Robert Hollander

(Princeton University)
5 July 2013
The Trouble with Ciacco
Before he resumes his customary role, the protagonist's guide is silent from Inferno 5.111
until 6.106. This silence contrasts with a more usual verbal presence – Virgil had spoken
some two hundred and forty verses in the roughly four cantos of poetic space
between Inferno 1.66 and 5.78. In each of the following episodes, those involving
Francesca and Ciacco, the reader is abandoned by the poet to draw his or her own
conclusions about the nature of the "correct" response to these two particular sinners.

In Inferno 6, all the first contributing details lead us to believe that the sinner whom we
meet amidst such squalid surroundings must be squalid himself. However, our author has
turned the tables on us. While Francesca is allowed, at least to a certain degree, to surmount
her physical condition (if flying around hell forever in the company of the man with whom
you lost your chance at heaven is hardly what most of us would choose for our eternities),
Ciacco and his co-gluttons are seen in what, many will concur, is one of the most disgusting
situations of any group of sinners in hell. The stinking downpour that sluices eternally
down on him and on his colleagues in gluttony puts some commentators in mind of vomit.
[1]
This study will examine only briefly what has become perhaps the most problematic aspect
of Ciacco’s canto, the debate over his name. Was this his orthographically-derived
nickname or a coinage of scornful intent, based on the Florentine vernacular for "pig"? That
is, was his actual name, probably Jacopo (or possibly Giacomo, as some have suggested),
simply transformed to "Ciacco," without any necessarily negative piggish implications? Or
are we supposed to make out in that nickname a clear porcine resonance? Further, whatever
the actual circumstance, what did Dante hear in the appellation? Whether Ciacco's
acquaintances were only using what they took for a shortened form of his Christian name or
whether they were knowingly following a local tradition that associated him with
piggishness is not knowable. Further, it is at least possible that Dante is merely repeating
the nickname as he had heard it from others and without knowing whether its at least
possible nasty reference was intended by its users. It is conceivable that Ciacco was the
object of a demeaning sobriquet of which the poet was unaware; it is equally possible that
Ciacco was merely a shortened version of his name, while the poet was indeed aware of the
possibility of the porcine reference it bears. We hear the name twice (at vv. 52 and 58), first
as the character identifies himself ("Voi cittadini mi chiamaste Ciacco") and then as the
protagonist calls out to him: "Ciacco, il tuo affanno /  mi pesa sì, ch'a lagrimar mi 'nvita."
While we may imagine that Ciacco's self-identification is rueful, remembering his only
fitting vernacular tag, his old friend's use of the name – whatever its origin – seems without
any negative feeling.[2] In any case, while it seems possible, even probable, that Dante was
aware that the nickname of his dead friend (the first former acquaintance whom the
protagonist meets in the afterworld) was the equivalent of "Piggy" or "Hogface," we cannot
be certain that such was the case; further, Dante may have been aware of the gross origin of
the nickname, but both poet and protagonist think of it and of its bearer in kindly terms, if
with less sympathy than the protagonist displays for Francesca.[3] In any case, even if we
could be sure that the poet thought of "Ciacco" as an essentially insulting pig-derived
nickname (as I happen to believe he did), it is nonetheless clear that the character is treated
in a perhaps – given his situation and the grossness of his punishment – surprisingly
positive light. Campi (1888-93, comm. 6.52-54) briefly reviews the history of the question
of Ciacco's name and then resolves it as follows: "chi lo tiene per corruzione del nome
proprio Jacopo, e chi per soprannome e sinonimo di porco; e sto per quest'ultimo
intendimento, parendomi chiaramente espresso dal chiamaste Ciacco." One understands the
drift of this thought: his fellow Florentines called Jacopo not by that name but by his
porcine nickname. On the other hand, could not his use of the past definite indicate that
Ciacco is remembering his time on earth, when he was happy to be recognized by his
Florentine nickname, Ciacco, short for Giacomo, and without any piggish implication? I
confess I lean strongly toward the other interpretation, but insist that we really do not have
the grounds on which to base a final decision.
This configuration, that of the "contrastive neighbors" Francesca and Ciacco, is repeated at
least once more in the Inferno, with Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. 26 and 27).
[4] Like Francesca, Ulysses has enjoyed a "good press" – certainly among Romantic
readers and into our own time. In the run-up to the scene, it is notable that Virgil, as guide,
refers to both of these two sinners who are wrapped in flame, Ulysses and Diomedes (Inf.
26.55-63, 74-75, 79-83), if he eventually calls on one of them to speak rather than the other
(26.83-84). Once Ulysses begins to speak, however, Diomedes is never mentioned again
(26.85-142). Ulysses cares little for anyone but himself; his "brothers" ("O frati," he
remembers calling out to them [27.112]) are in fact only dear to him as pliers of oars. This
positive use of the noun "frate" as a vocative is unique in Inferno, although it becomes a
key word in the direct addresses of Purgatorio (where it appears nine times) and
in Paradiso (where it enjoys five such appearances).[5] It is used by Ulysses as part of his
"con" to encourage his nameless shipmates to row him toward venturesome discovery. This
is not the place to offer my non-Romantic reading of Ulysses, along with Francesca a
much-loved and supposedly sympathetic figure. For example, according to Francesco De
Sanctis, Dante has created in Ulysses "a statue to this precursor of Christopher Columbus, a
pyramid set in the mud of hell."[6] Suffice it to say that we by now ought to have learned to
see through Ulysses, whose self-praising bluster may sound like heroism to many readers,
but which, examined carefully, turns out in fact to be vainglorious bravado, thoroughly
fitting in one found at this depth of hell. What of Guido? Unlike Ulysses (and like Ciacco),
he is straightforward about the nature of his sin. Where Ciacco had confessed to "la
dannosa colpa de la gola" (the pernicious fault of gluttony –  Inf.  6.53), Guido similarly
identifies himself as a sinner, one who had offered up "consiglio frodolente" (27.116). The
precision of these two self-describing and honest revelations set Ciacco and Guido apart
from many of their colleagues in eternal punishment. They at least know and own up to the
crimes they had committed and were condemned for. I am not arguing that we readers are
supposed to feel sympathy for either of them in their eternal punishment, only that their
honesty is sharply contrastive when we look back to consider the comportment of both their
predecessors, Francesca and Ulysses, who somehow never allow themselves to
communicate the reason for their presence in hell. In Francesca's case, it was apparently the
fault of another that she had sinned, the god of Love (V.100-106) and/or that damnable
author of a French romance (5.124-138). Further, she claims that her husband will occupy
the deepest part of hell (5.107) and thus, a reader is asked to believe, was guilty of a more
heinous crime than she and Paolo. It would have been easy enough for the poet to have
confirmed this claim, when he described that zone, had he mentioned one of its future
tenants, thus potentially valorizing Francesca's right to our sympathy. He did not choose to
do so. As for Ulysses, he employs words for "I" or "me" or "mine" a total of eleven times in
his first twenty-two verses (91-112). It is difficult not to grasp the poet's strategy in this
respect; nonetheless, most readers even today prefer a nobler portrait of this figure and so
supply it, despite our poet's craft in constructing this heroic confidence man, one capable of
leading his companions to their deaths without feeling much by way of acknowledgment of
having done so.
Francesca and Ulysses (along with perhaps Farinata and Cavalcante, Pier delle Vigne,
Brunetto, and Ugolino) are among the most beloved of Dante's sinners. I have long ago
tried to argue that the poet has organized the parade of sinners and their sins that
is Inferno in five cycles of pity and fear, in which these "sympathetic sinners" test the
developing moral resolve of the protagonist (and of the reader) as the poem describes a
descent into this underworld of sinners.[7] This is an attempt to broaden that understanding
by demonstrating that Ciacco, for all his filth, is preferable, on at least one ground --his
honesty-- to his apparently more attractive neighbor.

