at Briareus, but he was too far off.  He saw, however, Antaeus, who, not having fought against heaven, was neither tongue-confounded nor shackled; and Virgil requested the “taker of a thousand lions,” by the fame which the living poet had it in his power to give him, to bear the travellers in his arms down the steep descent into this deeper portion of hell, which was the region of tormenting cold.  Antmus, stooping, like the leaning tower of Bologna, to take them up, gathered them in his arms, and, depositing them in the gulf below, raised himself to depart like the mast of a ship.[42]

Had I hoarse and rugged words equal to my subject, says the poet, I would now make them fuller of expression, to suit the rocky horror of this hole of anguish; but I have not, and therefore approach it with fear, since it is no jesting enterprise to describe the depths of the universe, nor fit for a tongue that babbles of father and mother.[43] Let such of the Muses assist me as turned the words of Amphion into Theban walls; so shall the speech be not too far different from the matter.

Oh, ill-starred creatures! wretched beyond all others, to inhabit a place so hard to speak of—­better had ye been sheep or goats.

The poet was beginning to walk with his guide along the place in which the giant had set them down, and was still looking up at the height from which he had descended, when a voice close to him said, “Have a care where thou treadest.  Hurt not with thy feet the heads of thy unhappy brethren.”

Dante looked down and before him, and saw that he was walking on a lake of ice, in which were Murderous Traitors up to their chins, their teeth chattering, their faces held down, their eyes locked up frozen with tears.  Dante saw two at his feet so closely stuck together, that the very hairs of their heads were mingled.  He asked them who they were, and as they lifted up their heads for astonishment, and felt the cold doubly congeal them, they dashed their heads against one another for hate and fury.  They were two brothers who had murdered each other.[44] Near them were other Tuscans, one of whom the cold had deprived of his ears; and thousands more were seen grinning like dogs, for the pain.

Dante, as he went along, kicked the face of one of them, whether by chance, or fate, or will,[45] he could not say.  The sufferer burst into tears, and cried out, “Wherefore dost thou torment me?  Art thou come to revenge the defeat at Montaperto?” The pilgrim at this question felt eager to know who he was; but the unhappy wretch would not tell.  His countryman seized him by the hair to force him; but still he said he would not tell, were he to be scalped a thousand times.  Dante, upon this, began plucking up his hairs by the roots, the man barking,[46] with his eyes squeezed up, at every pull; when another soul exclaimed, “Why, Bocca, what the devil ails thee?  Must thou needs bark for cold as well as chatter?” [47]