Homer and the Classic Poets View Annotations Image Gallery
1	The heavy sleep within my head was smashed
2	by an enormous thunderclap, so that
3	I started up as one whom force awakens;
4	I stood erect and turned my rested eyes
5	from side to side, and I stared steadily
6	to learn what place it was surrounding me.
7	In truth I found myself upon the brink
8	of an abyss, the melancholy valley
9	containing thundering, unending wailings.
10	That valley, dark and deep and filled with mist,
11	is such that, though I gazed into its pit,
12	I was unable to discern a thing.
13	Let us descend into the blind world now,
14	the poet, who was deathly pale, began;
15	I shall go first and you will follow me.
16	But I, who'd seen the change in his complexion,
17	said: How shall I go on if you are frightened,
18	you who have always helped dispel my doubts?
19	And he to me: The anguish of the people
20	whose place is here below, has touched my face
21	with the compassion you mistake for fear.
22	Let us go on, the way that waits is long.
23	So he set out, and so he had me enter
24	on that first circle girdling the abyss.
25	Here, for as much as hearing could discover,
26	there was no outcry louder than the sighs
27	that caused the everlasting air to tremble.
28	The sighs arose from sorrow without torments,
29	out of the crowds the many multitudes
30	of infants and of women and of men.
31	The kindly master said: Do you not ask
32	who are these spirits whom you see before you?
33	I'd have you know, before you go ahead,
34	they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits,
35	that's not enough, because they lacked baptism,
36	the portal of the faith that you embrace.
37	And if they lived before Christianity,
38	they did not worship God in fitting ways;
39	and of such spirits I myself am one.
40	For these defects, and for no other evil,
41	we now are lost and punished just with this:
42	we have no hope and yet we live in longing.
43	Great sorrow seized my heart on hearing him,
44	for I had seen some estimable men
45	among the souls suspended in that limbo.
46	Tell me, my master, tell me, lord. I then
47	began because I wanted to be certain
48	of that belief which vanquishes all errors,
49	did any ever go by his own merit
50	or others'- from this place toward blessedness?
51	And he, who understood my covert speech,
52	replied: I was new-entered on this state
53	when I beheld a Great Lord enter here;
54	the crown he wore, a sign of victory.
55	He carried off the shade of our first father,
56	of his son Abel, and the shade of Noah,
57	of Moses, the obedient legislator,
58	of father Abraham, David the king,
59	of Israel, his father, and his sons,
60	and Rachel, she for whom he worked so long,
61	and many others and He made them blessed;
62	and I should have you know that, before them,
63	there were no human souls that had been saved.
64	We did not stay our steps although he spoke;
65	we still continued onward through the wood
66	the wood, I say, where many spirits thronged.
67	Our path had not gone far beyond the point
68	where I had slept, when I beheld a fire
69	win out against a hemisphere of shadows.
70	We still were at a little distance from it,
71	but not so far I could not see in part
72	that honorable men possessed that place.
73	O you who honor art and science both,
74	who are these souls whose dignity has kept
75	their way of being, separate from the rest?
76	And he to me: The honor of their name,
77	which echoes up above within your life,
78	gains Heaven's grace, and that advances them.
79	Meanwhile there was a voice that I could hear:
80	Pay honor to the estimable poet;
81	his shadow, which had left us, now returns.
82	After that voice was done, when there was silence,
83	I saw four giant shades approaching us;
84	in aspect, they were neither sad nor joyous.
85	My kindly master then began by saying:
86	Look well at him who holds that sword in hand
87	who moves before the other three as lord.
88	That shade is Homer, the consummate poet;
89	the other one is Horace, satirist;
90	the third is Ovid, and the last is Lucan.
91	Because each of these spirits shares with me
92	the name called out before by the lone voice,
93	they welcome me and, doing that, do well.
94	And so I saw that splendid school assembled
95	led by the lord of song incomparable,
96	who like an eagle soars above the rest.
97	Soon after they had talked a while together,
98	they turned to me, saluting cordially;
99	and having witnessed this, my master smiled;
100	and even greater honor then was mine,
101	for they invited me to join their ranks
102	I was the- sixth among such intellects.
103	So did we move along and toward the light,
104	talking of things about which silence here
105	is just as seemly as our speech was there.
106	We reached the base of an exalted castle,:
107	encircled seven times by towering walls,
108	defended all around by a fair stream.
109	We forded this as if upon hard ground;
110	I entered seven portals with these sages;
111	we reached a meadow of green flowering plants.
112	The people here had eyes both grave and slow;
113	their features carried great authority;
114	they spoke infrequently, with gentle voices.
115	We drew aside to one part of the meadow
116	an open place both high and filled with light,
117	and we could see all those who were assembled.
118	Facing me there, on the enameled green,
119	great-hearted souls were shown to me and I
120	still glory in my having witnessed them.
121	I saw Electra with her many comrades,
122	among whom I knew Hector and Aeneas,
123	and Caesar, in his armor, falcon-eyed.
124	I saw Camilla and Penthesilea
125	and, on the other side, saw King Latinus,
126	who sat beside Lavinia, his daughter.
127	I saw that Brutus who drove Tarquin out,
128	Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia,
129	and, solitary, set apart, Saladin.
130	When I had raised my eyes a little higher,
131	I saw the master of the men who know
132	seated in philosophic family.
133	There all look up to him, all do him honor:
134	there I beheld both Socrates and Plato,
135	closest to him, in front of all the rest;
136	Democritus, who ascribes the world to chance,
137	Diogenes, Empedocles, and Zeno,
138	and Thales, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus;
139	I saw the good collector of medicinals,
140	I mean Dioscorides; and I saw Orpheus,
141	and Tully, Linus, moral Seneca;
142	and Euclid the geometer, and Ptolemy,
143	Hippocrates and Galen, Avicenna,
144	Averroes, of the great Commentary.
145	I cannot here describe them all in full;
146	my ample theme impels me onward so:
147	what's told is often less than the event.
148	The company of six divides in two;
149	my knowing guide leads me another way,
150	beyond the quiet, into trembling air.
151	And I have reached a part where no thing gleams.

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