Episode 92. More Questions Than Answers For The Reliefs In The Road Bed Of Pride: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, Lines 22 - 63

We've spent three episodes going over the reliefs in the road bed of the terrace of pride on Mount Purgatory. Now let's step back and look at the whole passage. Yes, its sweet. But also its curiously crafted problems. And the way it leaves us with more questions than answers, even though we're supposed to take away a very distinct moral lesson.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we run through this entire complicated passage in PURGATORIO.

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Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:12] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, lines 22 - 63. If you'd like to read along, print it off, or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[04:18] Biblical, classical, and historical figures flatten the interpretive landscape. Is Ovid of an equal weight to the Bible?

[06:33] The passage is an acrostic poem: each tercet starts with a specific letter, here to spell out "man." But does that rhetorical technique actually work for this passage? Are these all "men"? Or even humans?

[10:05] The tercets are thematically in sets of four: the judgment of God, of the self, and of others. Again, doesn't that flatten the moral landscape?

[12:46] Do the penitents have to be this learned to glean the intended lesson? And is this the sum total of the reliefs on the terrace? Or are there more?

[15:13] How can you be guilty of pride against or toward a God you don't know?

[18:12] Where do these figures fit in hell? And while we're at it, where does pride fit in hell?

[21:29] Why does this passage end with Troy, the noble city?

[22:53] Why is this fake ekphrastic poetry?

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto XII, Lines 22 – 63

So I saw these figures carved here,

Better in their appearance thanks to the craft,

Along that path made into the side of the mountain.

I saw the one who was made nobler

Than any other creature; he fell like lightning

From the sky over to one side.

On the other side, I saw Briareus,

Fixed in place by a celestial lightning bolt,

Now heavy on the earth in the chill of death.

I saw Thymbraeus. I saw Pallas and Mars,

Stilled suited up in armor, along with their father,

All marveling at the scattered limbs of the giants.

I saw Nimrod at the pediment of his grand work,

Seemingly lost and staring at the people

Who partook of his pride at Shinar.

Oh, Niobe, with your sad eyes,

I saw you carved into relief in the road bed

And set among your dead, seven sons and seven daughters.

Oh, Saul, what you looked like! You were

Thrown onto your own sword and dead at Gilboa,

Which never after had any rain or dew.

Oh, crazy Arachne, I saw you

Morphing into a spider, pathetic, wound up in your own strands,

The very work that brought you so much woe.

Oh, Reheboam, the image of you doesn’t seem to be terrible

But rather to cower, for a chariot carries

The thing off without anyone’s giving it chase.

Now the hard pavement showed

The way in which Alcmeon caused the unfortunate jewelry

To appear not worth the price his mother paid for it.

And it showed the way in which his sons

Fell on top of Sennacherib inside the temple—

And how, having killed him, they left him there.

And it showed the way in which Tomyris

Made ruin and cruel slaughter when she said to Cyrus,

“You were thirsty for blood; I intend to fill you up with it.”

And it showed the way in which the Assyrians

Were routed and put to flight after Holofernes was killed

And the remains of his slaughter were littered about.

I saw Troy in cinders and wreckage.

Oh, Ilion, how you were debased and vile

Was shown in the symbolism I could make out.