When our own image near me I beheld
Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes
Along the fissure bathed the hinder parts.

Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak
Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said
To me: "Art thou, too, of the other fools?

Here pity lives when it is wholly dead;
Who is a greater reprobate than he
Who feels compassion at the doom divine?

Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom
Opened the earth before the Thebans' eyes;
Wherefore they all cried: 'Whither rushest thou,

Amphiaraus? Why dost leave the war?'
And downward ceased he not to fall amain
As far as Minos, who lays hold on all.

See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders!
Because he wished to see too far before him
Behind he looks, and backward goes his way:

Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed,
When from a male a female he became,
His members being all of them transformed;

And afterwards was forced to strike once more