Inferno Canto XIIProfessor Andrea Mazzucchi

Università di Napoli ‘Federico II’

Critical treatments of Inferno Canto 12

have expressed serious reservations, and even

quite negative assessments, that it is

discordant in tone and lacks organic structure.

Although there are more balanced evaluations

of the canto, especially in the last decade, the

traditional assessment of it is still to be found in

some more recent authoritative commentaries.

Therefore before proceeding to a new reading

of the canto, which, - I clarify now – in no way

shares such reservations, it is apt that we ask

about the reasons behind so widespread and

reductive an evaluation.

The poor critical fortune of this canto

must be attributed above all to a narrative

structure which is articulated in a variety of

ways, and has given rise to the erroneous

impression of a certain dissipation of themes

and motifs not entirely coherently resolved

around a central focal point.

This multiplicity of narrative sequences

must have been obvious to those responsible

for the illustrations of early manuscripts of the

Commedia, such as ms33 of the Library of the

University of Budapest, or the Codice Filippino

of the Oratoriana in Naples.

In them, the miniatures which depict the

fundamental stages of the ‘iter per mortuos’,

the journey through the dead, of Dante and

Virgil and which, have on average two or, at

most, three vignettes per canto. However they

reach a total respectively of 4 and 6 for canto

XII.

One may add that the traditional tendency

to condense the material of the Dantean cantos

in an eponymous formula, generally that of the

most prominent character, has heavily

conditioned many readers of this canto,

including recent ones, so that it has become

the “canto of the centaurs”.

This has led to an undeserved and in

many aspects misleading and arbitrary

interpretation of the episode carried out in an

excessively aestheticising and emotive key,

linking it to the ‘maladetti / nei nuvoli formati’,

“damned formed in the clouds” of Purg. XXIV

121-22, in an attempt to soften or completely

erase its savagery and monstrousness.

The episode, held to be empty of any

intrinsic connection with the rest of the text has

been judged to be as single poetic nucleus of

the canto.

The author has chosen an expressive narrative

strategy which strongly reduces the role of the

‘agens’, whose function is limited exclusively to

the narrative slant and whose role is exhausted

in the meticulous recording of visual experience

alone, conceding nothing to sentimental

suggestions: not one word is uttered by Dante

the character.

This choice has certainly contributed, I

believe in decisive measure, to rendering the

enjoyment and estimation of this canto

problematic for a critical approach which is

particularly sensitive to the lyrical effects and

emotional seductions of the poem.

This difficulty of reducing an articulated

narrative score to a single motif, with the

consequent expansion of the importance and

functions of a single episode, that of the

centaurs, and a strategy of exposition which

privileges, at least in the relationship of the

‘agens’ with the other actors/agents the

descriptive register over the dramatic,

are thus the elements which have conditioned,

albeit with some notable exceptions, the

interpretation of readers and commentators of

this canto XII of the Inferno.

It will be fitting therefore to start again from just

these elements in order to attempt a different

evaluation of them, less conditioned by

anachronistic aesthetic prejudices, except then

to test them in a comprehensive ‘explication du

texte’.

2. First of all, the narrative splintering is more

apparent than real and is rather the result of a

skilful expositional strategy which aims to

reproduce, articulating the stages and ably

varying the perspectives, the progress of Dante

and Virgil through the first subcircle of the

seventh circle, almost a mise en abîme, a

portrayal in a minor key, of the full journey.

The whole structure has movement as its

foundation with verbs of motion recurring in

verses 1-2; 28; 58; 76; 100; 113; 115; 126; and

139. Narrative suspense and tension is

produced by the appearance before the two

‘viatores’ of ever new, unexpected, unusual,

and astonishing objects:

the ruin; the unnaturally produced

landslide – a unique historical event in the

immobile infernal world; the Minotaur; the

centaurs; the river of boiling blood - the name

of which will only be revealed later - and in

which the damned are immersed to be boiled.

The centaur Nessus will then list them,

attractive to mediaeval tastes, as he points

them out to Dante with a wide-ranging use of

deictics.

But it is not only the representation of

movement.

Underlying the poetic-narrative composition of

the canto, its syntagmatic structure, is a

hypodiscourse based on the recurrence of

lexemes and images which refer back to the

common denominator of the bestialisation of

the human and degradation towards the feral :

Thus “the infamy of Crete conceived in the

false cow” (vv. 12-13), the Minotaur (v. 25),

beast (v. 19), which is prey to an “bestial anger”

and leaps in a grotesque fashion to the

slaughter; and the “cenataurs armed with

arrows” (v. 56), the great Chiron, the impetuous

and vengeful Nessus, the irascible Pholus, (v.

76),

Pholus, whose double-nature, human and

equine the narrator insistently underlines (v. 84;

94; 96); and again the images and lexemes

referring back to the horrific perverting of the

human form, With a strong realistic flavour the

parts of the body are revealed, discordantly and

deceptively isolated:

il «ciglio» “the brow” (v. 103), the «fronte»

“forehead” (v. 109), «’l pel» “skin” (v. 109) , «la

gola» “throat” (v. 116), «lo cor»”heart” (v. 120),

«la testa» “head” (v. 122), «’l casso» “chest” (v.

122), «li piedi» “feet” (v. 125), dominated by

four (or maybe five, as we will see)

appearances of the motif of blood. (vv. 47, 75,

101, 105; 120).

Man thus reduced to his physical

materiality and having become violent, has lost

his rational faculties and so, as Dante says in

Convivio II 7. 4 «non vive uomo, ma vive

bestia»: “he lives not as a man but as a beast”:

in an emblematic overturning of roles, the

bestial centaurs shoot the damned who are

reduced to being the animal prey of ranks of

sadistic hunters. (v. 74).

In this way the canto translates the notion

of “matta bestialitate” (mad bestialità),

introduced in an expository and didactic mode

in Inferno XI into efficacious images (the

mountainous and horrifying infernal topography,

the zoomorphic monsters, the damned

immersed in the river Phlegethon and hunted

by the centaurs).

Violence corrupts the original profile of

human nature, introducing into man a bestial

trait and thus reducing the individual from the

condition of ‘humanitas’ to that of ‘feritas’.

Feritas does not affect him however only as an

individual, but, insofar as it is an obstacle to

civil life , it extends to the collective/community:

rather it is an eminently political sin.

