cited as the supreme instance of adulatio. The fictional character receiving damnation on the strength of her one fictional remark.

The dismissal.

And herewith let our sight be satisfied. (Inf. XVIII.136)

E quinci sien le nostre viste sazie. The Virgilian formula for moving on. Compare let us not speak of them, but look, and pass from canto III. The lower Hell will allow shorter and shorter inspections.

What to watch for

Watch the next canto enter the third bolgia — the simoniacs, the popes who sold sacred office for money, planted upside-down in stone holes with their feet on fire. The canto will be the Inferno's most direct attack on the contemporary papacy.

Watch the role of the devils. They have made their first speaking appearance here. In cantos XXI and XXII they will become a cast — named, individuated, almost a comic ensemble.

Watch the canto-pattern. From here on, most cantos will cover one or two bolge. The eighth circle is the most architecturally regular section of the Inferno, and the reader can begin to keep count.

This post is part of Reading Divine Comedy, a slow daily companion to Dante's Commedia in the Longfellow translation — read one canto at a time, with a short orientation before and a close reading after. From Inferno I to Paradiso XXXIII.