INFERNO, Episode 47. Saved . . . By Mercury, Christ, The Archangel Michael, Someone: Inferno, Canto IX, Lines 64 - 106

We’ve been standing in front of the walls of Dis for forever! Finally, here comes heavenly help.

But which heaven? What help? Christ? The archangel Michael? Mercury, the messenger of the gods from Olympus?

Maybe all of them in this strange passage that offers us a passing glimpse of the entire AENEID, pulls off a bit of poetic derring-do by recasting a simile from Ovid in Christian terms, and offers us a disdainful figure who finally opens those gates . . . with a little wand.

Here’s my English translation of INFERNO, Canto IX, Lines 64 - 106:

And now there crashed across the turbulent waves

An awe-inspiring sound

That made the shore of the swamp start to tremble.

It was like the blast of a wind

That’s caused by opposing heat currents

Such that it strikes a forest without any resistance,

Splintering the branches, snapping them off, and sweeping them away,

Pouring forward with a lot of dust,

Putting the animals and shepherds to rout.

He unconvered my eyes and said, “Now look way out there

Over the ancient dross and focus in on

The spot where the smoke is the most intense.”

As frogs before a hostile

Snake will scatter and flee in every direction

Until they’re all bunched together on the land,

So I saw more than a thousand spirits fleeing

In front of one who strode along

Over the swamp of Styx with dry soles.

The air was acrid all around him,

And with his left hand he fanned his face, worn out

It appeared, with this sort of annoyance.

I well knew he’d been sent from heaven,

And I turned to my master, who made a sign

That I should stay quiet and bow down before him.

How full of disdain he seemed to me!
He came up to the gate and with a little wand

Opened it as if nothing held it in place.

“O outcasts from heaven, o despised people,”

He began as he stood on the awful threshold,

“What makes you stick to your insolence?

“Why do you kick against what is willed?

Its purpose can never be turned back

And it can increase your pain at any time.

“Do you think it helps to butt your skulls against fate?

Your Cerberus, as you well remember,

Got his chin and gullet flayed for stuff like this.”

Then he went back along the mucky road,

Without ever so much as making a gesture toward us. He looked like

A man pressed and gnawed by other cares

Than the ones caused by the guy in front of him.

We hightailed it to the city,

Fortified by his holy words.

We went in without the slightest battle challenge.