The tyrants, not by chance immersed up

to their brows in the Phlegethon, are therefore,

like the Minotaur and centaurs, monstrous at

the level of community, insofar as they destroy

the harmony between the parts and deform the

social order, removing themselves, through

their evil (malvagità) from the natural political

structure.

They are, as St Thomas writes in his

commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, more like

beasts than men. In the connection in Dante’s

imaginary between bestiality and those who

«dier nel sangue e nell’aver di piglio»”took to

blood and plunder” (v. 105) the etymology of

beasts cannot have been extraneous.

The 14th century commentator Guido da

Pisa makes the connection in his Expositiones:

«Bestie quasi vastie dicuntur et signant divites

et potentes qui terram devastant». “Beasts

sounds like waste (vastie) and signifies the rich

and powerful who devastate the earth.”

3. Having restored then to the narrative

fabric of the canto a certain ideological density

and a certain imaginative uniformity, I believe

that the episode of the centaurs must also be

removed from the splendid isolation to which it

had been condemned by a strong cohort of

commentators..

Instead we must recover its intimate

coherence with the general picture traced by

Dante in this canto of tragic monstrous demonic

bestiality, which carries out the double function

of rhetorically symbolising the sin, and

providing an exemplary warning to the reader

The sentiment of aesthetic admiration

seems to me difficult to sustain, and above all

divergent from the aim of a correct

reconstruction of the ‘intentio auctoris’. Even

less admissible is the slide into moral

admiration which many commentators and

readers of this canto have and do believe they

see in the description of the centaurs.

In order to capture the authentic aesthetic

dimension of Dante’s centaurs we must ignore

the equilibrium and harmony of the marbles of

Phidias on the Parthenon, or the anachronistic

group sculptures of humanism and the

renaissance, evoked respectively by Ernesto

Parodi or Guido Mazzoni.

Instead, we must turn to mediaeval sculpture

and engraving, the grammar and logic of the

Roman and Gothic tetramorph, in which, as the

studies of Baltrušaitis have shown, the

monstrous is founded upon the addition of

parts, on combination and encrustation of

heterogeneous material, on mixture, distension

and emphasis

We may recall here the insistence on the

adjective “grande” used of the centaurs by

Dante, of living forms belonging to diverse

species.

The mediaeval monster must then suggest,

through the association of incompatible

elements, of antimonies (such as that of

humanitas and feritas) a discord in which the

hybrid marrying of human and animal traits as it

gives life to contemptible and aberrant bodily

transformations, must provoke an immediate

rejection.

The ranks of armed centaurs, hunting

along the banks of the Phlegethon must

therefore have suggested to the first readers of

the Commedia not so much an aesthetic

satisfaction foreign to the infernal situation

portrayed, as rather,

as Achille Tartaro, has recalled, going

back to those unsettling monstrous epiphanies

in which the devil, assuming the appearance of

a hippocentaur or an onocentaur (its inferior

variant in the middle ages) appeared in order to

tempt devout hermits, as in Jerome’s Life of St

Paul, or Athanasius’ Life of St Antony, retold by

Jerome and Jacobus de Voragine in the

Legenda Aurea, thereby enjoying wide

iconographic circulation.

Alongside the hagiographic texts we may

also consider the symbolic significance

attributed to the ‘figurae mixtae’ in the

bestiaries: this in the second version of the

Latin Physiologus, the archetype for later

analogous texts, the onocentaur,

The onocentaur has the upper part like a

man and the lower part like an ass, and is

assimilated into the «vecordes atque bilingues

homines informes», and this allegorical

decodification is supported with reference to

Ps., 48 21: «Homo cum in honore esset non

intellexit; comparatus est iumentis insipientibus,

et similis factus est illis».

In confirmation of the demonic characterisation

of the centaur, fruit of the risemanticisation (in

which Dante also participated) of classical

echoes an suggestions in Christian mediaeval

culture, one could cite, without wishing to

attribute to such comparisons any intertextual

pertinence,

but evaluating them prudently as simple

threads useful for the reconstruction of an

interdiscursive cultural patrimony by no means

foreign to the creative route of Dantean

invention, the depictions of such monsters in

the iconographical cycles linked to the motif of

the Universal Judgement,

as for example in the centaur positioned

at the feet of Lucifer in the mosaic in the

Baptistry in Florence datable to 1260/70,

attributed to Coppo di Marcovaldo and often

noted as a possible model from which “Dante

took important cues and suggestions for the

construction of his own Inferno”.

The attention of the reader is constantly

brought back to the chest of the centaurs by

Dante, as Singleton has well observed, to the

point where the human descends into the

bestial.

So too the insistence on disharmony, on the divergence

of limbs, and an emphasis on size, through

intensification (e.g.«il gran Chiron» v. 71; «la gran

bocca» v. 79; «il gran centauro» v. 104); the sadistic

activity of the centaurs and their connection (also

phonemic) with the Minotaur; the entire negative

consideration of these monsters in mediaeval culture

(uniformly received in the 14th century commentaries,

despite their variety of exegetical positions);

and, finally, but perhaps most revealing of all,,

the place in which Dante has placed the

centaurs (noted by Francesco da Buti) - are not

insubstantial arguments. The characterisation

of the centaurs in a demonic or tetramorphic

sense, as symbols, emblems of bestial violence

is a characterisation perfectly coherent with the

overall tonality of the canto.

In conclusion, before tracing the

articulated diegetic plot of Inferno XII, we come

to the last element which could, even implicitly,

have conditioned, critical judgements on the

canto.

I refer to the limited, almost suspended,

emotional participation of Dante agens, evident

in his total absence of speech.

This is an intentional representational strategy,

the consequences of which do not seem to me

to have been noted in previous studies of the

canto. Subjective and aesthetic judgements

aside, it has serious implications, coherent with

the entire atmosphere of the canto, especially

when we consider how unusual the use of such

a technique of representation is in the Inferno.

