Canto XXV

“Oh me, Agnel, how you are changing!” (25.68, 383).

Durling identifies Agnel as “Agnello dei Brunelleschi, member of another prominent noble family” (392). Using commentary from the Dartmouth Dante Project, I will add to Agnel’s history. First, Charles S. Singleton from 1970-75, explains that “According to the early commentators, this first spirit (see vs. 35) is Agnello or Agnolo de' Brunelleschi (a Ghibelline family of Florence), who first joined the Bianchi [which are the white guelphs] and then went over to the Neri [which are the black guelphs]”. He then quotes the only source to give pertinent information, the Chiose anonime, which gives the history that:

This Agnello was a member of the Brunelleschi family of

Florence. Even as a boy, he used to empty the purses of his

father and mother; later, he would empty the strongbox in

the shop and steal other things. Then, as an adult, he

broke into other people's houses. He would dress like a

pauper and wear the beard of an old man. And for this

reason, Dante has him transformed through the serpent's

bites, as he was when he stole.

Lasly, Robbery Hollander from 2000-2007, adds: “Agnello (or Agnolo) dei Brunelleschi, a Ghibelline family, of whom the commentators have little to say that can be relied upon as coming from history rather than from Dante's placement of him among the thieves”. As the commentators have explained there is very little known about Agnel historically, which makes his horrific transformation interesting and slightly confusing. This punishment alludes to Ovid; Salmacis desires the young Hermaphroditus. He rebuffs her flattery and advances, she follows him. Seeing him naked in the water, Salmacis can “hardly postpone her pleasure, mad to hold him, amorous, eager” (Ovid 92). She flings herself on him, twines her body around his; Ovid describes it like “as a serpent caught by an eagle, borne aloft, entangles coils around head and talons, or as ivy winds around great oaks, or an octopus extends its prey within its tentacles” (Ovid 93). Dante uses the ivy imagery in this scene with Agnel on lines 58-59: “ivy never took root on a tree so tightly as the horrible beast grew vinelike around the other’s limbs” (383). Salmacis asks the gods that they never be separated; they grant her request: “two bodies seemed to merge together, one face, one form… no longer two beings, and no longer man and woman, but neither, and yet both” (Ovid 93). Hermaphroditus pleads with his father and mother that the pool be cursed that whosoever enters the pool becomes “half man, made weaker by the touch of this evil water” (Ovid 93). Dante pulls on both of these myths and outdoes them with his merging of the snake and sinner in Canto 25. Both of the metamorphosis alluded to here are reflected in the canto on lines 67-69: “The other two were staring at him, and each cried: “Oh me Agnel, how you are changing! See, already you are neither two nor one”” (383). In the same way that Alpheus forces Arethusa to become one in the water and Salmacis forces her fusion onto Hermaphroditus, the snake, which commentators identify as the missing Cianfa, forces the snake-sinner fusion. (SJ)

“About Cadmus and Arethusa let Ovid be silent” (25.94, 385).

Buoso’s punishment is an allusion to Ovid’s story of Cadmus and Harmonia. When readers first meet Cadmus in Metamorphoses, he is sent away to find his sister. After pleading to Apollo, the god sends Cadmus to follow a cow to where he should build his city. A serpent sacred to Mars lived in the area. It killed all of Cadmus’ men, and Cadmus vowed revenge. Once he had mortally wounded the serpent, he heard his prophecy: “Why, O Cadmus, stare at the serpent slain? You also, some day, will be a serpent for mortal men to stare at” (Ovid 60). The city that Cadmus founds becomes Thebes. Years pass, and Cadmus and his wife, Harmonia, leave Thebes. They travel sadly and wonder at their fate. Cadmus says if the gods are mad that he used the serpent’s teeth to create men, that he should be turned into a snake also. As he is speaking, he is transformed into a snake. Harmonia, in her love for Cadmus, asks to also change into a serpent. She does and the two slither away with each other. This allusion is echoed when the snake bites Buoso in the belly and he becomes a snake and the snake becomes the shade of a sinner.

Agnel’s punishment begins the allusions to Ovid’s Metamorphoses in this canto more specifically the sexual assaults of Arethusa from Alpeus and Hermaphroditus from Salmacis. First, Arethusa tells her story in the Metamorphoses pages 125-127. She explains she was a nymph, who did not like to be praised for her beauty. Tired and hot from her day of hunting, she cooled off in a clear and calm river. She hears Alpheus, a river-god, calling to her and she flees. Alpheus chases her in his human-form. Diana tries to save her by covering Arethusa with a cloud, but Alpheus waits. Before she can realize it, Arethusa has changed into “a stream of water”, which Dante calls a fountain. Realizing the change, Alpheus changes back into water-form, and joins the water that is Arethusa making the two one. (SJ)

“I want Buoso to run, as I have, on all sixes” (25.140, 387).

There is not much recorded about who Buoso could be, so debates have been had on his identity. Durling notes that early commentators identify him as “Buoso Donati, member of this powerful family… [stole] while in office” (396). Using the Dartmouth Dante Project, commentator John Carrol from 1904 notes: “The soul on whom he fastened is named Buoso, but nothing further is known of him. According to some commentators he was a certain Buoso degli Abati; while others identify him with that Buoso Donati who was so cleverly personated by Gianni Schicchi”. Hollander, Singleton, and Grandgent do not authoritatively identify him, but echo what Carrol has noted. (SJ)