Canto XXXIII Notes: Ciardi
1-90.) Ugolino and Ruggieri: Ugolino, Count of Donoratico and a member of the Guelph family della Gherardesca. He and his nephew, Nino de'Visconti, led the two Guelph factions of Pisa. In 1288 Ugolino intrigued with Archbishop Ruggiere degli Ubaldini, leader of the Ghibellines, to get rid of Visconti and to take over the command of all the Pisan Guelphs. The plan worked, but in the consequent weakening of the Guelphs, Ruggiere saw his chance and betrayed Ugolino, throwing him into prison with his sons and grandsons. In the following year the prison was sealed up and they were left to starve to death. The law of retribution is clearly evident: in life Ruggieri sinned against Ugolino by denying him food; in Hell he himself becomes food for his victim.
18.) you will know already: News of Ugolino's imprisonment and death would certainly have reached Florence, what you cannot know: no living man could know what happened after Ugolino and his sons were sealed in the prison and abandoned.
22.) coop: Dante uses the word muda, in Italian signifying a stone tower in which falcons were kept in the dark to moult. From the time of Ugolino's death it became known as the Tower of Hunger.
25.) several waning moons: Ugolino was jailed late in 1288. He was sealed in to starve early in 1289.
28.) This beast: Ruggieri.
29-30.) the mountain that hides Lucca from Pisa: These two cities would be in view of one another were it not for Monte San Giuliano.
32.) Gualandi and Sismondi and Lanfranchi: Three Pisan nobles, Ghibellines and friends of the Archbishop.
51-71.) UGOLINO'S "SONS": Actually two of the boys were grandsons and all were considerably older than one would gather from Dante's account. Anselm, the younger grandson, was fifteen. The others were really young men and were certainly old enough for guilt despite Dante's charge in line 90.
75.) Then fasting overcame my grief and me: i.e., He died. Some interpret the line to mean that Ugolino's hunger drove him to cannibalism. Ugolino's present occupation in Hell would certainly support that interpretation but the fact is that cannibalism is the one major sin Dante does not assign a place in Hell. So monstrous would it have seemed to him that he must certainly have established a special punishment for it. Certainly he could hardly have relegated it to an ambiguity. Moreover, it would be a sin of bestiality rather than of fraud, and as such it would be punished in the Seventh Circle.
79-80.) the land where "si" sounds sweet and clear: Italy.
82.) Capara and Gorgona: These two islands near the mouth of the Arno were Pisan possessions in 1300.
86.) betrayed your castles: In 1284, Ugolino gave up certain castles to Lucca and Florence. He was at war with Genoa at the time and it is quite likely that he ceded the castles to buy the neutrality of these two cities, for they were technically allied with Genoa. Dante, however, must certainly consider the action as treasonable, for otherwise Ugolino would be in Caina for his treachery to Visconti.
88.) you modern Thebes: Thebes, as a number of the foregoing notes will already have made clear, was the site of some of the most hideous crimes of antiquity.
91.) we passed on further: Marks the passage into Ptolomea.
105.) is not all heat extinguished: Dante believed (rather accurately, by chance) that all winds resulted from "exhalations of heat." Cocytus, however, is conceived as wholly devoid of heat, a metaphysical absolute zero. The source of the wind, as we discover in the next Canto, is Satan himself.
117.) may I descend to the last rim of the ice: Dante is not taking any chances; he has to go on to the last rim in any case. The sinner, however, believes him to be another damned soul and would interpret the oath quite otherwise as Dante meant it.
118.) Friar Alberigo: Of the Manfredi of Faenza. He was another jovial Friar. In 1284 his brother Manfred struck him in the course of an argument. Alberigo pretended to let it pass, but in 1285 he invited Manfred and his son to a banquet and had them murdered. The signal to the assassins was the words: "Bring in the fruit." "Friar Alberigo's bad fruit," became a proverbial saying.
125.) Atropos: The fate who cuts the thread of life.
137.) Branca D'Oria: A Genoese Ghibelline. His sin is identical in kind to that of Friar Alberigo. In 1275 he invited his father-in-law, Michel Zanche (see Canto XXII), to a banquet and had him and his companions cut to pieces. He was assisted in the butchery by his nephew.