Commentary Inf XXIII 124-126

The high priest, unlike Jesus, is crucified upon the ground and trodden upon (thus seeming so 'ignoble'). There has been much discussion of the possible reasons for Virgil's 'marveling' over the crucified shape of Caiaphas. Castelvetro, in error, says that Virgil would have seen Caiaphas on an earlier visit to the depths (DDP Castelvetro.Inf.XXIII.124-125); Lombardi (DDP Lombardi.Inf.XXIII.124) gets this right: when Virgil was sent down by Erichtho ([Inf IX 22-24]), Christ had not yet been crucified and Caiaphas not yet been damned. Further, and as Margherita Frankel has argued (Fran.1984.1, p. 87), Virgil has already seen Christ and his Cross ([Inf IV 53-54]). Nonetheless, and as others have pointed out, Virgil does not marvel at others who were not here before his first visit. Rossetti (DDP Rossetti.Inf.XXIII.124-126) remarks that nowhere else in Inferno does Virgil marvel at any other sinner, the text thus conferring a specialness upon this scene. Benvenuto da Imola (DDP Benvenuto.Inf.XXIII.114-117) and Vellutello (DDP Vellutello.Inf.XXIII.124-126) both offered an interesting hypothesis, which has since made its way into some modern commentaries: the verse at line 117, 'one man should be martyred for the people,' seems to echo a verse of Virgil's (Aen. V.815): 'unum per multis dabitur caput' (one life shall be given for many). (In that passage Neptune speaks of the coming 'sacrifice' of Palinurus.) Vellutello sees that 'prophecy' as an unwitting Virgilian prophecy of Christ, and suggests that Virgil now wonders at how close he had come. If that seems perhaps a forced reading, a similar effect is gained by the phrase that Dante uses to indicate Caiaphas's punishment in his 'eternal exile' (etterno essilio). That phrase will only be used once again in the poem, precisely by Virgil himself to indicate his own punishment in Limbo ([Purg XXI 118]), as Castelvetro observed, if without drawing any conclusion from the observation (DDP Castelvetro.Inf.XXIII.126). The Anonimo Fiorentino, perhaps better than many later commentators, caught the flavor of this passage, which he reads as indicating Virgil's grief for himself because he had not lived in a time when he could have known Christ (DDP Fiorentino.Inf.XXIII.124-126). In this reader's view, Virgil wonders at Caiaphas because the high priest had actually known Christ in the world and yet turned against Him. Had Virgil had that opportunity, he thinks, his life (and afterlife) would have been very different.