Dante the character remains completely silent in only

two other cantos of the first cantica: in XVII (91-93)

where the motif of the blocked word is an explicit

theme, attributing the cause to the horror provoked by

the downward flight of the monster Geryon (note the

analogous, unusual astonishing figura mixta with its

strong demonic connotations); and in XXV, the canto of

the metamorphosis of the damned into serpents, beasts

noted in the Middle Ages as having the power to cause

a destructive fascination. ,

In canto XXV once again a form of perversion of

the human image is condemned, a mixture of

humanitas and feritas, one anticipated by the

appearance in the opening verses of Cacus

«centauro pien di rabbia» “ a centaur filled with

rage”. Nor is it irrelevant to note that, though

not lasting the entire canto, the character Dante

suffers an analogous loss of communication at

the sight of Lucifer, in Inferno XXXIV 22-24.

The loss of speech of the character will also be

used intentionally by the narrator to

characterize the crucial, decisive stages of the

psychological and representational itinerary of

the agens in the lower Inferno. Canto XII,

which, with the Minotaur and the centaurs

marks the beginning of a new part of the

journey with a more demanding and arduous

experience of the knowledge of evil.

Canto XVII in which Geryon transports

the two travellers into the world of fraud: Canto

XXXIV at the end, in which the presence of

Lucifer closes not only the series of Dantean

demons but also the investigation into the

essence of evil.

In canto XII in particular this iterated

silence is functional for the representation in a

hyperbolic key of the intense feelings, of fear

and horror of the pilgrim, not made explicit

elsewhere. It is an expressive choice capable

of translating very effectively the first anguished

encounter of the protagonist with the zones of

lower hell.

The monstrous epiphanies of the

Minotaur and centaurs, with their connected

strangeness and instability of form, and the

repertoire of the horrific and marvellous, with

the ferocious tormented human beasts, the

horrible stench, the shrill screams of the

damned echoing, the horror of the landscape

and the unusual Phlegethon induce in the

protagonist a general condition of fearful

astonishment.

His senses are dulled and he loses the power

of speech. Indeed Virgil constantly has to solicit

his participation and attention: in v. 26 the alert

guide has to “shout” because the pilgrim, who

should be staying quite close, rushes off to

escape from the enraged Minotaur through an

“opening” in the ruins;

and in verse 46 another command from Virgil

directs the terrified gaze of Dante towards the

new suffering; and up to v. in front of the three

centaurs who menacingly confront the new

arrivals, Virgil’s exhortation can no longer be

simply verbal, but, with studied variatio, also

physical.

Nor should recourse to notions of stupefaction

to characterise and define the psychological

condition of the agens in this canto appear like

a curious modern critical excogitation,

surreptitiously introduced to account for the

particular expressive strategy adopted by

Dante in this canto.

Statements to be found in the Summa

Theologica of St Thomas are convincing.

According to Aquinas stupor “which is caused

by an unusual image” comes from the

consideration of a malum insolitum, an unusual

evil: and the monstra which appear in the

horrifying infernal scene of the first subcircle of

the seventh circle are certainly uncommon

manifestations of evil.

5. We have now recovered some constitutive

elements of the compositional strategies of the

canto from frequent, unmerited, and reductive

assessments, and returned to an evaluation,

one hopes, which follows the internal logic of

the text and the imaginary of mediaeval culture,

and of Dante himself, more closely.

We move on finally to examine the narrative

fabric, pausing inevitably only on some of the

questions which the marvellous workings of

Dantean discourse offer the reader.

Through the detailed and precise topographical

description of the savage nature of the place

and the announcement, played with calculated

narrative tension, of an event as yet

unspecified but already charged with strongly

disturbing elements condensed in the pronoun

“tal”, the narrator right from the first tercet

proposes the motif of horror which will

dominate the entire atmosphere of the canto

(vv1-3)

XII 1-3

The altering of the ordo naturalis of the

sentence, with the subject positioned after the

verb and the violent hyperbaton which

noticeably distances the nominal predicate from

the copulative, governing both «alpestro» and

«tal», the syntactic split between two relative

clauses, the enjambement of verses 1-2,

and finally a rhythmical phonematic structure

made of a series of suspensions and reprises

which does not try to avoid harsh consonantal

clashes – all of these features show that the

whole formal structure is charged with reflecting

the sense of a disturbed and violent reality.

The cliff which will allow the transition from the

sixth to the seventh circle is immediately

qualified as “alpine”, empty that is, as

Boccaccio puts it, “of any path or road as we

mostly see the ravines of the Alps and of wild

places”.

This adjective of a topographic sort, is also a

usage characteristic of the poetry of Guittone

d’Arezzo, and has strong political connotations

in denouncing the degeneration of the citizen to

an animal, provoked by the exercise of violence

and factional strife, and the reduction of the

city, a public community par excellence, to a

savage place in accordance with the decisive

problematic nucleus of this canto.

The description of the landslide, which

defers the release of the narrative tension of

verse 3, is carried out with the characteristic

Dantean technique of a simile with places,

which exist and can be seen (v. 4-10)

The infernal ravine is thus compared to a

landslide caused either by an earthquake or

erosion of the rocks, which struck the bank of

the Adige downstream from Trent, so that it

provided a path, albeit an uncomfortable one,

for anyone coming down from the top of the

mountain. It refers to a place called the Slavini

di San Marco, which Dante himself may have

visited during his time in the Veneto.

This possible personal memory is here joined

to a citation of Albert the Great’s De Meteoris, a

reference first noted by Benvenuto da Imola

and undoubtedly a source for this passage. On

the formal level of the verse it is worth noting

the inclusive rhyme in verses 8-10 which

appears to phonetically suggest the effect of

the landslide.

A later witness to the amazing capacity for

association in Dante’s language is found in

verses 101-3 of canto XVI when the same

rhyme (scesa : discoscesa) returns, again

signalling a passage, this time from the seventh

to the eighth circle of Hell.

6. In the rocky Alpine terrain, at the top edge of

the broken slope “on the edge of the broken

chasm”, and so at the border between two

different worlds, a fitting place for monsters

according to the Liber monstruorum, and

perfectly in keeping with the horrifying scene

just described the Minotaur makes it

appearance, taken from the classical tradition,

essentially from Virgil and Ovid. The verses

which follow are dedicated to it (11-27).

The periphrasis utilised to defer the direct

naming of the monster “the infamy of Crete that

was conceived in the false cow” is constructed

by Dante in a reworking of details from Virgil

and Ovid, done with his usual freedom of

adaptation. At the appearance of the two

travellers the ugly bestial mass grotesquely

comes to life, biting itself like someone

overcome by a deep-seated anger.

