Note 869 — CANTO XXXIV.

I thought to Hell, etc.: Virgil, holding on to Lucifer’s hairy sides, descends the dark and narrow space between him and the ice as far as to his middle, which marks the centre of the earth. Here he swings himself round so as to have his feet to the centre as he emerges from the pit to the southern hemisphere. Dante now feels that he is being carried up, and, able to see nothing in the darkness, deems they are climbing back to the Inferno. Virgil’s difficulty in turning himself round and climbing up the legs of Lucifer arises from his being then at the ‘centre to which all weights tend from every part.’ Dante shared the erroneous belief of the time, that things grew heavier the nearer they were to the centre of the earth.