[1] See Robert Dombrowski, "The Grain of Hell: A Note on Retribution

in Inferno VI," Dante Studies 88 (1970): 103-8, for the notion that the hellish downpour
takes, as its central and antithetic model, the manna promised by God to Moses in the Bible
(Exodus 16:4): "Ecce ego pluam vobis panes de caelo" (Behold, I will rain bread from
heaven for you). See, for a similar view, Simone Marchesi, "'Epicuri de grege porcus':
Ciacco, Epicurus and Isidore of Seville," Dante Studies 117 (1999): 117-31, citing, for the
history of interpretation of this scene, José Blanco Jimenez, "Rassegna bibliografica su 'Voi
cittadini mi chiamaste Ciacco'," Critica letteraria 14 (1977): 148-55.
[2] Perhaps the attempt to resolve this problem that is most sympathetic to Ciacco is the one
offered by Grabher (1934, comm. 6.52 [cited, as are other commentators, from the DDP]):
"[D]ice il Buti che secondo 'alquanti... è nome di porco'; ma Dante, che dimentica in Ciacco
il goloso per farne una figura tanto più seria, non poteva chiamarlo così, tanto più che egli
stesso pronuncerà il nome di lui in un tono pieno di pietà al v. 58: 'Ciacco, il tuo affanno'
[...]. Dunque è nome di persona."
[3] I find that I am in essential agreement with Scartazzini (1872-82, comm. 6.59): "Mi
pesa: mi rammarica tanto che mi induce a piangere. Ciacco merita compassione avendo
avuto delle buone qualità; vedi il passo del Boccaccio nella nota al v. 52. Ma questa
compassione non è tanto affettuosa come quella che il poeta sentiva per l'infelice
Francesca. Più i due poeti vanno in giù, e più la compassione di Dante va scemando."
[4] Farinata and Cavalcante (Inf. 10), Pier delle Vigne and Capaneus (Inf. 13 & 14),
Ugolino and Branca d'Oria (Inf. 33) offer other possible pairings of a similar kind but, in
my opinion, less notably than do Ulysses and Guido.
[5] See Hollander (2003, comm. Purg. 4.127 & 19.133). And see the negative use at Inf.
28.109.
[6] Storia della letteratura italiana, 4th ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1949 [1870], 201-2); my
translation.
[7] See Allegory in Dante's "Commedia" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969),
301-7).