Faced with this enraged reaction, Virgil

addresses the Minotaur, reminding it of its

death by the hand of Theseus following the

instructions of Ariadne. Naming it “bestia”,

“beast”, Virgil orders it to move away and allow

Dante continue on his journey to acquire

knowledge of evil, a necessary premiss for

salvation: «ma vassi per veder le vostre pene»,

“journeys here to see your punishments” a

formula in which the insistent alliteration seems

to produce an effect of enchantment and

suggest a peremptoriness not dissimilar that

obtained in the preceding cantos, by the

strongly alliterative and equally peremptory

formula «vuolsi così colà dove si puote / ciò

che si vuole».Canto 12 of the Inferno

“he journeys here to see your punishments” a

formula in which the insistent alliteration seems

to produce an effect of enchantment and

suggest a peremptoriness not dissimilar that

obtained in the preceding cantos, by the

strongly alliterative and equally peremptory

formula «vuolsi così colà dove si puote / ciò

che si vuole», “thus it is willed there where that

can be done which is willed”.

Virgil’s words to the Minotaur thus repeat,

with slight variation, the characteristic schema

of the meeting with demons in hell, whose vain

opposition is rebuffed by the wise guide with his

appeal to the will of God. Here, however they

are concealed behind the mention of Theseus,

traditionally regarded in the Middle Ages as a

‘figura Christi’.

Virgil’s stinging injunction uses the

weapon of scorn and his provocation hits its

target: the Minotaur is no longer able to block

the path of the two travellers as it falls prey to a

paroxysm of rage. Dante strengthens the

bestial connotations of the scene with the simile

of a bull which having been struck in its vital

nerves “plunges this way and that.”

Virgil “having noted the momentary

bewilderment which strikes the Minotaur”

shouts to Dante - who, on the contrary, we

must imagine is stunned, blocked by fear – to

take advantage of the moment and quickly

cross the “ford” created by the landslide.

Notable at the end is a reading, proposed

first in the anonymous 14th century Chiose

ambrosiane, then taken up again independently

by Matteo Chiromono and Velluttello, but

strangely omitted by modern commentators,

which recognises in verse 27 an echo of Ovid’s

Remedia amoris 119. «Dum furor in cursu est

currenti cede furori». “while madness is in full

flow, give way to the rush of madness”

If one accepts, as seems plausible to me,

the influence of the Ovidian hexameter on the

Dantean verse, the recovery of such a

subtextual verbal connection would recommend

a different textual reading of «mentre ch’è ’n

furia», as in the 1921 edition of Dante’s text,

and again in the recent edition by Sanguineti,

with the recovery of the substantive furor, rather

than Petrocchi’s reading «mentre ch’e’ ’nfuria».

Emblem, warning, precisely the mediaeval

etymology of ‘monstrum’ – of mad bestiality, -

which is is identified with violence in almost all

the early commentaries, with the sole exception

of Guido Da Pisa, and confirmed in large part

by the modern commentators - the Minotaur is

for Dante the first of the monsters encountered

in the lower part of hell, and undoubtedly the

guardian of the seventh circle.

Nonetheless the major part of the 14th-

century commentators on this canto (Lana,

Guido Da Pisa, the Ottimo Commento, Pietro

Alighieri, Maramauro, Benvenuto da Imola,

Francesco da Buti, the Anonimo Fiorentimo)

mention in their glosses a rationalising

interpretation of the mythical story.

This is found in, to cite texts presumably

known to Dante, the commentaries of Servius

and Bernardus Silvestris on the Aeneid, of

Arnulph of Orleans and John of Garland on

Ovid, and in the Historia Scholastica of Peter

Comestor (Pietro Mangiadore of Paradiso X)

The early commentators on Dante are

valuable not only in marking more or less

pertinent intertextual adaptations, but mainly

because they allow us to reconstruct Dante’s

interdiscursive library and so the patrimony of

knowledge common to authors and readers of

the time.

I do not believe that it can be excluded

that Dante, whilst rejecting a reading in a

euhemeristic key, of mere poetic fictio of the

myth, was in some way conditioned by it when

he chose to locate the Minotaur in the

subsection of circle of the violence containing

cruel tyrants.

Afetr his account of the stor. Jacomo della

Lana clarifies: “The allegory of the fable is that

the said King Minos of Crete was a just person

and so fought just battles … The Minotaur

depicts the son who succeeded him in the

kingdom and ruled for a time according to the

counsel of base bestial men, and was a tyrant.

And the poets say that since he followed

bestial counsels he was half ox and half man:

as a he was tyrant they depict him as eating

human flesh” concluding in a way that seems to

me acceptable in substance, that “since he led

a tyrannical life so Dante introduces him in this

canto which is that of the tyrants.”

Despite the efforts of Guido Mazzoni and

many other modern commentators to dig up

clues from Dante’s text that would suggest the

latter figure, we must recognise with Steven

Botterill that “the text of Inferno XII offers no

conclusive grounds for accepting a human-

headed Minotaur”.

The question therefore remains open.

Nor can it be resolved by recourse to

ambiguous formulations («mixtum genus»,

«proles biformis», «discordem fetum», «monstri

biformis», «parte virum […] parte bovem»,

«taurique virique», or the very famous

«semibovemque virum semivirumque bovem»

“A man, half ox, an ox, half man”) of classical

sources available to Dante.

Nor can the mention of the horn in Ovid

(Heroides X. 107) and in Statius (Theb. XI 671)

necessarily have suggested a bull’s head to

Dante, as Botterill maintains. The alternative

hypothesis of the Minotaur depicted as a

horned centaur, cannot be excluded.

This would be similar for example to onewhich

stands along with Theseus in the mosaic floor

depicting a labyrinth in the Church of San

Michele Maggiore in Pavia, bearing the

unambiguous inscription: «Theseus intravit

monstrumque biforme necavit» “Theseus

entered and killed the two-formed monster.”

Or like those reproduced in the miniatures of

the manuscript Arsenal 8530 in Paris; or the

famous Riccardiana 1035 of Florence, believed

by some to have been transcribed and drawn

by Boccaccio. Mediaeval Latin lexicographic

and encyclopediac texts give varying

responses and this uncertainty is reflected in

the earliest Dante exegesis.

