The leopard
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Ed ecco, quasi al cominciar de l’ erta, una lonza leggera e presta molto, che di pel macolato era coverta;
And behold, almost at the beginning of the climb, a light, quick beast that was covered with a spotted hide;
At the start of the steep, a lithe, spotted beast appears.
The first of the three beasts. The <i>lonza</i> is some cat of the leopard or lynx kind — spotted, quick, hard to get past. Commentators have read her as lust, or as fraud; Dante leaves her deliberately unnamed and dazzling, all speed and pattern.
She arrives with an <i>ecco</i>, the storyteller's "and suddenly there" — the climb had barely begun. The lesson of the whole canto is folded into that timing: the road up is blocked almost the instant you start it.
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Inferno 1.31 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/dante-inferno/1.31/