Purgatorio (84 page)

109–111.
   A number of recent commentators here note an echo of Virgil’s first
Georgic
(I.322–324). For the view that this passage reflects the description of the storm that drives Aeneas’s ships off course in the first book of the
Aeneid
see Carter (Cart.1944.1).
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112–114.
   Is Dante suggesting that evil forces have power only over the elements (and the dead bodies of humans—see verse 108)?
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116.
   The mountain ridge Pratomagno and the alpine protuberances referred to establish the confines of the Casentino at the southwest and northeast, respectively.
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117.
   Restoring a meaning offered in Benvenuto’s commentary but perhaps never revisited and arguing against the scholarly exertions of others, Pertile (Pert.1996.1), pp. 121–26, presents a strong case for the Tuscan form of the verb
intingere
’s past participle,
intinto
in its regular form, but also found as
intento
(darkened). We have accepted Pertile’s reading in our translation.
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122.
   Dante’s term for “seaward stream” is
fiume real
, or “royal river,” i.e., a river that ends in the sea.
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126–127.
   The “cross” that Buonconte had made of his arms perhaps expresses both the gesture of a man in the throes of mortal pain and the sign of his hope for redemption.
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128–129.
   Buonconte’s body finally came to rest on the Arno’s bed, along with the detritus that the rushing torrent had borne along with it until it, too, settled to rest, mingled with the body of the man.
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130–136.
   The six verses devoted to Pia’s speech have made her one of Dante’s most remembered and admired portraits—even though we do not really know who she was, to whom she was married (nor how many times, but perhaps twice), or who killed her, or how. For the complicated, necessarily hypothetical, and eventually unknowable status of Pia’s identity and story and the possible knowledge that Dante had of them, see Armour (Armo.1993.1), pp. 120–22. See also Giorgio Varanini,
ED
IV (1973), pp. 462–67.
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133.
   Pia uses the “polite imperative,” i.e., the impersonal subjunctive, to express her desire (i.e., “may it be remembered by you”): she hopes to be remembered by Dante once he is back on earth so that he can pray for her, as Vellutello (1544) suggests, or recall her to the minds of others for
their
prayers.
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134.
   This line, celebrated for its brevity and power, has the lapidary quality of a headstone, perhaps because it represents one: the beginning of Virgil’s epitaph, “Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere.…” (Mantua gave me birth, Calabria took me off), as Gmelin (Gmel.1955.1) was perhaps the first to suggest. See notes to
Purgatorio
III.27; VI.72. And see Hollander (Holl.1984.4), p. 119, n. 7.

Armour (Armo.1993.1), p. 116, suggests that, if she was defenestrated by her husband (or one of his agents), as many early commentators claim, then the hard earth of the Maremma actually did “undo” her, smashing her body when she hit it.
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135–136.
   These final verses of the canto have drawn numerous attempts at a clear understanding. However, without knowing the precise nature of the facts to which Dante has decided to allude, we cannot be certain. Among the more interesting suggestions for a source is Hermann Gmelin’s (Gmel.1955.1): the verses reflect Dido’s remark about her dead husband, Sichaeus, at
Aeneid
IV.28–29: “ille meos,
primus qui me sibi iunxit
, amores / abstulit; ille habeat secum servetque sepulchro” (He, who first joined me to him, has sealed up my love; may he have it with him and keep it in his grave). The italicized phrase seems close enough to Dante’s “colui che ’nnanellata pria / disposando” to merit further thought, even if the contexts are not the same, a suffering wife and murderous husband replacing a loyal husband and a would-be loyal wife. Did Pia’s husband himself give her a ring of betrothal before they married or, as Varanini suggests, did the man who eventually killed her, the representative of her husband (one Magliata di Pionpino), present the ring for him?
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Endnote.
The three “autobiographies” that make up the last and largest part of this canto are strikingly similar in their construction (for a somewhat different analysis of the structure of this “triptych” see Picone [Pico.1999.2], pp. 75–77), as the following table reveals. The central figure, Buonconte da Montefeltro, allows Dante the occasion to expand the model he had set for himself in the case of Jacopo del Cassero, and then Pia de’ Tolomei offers an occasion to restrict that model, refining it to the very nub of possible composition in the form of a gesture that may remind contemporary readers of the minimalism found in the later works of Samuel Beckett. We should probably be aware that such artistic play is frequently found in medieval writers, who were accomplished practitioners in expansion
(amplificatio)
and contraction
(abbreviatio)
of passages in earlier texts.