Francesco Da Buti demonstrates a knowledge

of the classical representations, as opposed to

Jacopo Alighieri for whom the Minotaur is «dal

petto in su uomo, e l’altro busto d’un toro»,

“From the chest up a man, and the rest a bull”.

So too the Anonimo Fiorentino and, finally and

rather strangely given his usual reliance on

Buti’s commentary, Guiniforte Barzizza.

Nor do the illustrations which decorate the 14th

and 15th century illustrated manuscripts of the

Commedia make a decisive contribution, in the

absence of a concrete reference, except to

testify to the diffusion and plausibility of certain

iconographic models. They always depict, the

Minotaur with a human upper body and taurine

lower body. with the single exception of the

already cited ms 33 of the Library of the

University of Budapest.

This choice is influenced perhaps by the

presence in the same canto of the centaurs

whose morphology is not open to question.

We can add to our considerations so far, -

without wishing to accuse Dante himself of

uncertainty about the shape of the Minotaur –

simply that this could have been influenced by

the figurative association of the Cretan monster

with the centaurs, as with the miniaturists.

There is also the proximity of the mention of

both monsters in works by St Augustine and

Isidore of Seville.

Finally, one further consideration might be

proposed, with the necessary caution.

The assimilation of the morphology of the

Minotaur to that of the centaur could have

occurred in Dante’s prodigious memory,

according to a route analogous to that which

saw the apparently even more inexplicable

transformation of the undefined monster Cacus

into a centaur.

This was the fruit of a contamination between

the Virgilian «semihominis Caci facies» of

Aeneid VIII 194, and the Ovidian «semiferi» e

«semihomines», in Metamorphoses XII 406

and 546, which apply precisely to the centaurs,

as Benvenuto da Imola was the first to

recognise.

Why then not speculate on a similar association

between these same expressions and the

Ovidian «semivirumque bovem semibovemque

virum», with was widely used to designate the

Minotaur?

7. Having overcome the obstacle of the

Minotaur, the two visitors make their way down

the mass of rock with difficulty, down the

“scarco”, “debris”, a hapax, rhyming with

“carco”. The rocky debris, in a touch of realism,

moves under the unexpected weight of Dante’s

body (v.28-30)

Certainly, the movement of the stones is a

realistic touch, but Benevento proposes a

rather thought-provoking meta-literary reading,

a subtle claim if Dantean primacy «Potest etiam

dici allegorice, quod autor movebat istos

lapides descriptione sua, qui prius erant

immoti», “It can also be said allegorically that

the author moved those stones which had not

been moved before, through his description”,

This to suggest, without too much subtlety, that

no-one before Dante had been capable of

crossing and, which counts even more,

describing such a ruined landscape.

A ruin heavy with a unique significance which is

then explained in the five tercets which follow

(vv. 31-45).

Virgil provides Dante with an explanation of the

origin of the infernal landslide. Its cause is to be

found in the miraculous earthquake (mentioned

by Matthew, 27:51 «et terra mota est, et petrae

scissae sunt» “The earth moved and the rocks

were split”) which followed the death of Christ.

The prodigious cataclysm, a sign of how much

the earth was moved by the death of the son of

God, was felt even in the foul (“feda”) depths of

the chasm of hell, suggesting to the pagan

Virgil the erroneous hypothesis that “the

universe” felt “love”, i.e. that coming together of

the elements which led Empedocles (known to

Dante through Aristotle) to believe that the

world returned to a state of chaos.

The consequences of that marvellous event

were the landslides, the “ruine” in this and other

places in hell, and indelible sign of a wounded

nature and the violence perpetrated on God by

man.

But also correct is the evangelical “ego sum

via”, “I am the way” (John 14: 6), sign of the

possible redemption of man obtained through

the death of Christ, sign therefore of the love of

God for humanity, and, in Dante’s infernal

topography, a path, albeit uncomfortable, in the

chasm created by the death of Christ, which

renders possible a way through evil, a

necessary premiss to overcoming it.

8. With Virgil’s important digression Dante

demonstrates his narrative skill in creating a

momentary pause. This paves the way for the

new and horrific infernal scene which now

confronts the two viatores (vv. 46-48):

As they climb down the rubble of the landslide

Virgil invites Dante to fix his gaze on the river of

blood in which those violent against others are

immersed to be boiled.

A metaphorical chain of culinary humour begins

here (Küchenhumor as identified by Ernst

Robert Curtius) which is repeated in this canto

in verses 101, 102 and 125, and to greater

descriptive effect in the later cantos dedicated

to the barraters (XXI-XXII).

The spectacle is dominated by the «riviera del

sangue» “river of blood”, which with varying

definitions («bollor vermiglio» “boiling crimson”,

v. 101; «bulicame»” stream”, v. 117; «quel

sangue» “that blood”, v. 125) crosses the

subcircle of the violent against others; skirts the

wood of the suicides (XIV 10-11); and re-

emerges in the subcircle of the violent against

God (XIV 76-84 e XV 1-3).

There it is finally (v. 116) recognised and

named as the Phlegethon; then it falls with a

crashing noise into the circle below (XVI 91-

105), thus constituting an authentic fil rouge, a

strong connective element throughout the

entire section dedicated to violence.

Phlegethon, already an infernal river in

antiquity, was consistently imagined as a river

of fire in the classical tradition, first by Virgil and

Statius (Aeneid VI 550-51 and Thebaid IV 523),

and in the etymology elaborated by Servius and

confirmed in Uguccione da Pisa’s Magnae

Derivationes. Macrobius further confirmed this

image, with moral connotations of which Dante

was most likely aware, as the always well-

informed Pietro Alighieri was first to indicate.

The motif associated with that of immersion

also has biblical antecedents: we can think of

the “stagnum ignis” (Apocalypse 20.14) the

lake of fire in which the damned perish, an

image frequently reproduced in the

iconography of the last judgement.

The addition of blood would seem to be entirely

Dante’s invention and a conscious ‘novitas’ in

emulating and adding to the subtexts.

