The verse proceeds to torments new, the twentieth strain of the first song. Earnest, Dante looks into a depth moistened with tears, and beheld a tribe that came along the hollow vale in silence weeping, their step as quires chanting solemn litanies on earth. As his eye descends more direct, each seems wondrously reversed at the neck-bone, so the countenance is averted from the reins. Because none might look before him, they are compelled to advance with backward gait. Perhaps palsy has so transposed someone, but he never saw it nor believes it so.
Now, reader, think how long he could keep his visage dry, when he beheld our form distorted so that tears down-streaming rolled on the hinder parts fallen from the face. Against a rock he leant and wept. Virgil: what, and art thou too witless as the rest? Here pity most doth show herself alive when she is dead. What guilt exceedeth his who with Heaven's judgment in his passion strives? Raise up thy head, and see the man before whose eyes earth gaped in Thebes, when all cried Amphiaraus, whither rushest, why leavest thou the war? He fell ruining as far as Minos, whose grapple none eludes. Lo how he makes the breast his shoulders, and who once too far before him wished to see, now backward looks, and treads reverse his path. Tiresias, who changed semblance through every limb, then had to strike the serpents again before the better plumes might shoot. Aruns comes with his belly facing, from a cavern on Luni's mountains among Carrara's marbles, where he held stars and main-sea in boundless view. Next, Manto, loosen'd tresses overspreading the bosom one cannot see. After her sire died and Thebes mourned, she wandered, found the marsh of Mincius, and to shun all human converse remained with her slaves, and lived, and left her body tenantless. On those dead bones they reared a city, calling it Mantua, who first chose the spot, nor asked another omen for the name. If thou hear henceforth another origin assigned of that my country, I forewarn thee now, that falsehood none beguile thee of the truth.
Dante: teacher, I conclude thy words so certain that all else shall be to me as embers lacking life. Who here merits more especial note? The spirit from whose cheek the beard sweeps o'er his shoulders brown: Eurypilus, who with Calchas gave the sign at Aulis when first to cut the cable, as Virgil's own tragic strain sings. That other, slender round the loins, was Michael Scot, practised in every slight of magic wile. Guido Bonatti; Asdente, who now were willing he had tended still the thread and cordwain, and too late repents. Next the wretches who left needle, shuttle, and spindle, and became diviners with images and herbs. But onward now: Cain with fork of thorns confines the moon, touching the wave beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight the moon was round. Thou mayst remember well: for she good service did thee in the gloom of the deep wood. This said, both onward moved.
