And he whose tufts our ladder rungs supplied. Fixed as he was continues to appear. 120 Headlong from Heaven he fell upon this side; Whereon the land, protuberant here before, For fear of him did in the ocean hide, And 'neath our sky emerged: land, as of yore[876] Still on this side, perhaps that it might shun His fall, heaved up, and filled this depth no more.' From Belzebub[877] still widening up and on, Far-stretching as the sepulchre,[878] extends A region not beheld, but only known By murmur of a brook[879] which through it wends, 130 Declining by a channel eaten through The flinty rock; and gently it descends. My Guide and I, our journey to pursue To the bright world, upon this road concealed Made entrance, and no thought of resting knew. He first, I second, still ascending held Our way until the fair celestial train Was through an opening round to me revealed: And, issuing thence, we saw the stars[880] again. FOOTNOTES: [858] _Vexilla, etc._: '_The banners of the King of Hell advance._' The words are adapted from a hymn of the Cross used in Holy Week; and they prepare us to find in Lucifer the opponent of 'the Emperor who reigns on high' (_Inf._ i. 124). It is somewhat odd that Dante should have put a Christian hymn into Virgil's mouth. [859] _Now was I where_: In the fourth and inner division or ring of the Ninth Circle. Here are punished those guilty of treachery to their lawful lords or to their benefactors. From Judas Iscariot, the arch-traitor, it takes the name of Judecca. [860] _Some stood, etc._: It has been sought to distinguish the degrees of treachery of the shades by means of the various attitudes assigned to them. But it is difficult to make more out of it than that some are suffering more than others. All of them are the worst of traitors, hard-hearted and cold-hearted, and now they are quite frozen in the ice, sealed up even from the poor relief of intercourse with their fellow-sinners. [861] _The creature once, etc._: Lucifer, guilty of treachery against the Highest, at _Purg._ xii. 25 described as 'created noble beyond all other creatures.' Virgil calls him Dis, the name used by him for Pluto in the _Æneid_, and the name from which that of the City of Unbelief is taken (_Inf._ viii. 68).