This functions within the logic of the

‘contrapasso’ and thus is strongly linked to the

idea of violence and the punishment of tyrants,

murderers, bandits and robbers. This can be

traced back through interconnected biblical

references, certainly known to Dante and

carefully linked by his early commentators, to

the scriptural category of “homines sanguinis”

“men of blood”) (Sirach 34. 25)

Dante’s ability to modify his own sources,

disguising them through combinations and

allusive games will certainly not be dimiiinished

by some other possible links that may have

suggested to him, perhaps by synergy, the

substitution, to great figurative and structural

effect, of the classical burning river with

immersion in a river of boiling blood.

Another possible influence is in the epiisode of

Thamyris the queen of the Scythians, who for

revenge immersed the head of Cyrus in a skin

full of human blood, according to the story in

Orosius (II 7 6). This is recalled by Dante in

Purgatorio XII 57, and widely cited by the

earliest commentators.

Also the citation recovered by Pascoli, but

already linked by Pietro Alighieri, of Seneca’s

De Ira, II 5 4, in which, faced with Hannibal’s

enthusiasm on seeing a ditch «sanguine

humano plenam» “full of human blood”, the

narrator adds «Quanto pulchrius illi visum

esset, si flumen aliquod lacumque

complesset!» “How much more beautiful would

it have seemed to him, had it filled a river and a

lake.”

The connection of blood with anger,

recognised, in the next tercet, and a decisive

co-cause of violence, should then have

recommended Landino’s comment to modern

readers (which doesn’t seem to me to have

happened).

Commenting on the violent punished in blood,

after having cited the episode of Thamyris,

Landino notably adds «Preterea bollono nel

sangue e’ violenti, perché sono incitati da ira la

quale è bollimento di sangue», “So the violent

boil in blood, because they are incited by anger

which is the boiling of the blood”, which takes in

a literal sense the aristitotelian-thomistic

definition of anger as «accensio sanguinis circa

cor» burning of the blood around the heart”.

Whatever the intertextual process which led to

the “river of blood”, there is no doubting Dante’s

ability to anticipate in the short space of a tercet

the hair-raising setting for a new narrative

sequence, preceded again with his customary

delaying technique, by a brief apostrophe from

the narrator (vv. 49-51)

Blind greed and senseless rage are to be

understood here not simply as sins of

incontinence, but in a Thomistic sense as

dispositions of the soul which generate violence

towards others (in the Summa Theologica and

even more clearly in the De Malo).

The chiasmus at v. 49 and at vv. 50-51

translate the connection between these actions

into formal expression.

9. Marked by two verbs of vision (in v. 52 and v.

58) the next sequence (vv. 52-75), filled with

classical echoes, opens with the picture of the

centaurs (vv. 52-57).

Between the river and the foot of the rocky

slope the centaurs appear to Dante, galloping

“in ranks” and “armed with arrows”, their

attitude is just as it was when they went hunting

in life.

The military characterisation of the centaurs is

clear from the first tercet describing them, they

advance in ranks, and are armed with arrows),

and will be recalled in subsequent verses.

They move in formation (v. 59 and v. 99), they

carefully ready their weapons (v. 60), block the

path of the intruders (v. 61-63), quickly carry

out their commander’s orders (v. 97-99) and

promptly complete precise missions (v. 139).

This characterisation is probably the origin of

the opinion, quite widespread in 14th century

commentaries, (Pietro Alighieri, Maramauro,

Boccaccio, Benvenuto, the Anonimo Fiorentino,

Serravalle) that «allegorice hii Centauri pro

stipendiariis equitibus summuntur» “the

centaurs can be taken allegorically to represent

mercenary cavalry”;

They “symbolise paid soldiers and predatory

military men” for Boccaccio: «i masnadieri e ’

soldati e i seguaci de’ potenti uomini, essecutori

de’ loro scellerati comandamenti», “Robbers,

soldiers, and followers of powerful men […] who

carry out their wicked orders” who «fanno le

violenze e le ’ngiurie a’ subditi», “commit acts of

violence and harm to their subjects”.

and in terms of the contrapasso Boccaccio

observes, «come furono strumento alle

malvage opere de’ tiranni, così sieno alla lor

punizione» “as they were the instruments of the

evil deeds of tyrants, so are they now their

punishment”.

However such an interpretation must be placed

in relation to ademythologising explanation of

the centaurs, common in the 14th century

commentaries and analogous to that of the

Minotaur. According to explanations which

Dante could have read in Servius, Isidore of

Seville and Rabanaus Maurus, the centaurs

were the result of a banal optical illusion.

Recalling the mythical union of Ixion and the

cloud which adopted the appearance of Juno,

The Ottimo Commento tells us “The truth is that

Ixion was the first to arm 100 horsemen in

Greece, and he waged war with them. When

ignorant people first saw them on horseback

they thought that man and horse were a single

animal, and they were called centaurs because

there were 100 of them, and they destroyed the

land like a mighty wind (aura)”

“Or it was the first ruler of Greece, not a noble

ruler but one who held power through tyranny

and desired glory an honour […] He had as his

guard 100 archers on horseback, and this is the

origin of the Centaurs.”

If their position at the threshold of Avernus in

Virgil and Statius was enough for Dante to admit

the centaurs among the monsters of his Inferno,

and if Ovid’s story of the centauromachia testified

to their impulsive character, it seems reasonable

to believe that their specific function as punishers

of tyrants and the violent toward others is due to

the widespread rationalising interpretation of the

myth (as in the case of the Minotaur).

The Ottimo Commento again: “and since the

Centaurs were first found by tyrants, i.e.

soldiers, so in this canto of the tyrants the

Centaurs are mentioned as guarding the

tyrants in their punishment.”

There has been insufficient emphasis, I believe,

on the influence of this tradition on some of the

miniaturists. As well as having depicted the

Minotaur as a centaur, they also depict the

centaurs of Inferno XII simply as archers.

This is the case in the codices of the University

of Budapest library and the Oratoriana in

Naples, and also in the splendid Egerton 943

manuscript in London.

The centaurs then, are committed to their

sadistic task of punishment and oblivious to the

visitors until now - it is only from v. 58 that they

are aware of the two poets – and Dante in

particular - making their way down the landslide

into the valley (vv. 58-75).

The exceptional nature of the event determines

the sudden halt of all the centaurs. Three of

them break away from the formation. They

advance only after they have prudently readied

their bows and arrows.

