FOOTNOTES:
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Dante Alighieri and Sibbald, James Romanes
Source notes
[515]Malebolge: Or Evil Pits; literally, Evil Pockets.
[516]A well: The Ninth and lowest Circle, to be described in Canto xxxii., etc.
[517]The zone: The Eighth Circle, in which the fraudulent of all species are punished, lies between the precipice and the Ninth Circle. A vivid picture of the enormous height of the enclosing wall has been presented to us at the close of the preceding Canto. As in the description of the Second Circle the atmosphere is represented as malignant, being murky and disturbed with tempest; so the Malebolge is called malignant too, being all of barren iron-coloured rock. In both cases the surroundings of the sinners may well be spoken of as malign, adverse to any thought of goodwill and joy.
[518]The extremities: The Malebolge consists of ten circular pits or fosses, one inside of another. The outermost lies under the precipice which falls sheer from the Seventh Circle; the innermost, and of course the smallest, runs immediately outside of the ‘Well,’ which is the Ninth Circle. The Bolgias or valleys are divided from each other by rocky banks; and, each Bolgia being at a lower level than the one that encloses it, the inside of each bank is necessarily deeper than the outside. Ribs or ridges of rock—like spokes of a wheel to the axle-tree—run from the foot of the precipice to the outer rim of the ‘Well,’ vaulting the moats at right angles with the course of them. Thus each rib takes the form of a ten-arched bridge. By one or other of these Virgil and Dante now travel towards the centre and the base of Inferno; their general course being downward, though varied by the ascent in turn of the hog-backed arches over the moats.
[519]More swift: The sinners in the First Bolgia are divided into two gangs, moving in opposite directions, the course of those on the outside being to the right, as looked at by Dante. These are the shades of panders; those in the inner current are such as seduced on their own account. Here a list of the various classes of sinners contained in the Bolgias of the Eighth Circle may be given:—
1st
Bolgia—Seducers,
Canto
xviii.
2d
”
Flatterers,
”
”
3d
”
Simoniacs,
”
xix.
4th
”
Soothsayers,
”
xx.
5th
”
Barrators,
”
xxi. xxii.
6th
”
Hypocrites,
”
xxiii.
7th
”
Thieves,
”
xxiv. xxv.
8th