1–12.
   Frankel (Fran.1989.1), pp. 113–16, discussing this opening simile, deploys the argument that the figure of the loser within the simile equates with that of Virgil in the narrative. That so reasonable an interpretation took six and a half centuries to be developed is a mark of the continuing obstinately rosy view of Virgil and of his role in the poem among its interpreters. It was only in 1968 that any commentator tried to find a counterpart for the “loser”; Giacalone thinks he may correspond to Dante, because of the poet’s many troubles at the hands of his enemies. Yet it is hard to see how Dante can be both winner (to whom he is explicitly compared)
and
loser. Singleton (1973 [at verse 2]) offers the following pronouncement: “This figure of the loser, though serving to make the whole scene more graphic, finds no correspondence in the second term of the simile.” He is in part correct: both Dante and the crowd of petitioners do correspond to figures within the simile (winner and the crowd of spectators, respectively); that the reference to Virgil is suppressed, inviting the reader to supply it, makes it all the more telling. For support for Frankel’s analysis see Hollander (Holl.1990.1), p. 31. Reviewing the commentators, we are able to witness centuries of avoidance behavior (e.g., Momigliano [1946]: the simile is produced “as a piece unto itself, with but slight regard for the context”).

For information on the game of
zara
(from Arabic
zahr
, a die, through French
hazard
and Provençal
azar
) see Singleton’s lengthy gloss in his commentary to the opening verse of the canto. Similar to the modern game of craps,
zara
involved betting on the numbers, from 3 to 18, resulting from the cast of three dice. The numbers 3, 4, 17, and 18 were, like 2 and 12 in the modern game, “craps,” or
zara
, i.e., an undesirable result—unless the player called them out before he threw his dice. The game was apparently played by two players, as is reflected by Dante’s reference to only a single winner and loser in this passage.

At verse 8 the reference is to the reward the winner traditionally bestowed upon the onlookers—a bit of his winnings (a practice found today in those at gaming tables who tip the croupier when they conclude their gambling happily).
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13–24.
   These six males, all of whom died violently between 1278 and 1297, are presented as a sort of coda to the three developed figures who bring the preceding canto to its end (Jacopo, Buonconte, Pia), leaving us with the impression of the potentially more extensive narratives that might have accompanied their names, with still more resultant pathos. They also, as Chiavacci Leonardi (Chia.1994.1), p. 173, points out, remind us, in their violent deaths, of the unsettled political condition of Italy (even though the last of them, Pierre de la Brosse, is French), a subject that will dominate the final section of this canto.
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13–14.
   The Aretine is Benincasa da Laterina, “(in the upper Val d’Arno), a judge of Arezzo; according to the old commentators, while acting as assessor for the Podestà of Siena, he sentenced to death a brother (or uncle) of Ghino di Tacco, a famous robber and highwayman of Siena; in revenge Ghino stabbed him while he was sitting in the papal audit office at Rome, whither he had got himself transferred from Siena, at the expiry of his term there, in order to be out of Ghino’s reach”
(T)
. Jacopo della Lana says (comm. to vv. 13–14) that Ghino cut off Benincasa’s head in full view of the assembled papal court of Boniface VIII (ca. 1297) and somehow managed to make good his escape. Ghino di Tacco was of a Sienese noble family; exiled from his city, he became a famous highwayman. According to Boccaccio (
Decameron
X.ii), his nobility of character eventually resulted in his reconciliation with Pope Boniface before both of them died (in 1303). In Dante’s reference to him here there is no such positive treatment; Benincasa, not Ghino, is presented as being saved.
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15.
   This brief and unadorned reference is taken by nearly all the early commentators to refer to Guccio de’ Tarlati di Pietramala, a Ghibelline of Arezzo, who was in an attacking party against the Bostoli, Aretine Guelphs in exile at the fortified castle of Rondine. Some assert that, when the forces of the Bostoli counterattacked, Guccio galloped, on a runaway horse, into the Arno, where he drowned. Others say that his death occurred while he was in pursuit of the enemy at that encounter. (The text would allow either interpretation.) Still others claim that his death occurred during the rout of Campaldino, shortly before the presence of the war party at Rondine, in 1289; but see the next note.
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16–18.
   Federico Novello, son of Guido Novello of the Conti Guidi of Romena, in the Casentino (see note to
Inf
. XXX.58–61), died when he came to the aid of the Tarlati, besieging the Bostoli (see preceding note), ca. 1291. It would seem likely that Dante thought of both men as dying in the same effort.