One of the three, with an abrupt tone and

demeanour asks the new arrivals to declare the

reasons for their presence, threatening them

with his bow.

Virgil replies, equally brusquely, informing his

rash interlocutor that he intends to respond only

to Chiron. The lightly derisive tone Virgil uses

recalls his words against the Minotaur. As he

reminds the centaur of the harm his rashness

has already done “to your own hurt was your

will ever hasty” a reworking of Ovid’s «“Quo te

fiducia” clamat “vana pedum, violente, rapit?”»

“Where is your vain confidence in your swift

feet carrying you, you ravisher.” (Met. IX 120-1)

Then having regained Dante’s attention he

reveals the names of the three centaurs,

condensing the important details regarding

them into a marvellous summary.

The first, the one who spoke, is Nessus,

charged whilst alive with ferrying travellers

across the river Euenos, according to Ovid

(Met. IX 98 ff).

When he carried the “Beautiful Deianira”, the

betrothed of Hercules, across the river he fell in

love with her and tried to capture and rape her.

When the Greek Hero realised what was

happening he wounded the centaur with an

arrow which soaked his shirt with a lethal

poison and killed him.

Nessus however, before dying prepared his

revenge, giving the poisoned shirt to Deianira

and convincing her that although Hercules had

betrayed her it would be possible to restore

their first love if he were to put on the shirt.

As is well-known Deianira, jealous of Iole,

followed Nessus’ instructions and

unintentionally poisoned Hercules, then

overcome with grief killed herself.

And so Nessus «fé di sé la vendetta elli

stesso», a hendecasyllable which alludes once

more to Ovid «Neque enim moriemur inulti»

“For I will not die unavenged” (Met., IX 131).

Positioned prominently in the centre is the most

famous of the centaurs and, according to the

tradition reported by Statius, their chief, the

“great” Chiron, the “huge centaur” (Achilleid. 1.

195-6). He is specified solely through physical

description, and the moral connotations which

have been linked to him (unduly in my opinion),

such as Statius “ingenti magistro”, “the great

teacher”, are absent here.

The use of “gran” in reference to the mouth of

Chiron (v. 79) and to the centaur Nessus (v.

104), and the realistic observation in v. 83-84,

that Virgil only comes up to the Chiron’s chest

so that the human part of the centaur towers

above him, are mainly physical descriptions.

The excessive length of their limbs has the

centaurs defined as giants by Bambaglioli in

the 14th century, though gigantism as a

characteristic of the monstrous is not only a

mediaeval idea.

The image of Chiron with his head bowed

looking at his chest bears witness, according

one interpretative tradition, of his reflective and

thoughtful character. However we may return,

with Charles Singleton, to the intention of the

narrator to direct the reader’s gaze towards the

pinot at which Chiron’s human nature descends

into the bestial and thus shows the monstrous

dehumanisation of these infernal creatures.

Third in the series and occupying a single verse

is the irascible Pholus. Ciafardini noted in 1925

that Dante could not have drawn this detail

from Ovid since the mention of Pholus in

Metamorphoses VIII provides no detailed

characterisation, he is simply named among

the participants in the battle. Nor do other

classical texts yield much more information as

Pholus is generally only mentioned tangentially.

Boccaccio’s uncertainty in his Esposizioni

exemplifies the issue, as he candidly states:

“Regarding this Pholus we have nothing to add

except that he was the son of Ixion and the

cloud, like the other centaurs”

Pietro Aligheiri, in the first version of his

commentary has recourse to an improbable

etymology in an attempt to explain the

description ‘irascible’, “Pholus the other centaur

was so angry that today stupid and angry

people are called ‘Fools”.

Pietro edited this out of his later versions.

The grouping of the three centaurs Nessus,

Chiron and Pholus, who stand out from the

various other ‘semihomines’ mentioned in

sources known to Dante, comes from Lucan’s

Pharsalia (VI 391-93) In book VI Lucan reviews

the peoples of Thessaly and when he comes to

the «issionidi Centauri», “Ixion’s centaurs”

records Dante’s three centaurs in sequence.

The evident intertextual connection (in no other

classical text known to Dante are the three

centaurs associated) is not enough by itself,

however, to clarify all the implications and

valences of such a choice, also because

literary memory is never assimilated in an

acritical way by Dante, but is always in keeping

with the “reasons of a calculated revision of the

myth […] between continuity and Christian

surpassing of the classics”.

Among the thousands of centaurs who inhabit

for all eternity the first subcircle of the seventh

circle of hell Dante brings forward only Nessus,

Chiron and Pholus. Perhaps, as Jacopo

Alighieri and Buti would have it, because they

are better known than the others, but also

because they share a common fate: all three

are victims, voluntary and involuntary, of

Hercules.

Nessus, intentionally shot by the bank of the

river Euenos while he tried to rape Deianeira;

Chiron, as Ovid relates (Met. II 633f.) struck by

accident by a poisoned arrow which Hercules

had shot at other centaurs, and in such terrible

pain that he asked the gods to let him die; and

Pholus, as Virgil briefly recalls (Aen. VIII 393-5),

and as Servius fully explains, died from a

wound inflicted whilst he was examining the

deadly arrows of his host Hercules

All three centaurs named here, and not only

Nessus, recall for mediaeval readers the

“stories of Hercules”, as mentioned by Dante

himself in the ‘Convivio’ III 3. 7.

After the explicit reference to Theseus,

responsible for the death of the Minotaur and

decisive on the side of the Lapiths in the fight

against the centaurs, Nessus Chiron and

Pholus allow a clear allusion to Hercules,

that is to the personification of reason and

virtue capable of overcoming adversity – as

suggested by a solid tradition of allegorical

reading (taken up by, to name a few, Augustine,

Lactantius, Servius, Macrobius and Fulgentius).

In mediaeval culture too,, Herculaes is

sometimes identified on an equal footing with

Theseus as a figura Dei, “a figure of God”, sent

to earth from heaven to combat evil.

The allusion to Hercules thus constitutes further

proof of Dante’s characterisation of the

centaurs in demonic terms. The run in great

numbers in the space between the river and the

escarpment cruelly striking the souls of the

damned who come out of the Phlegethon. They

display a bestial and inhuman delight as they

inflict greater pain than the punishment

requires.

