Commentary Purg XXII 40-41

The meaning of these lines, clearly a translation of a text of Virgil (Aen. III.56-57), is the subject of much debate involving questions about the exact nature of what Dante wrote ('Per che' or 'perché'?) and what he took Virgil to mean (or decided to make Virgil say).  Here, as always, we have followed Petrocchi's text in our translation, even though in this case we are in particularly strenuous disagreement with him.  Here are the texts, Virgil's first: 

                        Quid non mortalia pectora cogis,

                  auri sacra fames? 

(to what do you not drive human hearts, impious hunger for gold?) 

As for Dante's text, it may be either of the following: 

                    Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fame

                  de l'oro, l'appetito de' mortali? 

(to what end, O cursèd hunger for gold, / do you not govern [drive] the appetite of mortals?) 

or     Perché non reggi tu, o sacra fame

                  de l'oro, l'appetito de' mortali? 

(why do you not govern mortal appetites, O holy [i.e., temperate] hunger for gold?) 

It is true that the Latin adjective sacer can mean either 'holy, sacred' or 'unholy, impious.'  However, the meaning of Aeneas's outcry, recounting the horrific deed committed by Polymnestor against Polydorus (see C.Inf.XIII.31-39) is clear to all; he means 'impious.'  But what of Dante's text?  The 'traditional' reading has him maintaining the negative valence of Virgil's sacer (which would then be the only occurrence among twelve in which sacro does not mean 'holy' in his poem -- see [Inf XXVII 91], [Purg IX 134], [Purg XIX 38], [Purg XXII 40], [Purg XXXI 1], [Par III 114], [Par VI 7], [Par XII 62], [Par XV 64], [Par XXI 73], [Par XXV 1], [Par XXXII 21]).  See Jacopo della Lana (DDP Lana.Purg.XXII.37-42) who reads the lines exactly as modern 'revisionists' do, as does the Anonimo Fiorentino (DDP Fiorentino.Purg.XXII.37-42), who also realizes that Statius needed to understand the lines as condemning prodigality and not avarice and thus adjusted their meaning to fit his own condition.  Perhaps no early reader, among those who understood Statius as deliberately misreading Virgil, was as 'modern' and 'revisionist' as Francesco da Buti (DDP Buti.Purg.XXII.25-54), who simply argued that Dante was deliberately giving Virgil's text another meaning than it held because it suited his purpose to do so.  A similar, if more cautious, reading is found in Venturi (DDP Venturi.Purg.XXII.38-41), blamed by Andreoli (DDP Andreoli.Purg.XXII.40-41) for his 'absurd supposition.'  Bianchi (DDP Bianchi.Purg.XXII.40-41) was perhaps the first to appreciate the absurdity of the notion that Dante had used the verb reggere (to govern) in a pejorative sense.  The debate continues into our own day, mainly propelled by the notion that Dante could not possibly have misunderstood Virgil's words and therefore did not grossly misrepresent them.  This, however, is to overlook the fact that it is the character Statius who is understanding them as they took on significance for him, guilty of prodigality, not of avarice.  And just as he will later reveal his 'misinterpretation' of Virgil's fourth Eclogue at [Purg XXII 70-72], a 'misreading' that saved his soul, so now he shows how his moral rehabilitation was begun when he 'misread' a passage in the Aeneid.  The debate is finally in such condition that this view, present in some of the earliest commentators but energetically attacked over the centuries, now may seem only sensible.  See, among others, Ronconi (Ronc.1958.1), pp. 85-86; Groppi (Grop.1962.1), pp. 163-68; Paratore (Para.1968.1), pp. 73-75; Hollander (Holl.1980.1), pp. 212-13, and (Holl.1983.1), pp. 86-89, completely in accord with Shoaf's earlier and nearly identical reading (Shoa.1978.1).  They are joined by Barolini (Baro.1984.1), p. 260, and, at length, by Martinez (Mart.1989.2).  A similar, if less developed argument, is found in Mazzotta (Mazz.1979.1), p. 222.  And, for wholehearted acceptance of Shoaf's argument, see Picone (Pico.1993.2), pp. 325-26.  Neglected, by all but Barolini and Shoaf, is Austin (Aust.1933.1).  Mainly forgotten as well is the then daring support of Francesco da Buti by Alfredo Galletti (Gall.1909.1), pp. 17-18.  Among Italian students of the problem who accept this basic view of its resolution see Chiamenti (Chia.1995.1), pp. 131-37, who offers most of the essential bibliography for the problem but is, however, surprisingly unaware of the support for his position available in his American precursors' analyses of what he considers 'the most beautiful example of free translation in Dante' (p. 134).  For the general question of Dante's Statius see Brugnoli (Brug.1969.1) and Rossi (Ross.1993.1); for more recent bibliography see Glenn (Glen.1999.1), p. 114, and Marchesi (Marc.2002.3), an extended discussion of the possible Augustinian sources of the 'aggressive' reading of Virgilian text attributed to Statius by Dante.  For yet another inconclusive and unconvincing attempt to deal with the problematic passage as not involving a 'misreading,' offering a slight and probably unacceptable twist to the traditional reading, 'per che' should be understood as 'quid' in the sense of 'quomodo' (in English perhaps translated as 'in how many ways,' said in such a way as to express a certain irony), see Baldan (Bald.1986.1). However, for a stinging rebuke to Petrocchi's (Petr.1967.1) philological procedures here see Palma di Cesnola (Palm.2003.1), p. 79n.