[435] _Some of them, etc._: In this the third round of the Seventh Circle are punished those guilty of sins of violence against God, against nature, and against the arts by which alone a livelihood can honestly be won. Those guilty as against God, the blasphemers, lie prone like Capaneus (line 46), and are subject to the fiercest pain. Those guilty of unnatural vice are stimulated into ceaseless motion, as described in Cantos XV. and XVI. The usurers, those who despise honest industry and the humanising arts of life, are found crouching on the ground (_Inf._ xvii. 43). [436] _The Alps_: Used here for mountains in general. [437] _Such Alexander, etc._: The reference is to a pretended letter of Alexander to Aristotle, in which he tells of the various hindrances met with by his army from snow and rain and showers of fire. But in that narrative it is the snow that is trampled down, while the flakes of fire are caught by the soldiers upon their outspread cloaks. The story of the shower of fire may have been suggested by Plutarch's mention of the mineral oil in the province of Babylon, a strange thing to the Greeks; and of how they were entertained by seeing the ground, which had been sprinkled with it, burst into flame. [438] _Eternal fire_: As always, the character of the place and of the punishment bears a relation to the crimes of the inhabitants. They sinned against nature in a special sense, and now they are confined to the sterile sand where the only showers that fall are showers of fire. [439] _The wretched hands_: The dance, named in the original the _tresca_, was one in which the performers followed a leader and imitated him in all his gestures, waving their hands as he did, up and down, and from side to side. The simile is caught straight from common life. [440] _At the gate_: Of the city of Dis (_Inf._ viii. 82). [441] _Was slain, etc._: Capaneus, one of the Seven Kings, as told below, when storming the walls of Thebes, taunted the other gods with impunity, but his blasphemy against Jupiter was answered by a fatal bolt. [442] _Mongibello_: A popular name of Etna, under which mountain was situated the smithy of Vulcan and the Cyclopes. [443] _Phlegra_: Where the giants fought with the gods. [444] _Fit ornament, etc._: Even if untouched by the pain he affects to despise, he would yet suffer enough from the mad hatred of God that rages in his breast. Capaneus is the nearest approach to the Satan of Milton found in the _Inferno_. From the need of getting law enough by which to try the heathen Dante is led into some inconsistency. After condemning the virtuous heathen to Limbo for their ignorance of the one true God, he now condemns the wicked heathen to this circle for despising false gods. Jupiter here stands for, as need scarcely be said, the Supreme Ruler; and in that sense he is termed God (line 69). But it remains remarkable that the one instance of blasphemous defiance of God should be taken from classical fable.