The Pisan whom Dante observes is consistently identified as the son of Marzucco degli Scornigiani, a widely known and respected judge of Pisa until the time of Ugolino’s joint rulership (with Archbishop Ruggieri—see note to
Inf.
XXXIII.1–3) in 1287. That Ugolino himself was involved in the political murder of Marzucco’s son is attested by various early commentators. Whether the execution (by decapitation) was carried out under Ugolino’s direct orders or not, it occurred in 1287 when Ugolino had returned to Pisa as its coruler, and necessarily would have, at the very least, suggested, in Dante’s view, Ugolino’s complicity.

Evidence for Marzucco’s fortitude is ascribed to one of two anecdotes by the early commentators: either he astounded Ugolino by his calm demeanor when he, no longer a judge but a Franciscan novice, asked that the corpse of his son be taken up from the public square and buried (to which request the much impressed Ugolino assented) or he exemplified Christian forgiveness in his decision not to seek revenge for the judicial murder of his son. Both anecdotes may, however, be pertinent. In 1286, before these events, Marzucco had ended his long and distinguished career in Pisa as jurist (ca. 1249–86) to become a Franciscan and indeed eventually resided in the Franciscan house at Santa Croce in Florence from 1291 until his death in 1300 or 1301. It is possible that Dante knew him and heard of the events in Pisa and of Ugolino’s involvement in them directly from “lo buon Marzucco” himself.
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19–24.
   The first of these two is Count Orso degli Alberti della Cerbaia, murdered by his cousin, Count Alberto da Mangona, ca. 1286. Their respective fathers, Napoleone and Alessandro degli Alberti da Mangona, have been seen locked in eternal hatred, in Caïna, as treacherous to kindred in
Inferno
XXXII.40–60. Like father, like cousin.

The only non-Italian in the group, and the first of them to die (in 1278), is the Frenchman, Pierre de la Brosse, “favorite and chamberlain of Philip III of France. On the sudden death in 1276 of the heir to the throne, Louis, Philip’s son by his first wife, Isabella of Aragon, an accusation was brought against the Queen, Mary of Brabant, of having poisoned Louis in order to secure the succession of her own son, among her accusers being Pierre de la Brosse. Not long afterwards Pierre was suddenly arrested and imprisoned by order of the King. After being tried at Paris before an assembly of the nobles, he was hanged by the common hangman, June 30, 1278. The suddenness and ignominy of his execution appear to have caused great wonder and consternation, especially as the charge on which he was condemned was not made known. According to the popular account he had been accused by the Queen of an attempt upon her chastity. The truth seems to be that he was hanged upon a charge of treasonable correspondence with Alphonso X, King of Castile, with whom Philip was at war, the intercepted letters on which the charge was based having, it is alleged, been forged at the instance of the Queen”
(T).
Dante seems to have believed the common version of the story, which would put Mary of Brabant (in our day a province of Belgium) not in purgatory, where her victim has his victory, but in hell (probably in the last of the Malebolge along with Potiphar’s wife [
Inf
. XXX.97]) if she failed to repent her evildoing. Since she lived almost as long as Dante would (she died on 12 January 1321), one wonders if she became aware of this warning.
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