Canto V Notes: Mandelbaum
1-3) The "first enclosure" is Limbo. Each successive enclosure or circle "girdles less space" because Hell funnels downward, as in this diagram.
4) In the Aeneid (VI, 568-572), Minos is a judge of the underworld. In ancient mythology, Minos, son of Zeus and Europa, and king of Crete, was renowned for the wisdom of and severity of his judgments.
6) The place of each sinner in Hell is determined by the number of times Minos' tail twines around his body. Where a circle of Hell has one or more divisions, Minos -- at least in XXVII, 124-127 -- seems to supplement his tail with a more precise spoken
indication.
15) They admit their sins and hear their sentence before they are sent down.
20) The emphasis on the width of the gate echoes the Bible (Matt. 7:13) and the Aeneid
(VI, 175-177).
34-35) This translation of ruina as "ruined slope" follows those who see this as a reference to the earthquake that occurred after the death of Christ. For more on that earthquake and its consequences, see Canto XII, 31-41.
58-59) Ninus was the mythical founder of ancient Nineveh; his wife, Semiramis, succeeded him to become Queen of Assyria. Notorious for her licentiousness, she was supposed to have legalized even incest. Because of her reputation, her capital, Babylon, was often confused with the Babylon (Old Cairo) of Egypt and thus her kingdom with that of the Sultans (see 60, note). Dante's source here -- "we read," he
writes in 58 -- is the History against the Pagans of Paulus Orosius, the 5th-century Christian historian. Legend has Semiramis dying at the hands of an illegitimate son.
60) The Sultan is the ruler of Egypt, at this time El-Melik En-Nasir Muhammed, who reigned from 1299 to 1309.
61-62) "That other spirit" is Dido, wife of Sychaeus, who was murdered by her brother, Pygmalion, King of Tyre. After Sychaeus' shade tells Dido of the murder, she flees Tyre to found a new city in North Africa -- Carthage. Aeneid I and IV relate her love for Aeneas. He, reminded of by the gods of his higher destiny as founder of Rome, departs for Italy; Dido, in despair, commits suicide. Dante mentions her faithlessness to Sychaeus; but it is her violent death for love that places her in these tercets (59-69).
63) Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt whose beauty was legendary, was mistress first of Julius Caesar and then of Marc Antony. Rather than be taken to Rome as a captive, she killed herself with a poisonous asp. Like Dido, she is placed in a circle higher than the Seventh Circle, Second Ring, the place of the Suicides (XIII).
64) Helen, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta, became the mistress of Paris. Her abduction led to the Trojan War. Legend has her as having died at the hands of a Grecian woman who avenged her husband, killed in the war against Troy.
65) Achilles was the principal Greek hero in the Trojan War. Homer notes that Achilles was killed under the walls of Troy after killing Hector, the main Trojan hero. Accounts current in the Middle Ages, however, claim that Paris killed Achilles in the temple of Apollo, where he had been lured by promises that he could have Priam's daughter Polyxena if he joined the Trojans. See Servius's comments on Aeneid III, 321 (Latin numbering).
67) Paris was the son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy, and the abductor of Helen (see 64, note). One tradition has him killed by Philoctetes. Tristan, hero of medieval French romance, was the lover of Yseult, wife of King Mark of Cornwall, Tristan's uncle, who, in a version cited by Boccaccio, wounds Tristan with a poisoned arrow. In his death throes Tristan embraces Yseult so strongly that both die in that embrace.
97) "The land where I was born" is the territory of Ravenna, and the speaker is Francesca da Rimini, daughter of Guido da Polenta, Lord of Ravenna, who died in 1310. Though married some time after 1274 to Gianciotto Malatesta of Rimini for political reasons, she fell in love with his younger brother, Paolo. When Gianciotto
discovered their adulterous love, very possibly in 1285, he killed them.
100-107) These lines recall the 13th-century celebrations of love -- not the least the canzone of Guido Guinizzelli, Al cor gentile rempaira sempre amore. Set against such celebrations, these lines become tragically ironic.
101) "him": Paolo Malatesta.
102) For some interpreters the "how" does not refer to the killing of the two lovers by Gianciotto, which left them no time for repentance, but to the ardent passion of Paolo for Francesca, a love that still overwhelms (offende) her. This translation does refer the "how" to the killing of the lovers and translates offende as "wounds."
103) This doctrine of courtly love was expounded by Andreas Cappellanus in his De amore but has religious antecedents as well.
107) Caina, the first of the four divisions of the Ninth Circle of Hell, is named after Cain, who killed his brother Abel (Gen. 4:8). Caina is where those who betrayed their kin are punished. It "waits" for Gianciotto because he is still alive in 1300.
121-123) The source of this reflection is Boethius, whose Consolation of Philosophy was well known in the Middle Ages (see Cons. Phil. II, iv, 2). But "your teacher" is Virgil.
127-138) The book they were reading was one of the French Arthurian romances well known to Dante. It tells of Lancelot, the most famous of the knights of the Round Table of King Arthur. He fell in love with Arthur's Queen Guinevere. Since
Gallehault is a character who encouraged the Queen and her lover, the book is "a
Gallehault indeed," for it serves Paolo and Francesca as a go-between.
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