Canto XX (Inferno)
False Prophets, Manto
Now new punishments I must fit to verse,
Shaping the subject for my twentieth canto
Of the first canticle on the buried damned.
Already I was fully set to look
5 Far down into the depth that opened to me
To see its bottom bathed with tears of anguish,
When through the valley’s circling I descried
People coming hushed and weeping, at the pace
Followed by processions in this world.
10 As my fixed gaze descended lower to them,
Each seemed bizarrely twisted at the neck
Between the chin and top part of the chest,
Because their faces turned round to their haunches
So that they were compelled to walk backwards
15 Since they could not possibly see ahead.
Perhaps a stroke of palsy once has twisted
Someone so completely, but I doubt it
For I have never seen a case like this.
May God so grant you, reader, to find fruit
20 In your reading: now ponder for yourself
How I could keep the eyes in my head dry
When I saw close at hand our human image
Contorted so the tears streaming from their eyes
Bathed their buttocks and ran between the cleft.
25 I wept, surely, while I leaned back against
A rock there on that rugged ridge; my escort
Said, "Still like all the other fools, are you?
"Here pathos lives when its false meaning dies,
Since who is more pathetic than the person
30 Who agonizes over God’s just judgments?
"Lift up your head, lift it, see him for whom
The earth cracked open before the Thebans’ eyes
While they all cried, ‘Where are you rushing off,
" 'Amphiaraus? Why do you flee the battle?’
35 And he didn’t once pause in his headlong flight
Down to Minos who snatches every soul.
"Look how he’s made a chest of his own shoulders:
Because he wished to see too far ahead
He stares behind and takes a backward path.
40 "See Tiresias, who changed his likeness:
Being a man he then became a woman,
Transforming all the members of his body,
"Until, a second time, he had to strike
The two lovemaking serpents with his staff
45 Before he donned again his manly down.
"And backing against his belly is Aruns
Who, in the hills of Luni where the folk
Of Carrara cultivate the valley,
"Dwelt in a cave among white marble cliffs,
50 And from that vantage with an unblocked view
He gazed out at the stars and at the sea.
"And she who with her wild disheveled hair
Covers up her breasts so you can’t see them
And keeps all of her hairy parts to that side
55 "Was Manto, who had searched through many lands
Before she settled there where I was born:
On this I want you to hear me for a while.
"After her father Tiresias left this life
And the city of Bacchus lay enslaved,
60 For long years she wandered through the world.
" High up in lovely Italy, at the foot
Of those Alps that wall in Germany
Above Tirol, lies a lake called Benaco;
"A thousand brooks and more, I believe,
65 Bathe Garda, Val Camonica, and Pennino
With the waters flowing through that lake,
"And in its center is a spot the three
Bishops of Trent, Brescia, and Verona,
If ever they should pass that way, would bless.
70 "Peschiera, a strong and handsome fortress
Built against the Bergarnese and Brescians,
Sits at the low point of the surrounding shore.
"There all the waters which cannot be contained
Within the bosom of Benaco tumble
75 To form a river down through greening fields;
"As soon as this water starts to course,
It is known as the Mincio — not Benaco —
To Governolo where it falls into the Po;
"Not running far, it finds a level ground
80 Where it spreads out and turns into a marsh
Which is in summer sometimes low and foul.
"Passing that way, the savage virgin saw
Land there in the middle of the swamp,
Untilled and barren of inhabitants.
85 "There, to flee all human fellowship,
With her slaves she stopped to ply her arts,
And there she lived and left her empty body.
"Later the people who were dispersed about
Gathered to that place, since it was protected
90 By the swamp that ringed it on all sides.
"Over her dead bones they built a city
And, after her who first picked out the site,
Without casting lots, they named it Mantua.
"Once far more people dwelt within it,
95 Before Casalodi through his foolishness
Was taken in by Pinamonte’s tricks.
"I charge you, therefore, if you ever hear
Another origin claimed for my city,
Don’t let false stories cheat you of the truth."
100 And I said, "Master, this account of yours
Makes me so sure and so wins all my trust
That I think other versions just dead coals.
"But tell me if among the people passing
You notice anyone worth mentioning,
105 For that alone keeps coming to my mind."
To this he said to me, "That one whose beard
Streams down from his cheeks to his brown shoulders
Was — when Greece became so drained of males
"That scarcely were there sons for the cradles —
110 An augur, and he set the time with Calchas
To cut the first ship-cables at Aulis.
"His name was Eurypylus, and of him
My high tragedy sings in one passage
Which you know well who know the whole of it.
115 "That other one, so thinned-out in the shanks,
Was Michael Scot, who certainly perceived
How to play the game of magic fraud.
"See Guido Bonatti; see Asdente,
Who wishes now he had kept to his thread
120 And shoe-leather, but he repents too late.
"See those wretched women who left needle,
Spool, and spindle for their fortune-telling;
They cast their spells with herbs and image-dolls.
"But come now; already Cain with his thornbush
125 Stands at the border of both hemispheres
And touches the waves below Seville,
"And last night’s moon was already round and full.
Remember her well, for through her in times past
No harm came to you deep in the dark forest."
130 So he spoke to me as we journeyed on.
