The forest was a trackless and dreadful forest—­the leaves not green, but black—­the boughs not freely growing, but knotted and twisted—­the fruit no fruit, but thorny poison.  The Harpies wailed among the trees, occasionally showing their human faces; and on every side of him Dante heard lamenting human voices, but could see no one from whom they came.  “Pluck one of the boughs,” said Virgil.  Dante did so; and blood and a cry followed it.

“Why pluckest thou me?” said the trunk.  “Men have we been, like thyself; but thou couldst not use us worse, had we been serpents.”  The blood and words came out together, as a green bough hisses and spits in the fire.

The voice was that of Piero delle Vigne, the good chancellor of the Emperor Frederick the Second.  Just though he had been to others, he was thus tormented for having been unjust to himself; for, envy having wronged him to his sovereign, who sentenced him to lose his eyes, he dashed his brains out against a wall.  Piero entreated Dante to vindicate his memory.  The poet could not speak for pity; so Virgil made the promise for him, inquiring at the same time in what manner it was that Suicides became thus identified with trees, and how their souls were to rejoin their bodies at the day of judgment.  Piero said, that the moment the fierce self-murderer’s spirit tore itself from the body, and passed before Charon, it fell, like a grain of corn, into that wood, and so grew into a tree.  The Harpies then fed on its leaves, causing both pain and a vent for lamentation.  The body it would never again enter, having thus cast away itself, but it would finally drag the body down to it by a violent attraction; and every suicide’s carcass will be hung upon the thorn of its wretched shade.

The naked souls of two men, whose profusion had brought them to a violent end, here came running through the wood from the fangs of black female mastiff’s—­leaving that of a suicide to mourn the havoc which their passage had made of his tree.  He begged his countryman to gather his leaves up, and lay them at the foot of his trunk, and Dante did so; and then he and Virgil proceeded on their journey.

They issued from the wood on a barren sand, flaming hot, on which multitudes of naked souls lay down, or sat huddled up, or restlessly walked about, trying to throw from them incessant flakes of fire, which came down like a fall of snow.  They were the souls of the Impious.  Among them was a great spirit, who lay scornfully submitting himself to the fiery shower, as though it had not yet ripened him.[22] Overhearing Dante ask his guide who he was, he answered for himself, and said, “The same dead as living.  Jove will tire his flames out before they conquer me.”

“Capaneus,” exclaimed Virgil, “thy pride is thy punishment.  No martyrdom were sufficient for thee, equal to thine own rage.”  The besieger of Thebes made no reply.