Note 208 — CANTO III.
James Romanes Sibbald translation
Horror-stricken: ‘My head enveloped in horror.’ Some texts have ‘error,’ and this yields a better meaning—that Dante is amazed to have come full into the crowd of suffering shades before he has even crossed Acheron. If with the best texts ‘horror’ be read, the meaning seems to be that he is so overwhelmed by fear as to lose his presence of mind. They are not yet in the true Inferno, but only in the vestibule or forecourt of it—the flat rim which runs round the edge of the pit.