Then he said to me, “That one, who from his cheek stretches his beard upon his dusky shoulders, was an augur when Greece was so emptied of males that they scarce remained for the cradles, and with Calchas at Aulis he gave the moment for cutting the first cable. Eurypylus was his name, and thus my lofty Tragedy sings him in some place;[1] well knowest thou this, who knowest the whole of it. That other who is so small in the flanks was Michael Scott,[2] who verily knew the game of magical deceptions. See Guido Bonatti,[3] see Asdente,[4] who now would wish he had attended to his leather and his thread, but late repents. See the forlorn women who left the needle, the spool, and the spindle, and became fortune-tellers; they wrought spells with herb and with image. [1] Suspensi Eurypylum scitantem oracula Phoebi Mittimus. Aeneid, ii. 112. [2] A wizard of such dreaded fame That, when in Salamanca’s cave Him listed his magic wand to wave, The bells would ring in Notre Dame. Lay of the Lost Minstrel, Canto ii. [3] A famous astrologer of Forli, in the thirteenth century. [4] Dante, in the Canvito, trattato iv. c. 16, says that if NOBLE meant being widely known, then “Asdente, the shoemaker of Parma, would be more noble than any of his fellow-citizens.” “But come on now, for already Cain with his thorns[1] holds the confines of both the hemispheres, and touches the wave below Seville. And already yesternight was the moon round; well shouldst thou remember it, for it did thee no harm sometimes in the deep wood.” Thus he spoke to me, and we went on the while. [1] The Man in the Moon, according to an old popular legend. CANTO XXI. Eighth Circle: fifth pit: barrators.—A magistrate of Lucca.—The Malebranche.—Parley with them. So from bridge to bridge we went, speaking other things, which my Comedy careth not to sing, and held the summit, when we stopped to see the next cleft of Malebolge and the next vain lamentations; and I saw it wonderfully dark. As in the Arsenal of the Venetians, in winter, the sticky pitch for smearing their unsound vessels is boiling, because they cannot go to sea, and, instead thereof, one builds him a new bark, and one caulks the sides of that which hath made many a voyage; one hammers at the prow, and one at the stern; another makes oars, and another twists the cordage; and one the foresail and the mainsail patches,—so, not by fire, but by divine art, a thick pitch was boiling there below, which belimed the bank on every side. I saw it, but saw not in it aught but the bubbles which the boiling raised, and all of it swelling up and again sinking compressed.