Inferno: Canto IV
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Dante Alighieri and Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
I saw Electra with companions many, ’Mongst whom I knew both Hector and Aeneas, Caesar in armour with gerfalcon eyes;
I saw Camilla and Penthesilea On the other side, and saw the King Latinus, Who with Lavinia his daughter sat;
I saw that Brutus who drove Tarquin forth, Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia, And saw alone, apart, the Saladin.
When I had lifted up my brows a little, The Master I beheld of those who know, Sit with his philosophic family.
All gaze upon him, and all do him honour. There I beheld both Socrates and Plato, Who nearer him before the others stand;
Democritus, who puts the world on chance, Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales, Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus;
Of qualities I saw the good collector, Hight Dioscorides; and Orpheus saw I, Tully and Livy, and moral Seneca,
Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy, Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna, Averroes, who the great Comment made.
I cannot all of them pourtray in full, Because so drives me onward the long theme, That many times the word comes short of fact.
The sixfold company in two divides; Another way my sapient Guide conducts me Forth from the quiet to the air that trembles;
And to a place I come where nothing shines.