In the imprecise and hyperbolic enumeration of

the centaurs (thousands and thousands), we

may catch an echo of Apocalypse 9:16 «Et

numerus equestris exercitus vicies milia dena

milia», ‘The number of the mounted troops was

two hundred million’ both phonically in the

repetition of mille / milia, and figuratively in the

analogy between the formations of centaurs

and armies of cavalry.

10. After the rapid exchange between Nessus

and Virgil and the presentation to a still

dumbstruck Dante of the threatening rank of

centaurs, the narration is taken up (vv. 76-99):

While the two poets approach the centaurs,

Chiron takes an arrow and using the notch on

the end like a comb, combs his beard back

behind his jaws, with a rough militaristic

gesture.

With his large mouth now revealed, the chief of

the centaurs addresses his underlings, making

them take note that the steps of Dante «quel di

retro», “the one behind”, most unusually cause

the stones to move, which doesn’t happen with

the other souls.

Virgil, who had come up to Chiron’s chest, the

crucial point of conjunction of his double nature,

with precision but in a tone not dissimilar to that

used by the two infernal guardians, confirms

their impression that Dante is alive and that he

is travelling through the “valle buia”, dark valley

of Hell alone with his guide. He is moved by

divine will and not his own wishes.

Nor does he conceal the pre-history of the

journey, recalling the office entrusted to him by

Beatrice. Whom he doesn’t name directly (as is

also the case for Christ in Hell) but with a

periphrasis that has a strong connotative

function.

Having clarified everything, in particular that

neither he nor Dante are damned souls, Virgil

calls upon the divine authority which allows him

to follow this «selvaggia strada» “savage road”

(echoing the «selva selvaggia» of Inf., I 5), and

presents his requests to Chiron:

He must supply one of his subordinates to

accompany them, and point out the ford over

the Phlegethon, and carry Dante across the

river of boiling blood on his back. As in the case

of Phlegyas, then later Geryon, Antaeus and

Lucifer himself, one of the constant features of

the first cantica is not just that the will of God

prevails, but the forces of evil are forced to

assist in the divinely willed journey.

Thus Chiron cannot disobey and turning to

Nessus, who is expert in fording rivers (scitus

vadorum (Ovid Met., IX 108), orders him to

accompany them and move aside any other

groups of centaurs who try to block their path.

The harsh rhyme in -oppa of groppa : poppa :

intoppa, occurs in three other parts of the

Inferno - VII 23-27 , XXI 11-15, and XXV 20-

24, this latter referring to Cacus, another

centaur «pien di rabbia» filled with rage.

11. Only the final rapid sequence in the canto is

given to the sinners immersed in the

Phlegethon, trapped in a degrading immobility.

There is no contact with them, and the mention

of them is often reduced to a mere naming,

mediated by Nessus. This expository strategy is

calculated to produce a strong ethical

distancing. The main elements of this final

section have been fully explained by Ezio

Raimondi and, more recently, Umberto Carpi.

Dante and Virgil take up their journey again,

along with the centaur Nessus, ironically

described as a “scorta fida” a “trustworthy

escort”. They travel alongside the bank of

“boiling crimson”, and the sense of horror is

increased by the screams of the “bolliti”, boiled

souls.

The rapid review of the souls, conducted

according to a technique typical of the

‘serventese’ form for dealing with political

material and already used in the enumeration

of the souls in Limbo will be reutilised in the

listing of negligent rulers in Purgatorio VII.

Verbs of seeing predominate (v. 103; 118; 121)

and numerous deictics (v.104; 106; 107; v. 109;

110; 119) which Nessus uses to carry out his

task as guide.

The listing of these souls is rapid for reasons of

narrative verisimilitude (the short span of the

ford). But Dante also wishes to give an almost

anonymous image of violence, and show the

distance and disdain the author has for the

sinners immersed in Phlegethon, shown by the

haste with which he deals with these character.

There are difficulties in identifying some

individuals, (e.g. in v. 107, is it Alexander King

of Jerusalem, or Alexander of Macedonia, or

Alexander of Pherae; is it Dionysius the elder or

younger? In v. 135 which Pyrrhus is it, and is

Sextus Pompeius, or Nero?), However the

series is not incidental, and is constructed

symmetrically, in three sections.

The central section condemns the souls there

to anonymity, which also functions to highlight

how widespread this particular sin is. «di

costoro assai riconobb’io», “I recognised many

of them” v. 123).

The two final sections collect together five

characters each, arranged in a sort of

chiasmus: in the first part two ancients,

Alexander and cruel Dionysius, and three

moderns, Ezzelino III da Romano, Obizzo II

d’Este and Guy de Monfort, vicar of Charles of

Anjou in Tuscany in 1272; in the second three

ancients, Pyrrhus, Sextus and Attila, and

corresponding to them the two homonymous

moderns Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzo.

The modern souls, at least those who can be

identified more precisely, constitute a distinctive

group of characters, and their names identify a

precise historical-political geography with

important implications for the political strategies

of the Commedia

The mention of Ezzelino and Obizzo together,

individuated by the colour of their hair, is not

due to some criteria of equality as Raimondi

has noted. The greater insistence on the

inglorious death of Obizzo seems to lessen the

severity of the common judgement on Ezzelino,

whose condemnation is, so to speak

dialectalised

The expressive high point in the list of the

damned comes in the isolation to which the

soul of Guy de Montfort is condemned. In

revenge for the death of his father he killed the

young Henry of Cornwall during the celebration

of the mass in Viterbo, in the presence and

possibly with the tacit approval of Philip III of

France and Charles of Anjou.

There is an interesting exegetical crux here,

which, unfortunately, we do not have time to

examine in detail.

His task completed, having carried Dante

beyond Phlegethon, Nessus crosses back over

the ford: the canto closes in a brusque manner,

with a perfect correspondence of formal unity

and topographical division.

The reader is left with the image of the centaur

who…«mostra in primo piano la parte equina,

bestiale del suo corpo».

The brusque effect of caesura will be

diminished however in verse 1 of canto XIII,

(«Non era ancora di là Nesso arrivato»), as if it

were an example of “coblas capfinidas”, and

narrative continuity with the preceding canto

will be restored.