The Three Florentines

In canto XVI, already within hearing of the water falling into the next circle, three shades break away running from a crowd that passes under the rain of fire and come towards Dante crying «Sòstati tu ch’a l’abito ne sembri essere alcun di nostra terra prava». They cannot stop, so when they reach him they make a wheel of themselves, all three, like oiled wrestlers sizing each other up, each keeping his face on him, so that the neck travels the opposite way to the feet. They are Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi and Iacopo Rusticucci, Florentines of great name: Dante had asked Ciacco about two of them in the third circle, and had been told that if he went down far enough he would see them.

In the game they walk in a small crowd of their own on the sand, east of the last stretch of the stream, among those who never stop. When your road along the stream comes within two metres of the bend towards the chasm, and Brunetto is no longer walking at your side telling his story, they break away crying and run to a wheel on the sand between the channel and the cliff, never inside the cover of the channel. They wheel at walking pace with their faces on one fixed point of the bank, the edge of the channel in front of them, and when the twist would go past a hundred and thirty degrees the head swings over to the other shoulder. They do not follow you: the point is fixed, and it is where anyone who stops to listen is standing.

One colloquy speaks for all three, and one name goes into the book. Promise to speak of them and they answer «Se campi d’esti luoghi bui e torni a riveder le belle stelle, quando ti gioverà dicere “I’ fui”, fa che di noi a la gente favelle», then break the wheel, and their legs seem wings. Tell them you are staying and they give you the law of the sand: whoever of them stops lies a hundred years under the fire without being able to shield himself, and going round in a wheel is the only way they have of stopping. Walk past and they ask nothing more: they are gone before an amen could be said.