Canto VII
Circle Four: The Hoarders & the Wasters
Circle Five: The Wrathful & The Sullen
Plutus
• God of the
Underworld
• Guardian/ symbol of
4th Circle
– Avarice (greed) and
Prodigality (spending
freely)
– Also known as God of
Wealth in some cases
Hoarders and Wasters
• “so these shades dance
and crash eternally…a
nation of lost
souls…they strained
their chests/ against
enormous weights and
with mad howls/ rolled
them at one another.”
(23-27)
– Lie in ditches, weighted
down and continually hit
each other with their
weights.
Hoarders and Wasters
• “’what people can these be?/ And all those
tonsured ones there on our left-/ is it
possible they all were of the clergy?’” (3739).
– Signifies corruption in the church
– Corresponds with political fight as well
Hoarders and Wasters
• “’This is lost ambition./ In their sordid lives
they labored to be blind,/ and now their
souls have dimmed past
recognition…Hoarding and squandering
wasted all their light/ and brought them
screaming to this brawl of wraiths’” (5159).
– Destroyed the light of God within themselves
by thinking of nothing but money.
Dame Fortune
• “That king whose perfect wisdom transcends all,/
made the heavens and posted angles on them/
to guide the eternal light that may fall/…he made
earth’s splendors by a like decree/ and posted
as their minister this high Dame/…All earth’s
gear/ she changes from nation to nation, from
house to house/….no mortal power may stay her
spinning wheel/… man’s mortal reason cannot
compass her/…And this she so railed at and
reviled/ that even her debtors in the joys of time/
blaspheme her name…” (73-93).
Dame Fortune
• Fortune received
orders from God to
transfer worldly goods
between people and
nations.
• She moves quickly and
humans cannot
understand this so we
should not curse her
when we lose
something- it is God’s
will.
The Sullen
• “a swarm of spirits in that bog, savage, with
anger,…they thumped at one another in that
slime with their hands and feet they butted and
they bit as if each would tear the other limb from
limb…there are souls beneath that water…Fixed
in slime…” (110-120)
– Souls attack each other in gross slime
– Lie entombed in the bubbles from the sludge, singing
a hymn that mocks them.
• Sunk under slime- refused the light of God (116126)
Canto VIII
Circle Five: Styx- The Wrathful, Phlegyas
Circle Six: Dis- The Fallen Angels
Phlegyas
• Ferryman to River
Styx
• Mythological King of
Boeotia
• Son of Ares (Mars)
and human mother
• Sent soul to hell for
burning Apollo’s
temple at Delphi
• Symbolic of Wrath
Dante
“…and not till I stepped aboard did it seem to
settle
Into the water. At once we left the shore,
that ancient hull riding more heavily
than it had ridden in all of time before.” (27-30)
Emotional Reaction
“’May you weep and wail to all eternity,
for I know you, hell-dog, filthy as you are.’
Then he stretched both hands to the boat, but warily
The Master shoved him back, crying’ Down! Down!
with the other dogs!’ The he embraced me saying:
‘Indignant spirit, I kiss you as you frown.
Blessed be she who bores you.’” (37-43)
• First time Dante chastises the sinners
• Virgil approves and commends Dante
– Dante purges himself of anger by showing it to sinners
– He is learning and gaining the morals necessary
– Contempt for evil will enable truer perfection for Dante
Filippo Argenti
“’Master, it would suit my whim/ to
see the wretch scrubbed down
into the swill/ before we leave this
stinking sink and him.’” (49-51)
Filippo Argenti
• Black Guelph member of Adimari family
(enemy of Dante)
• Said that his brother took Dante’s property
after his exile
• Insults family
• Character development
Rebellious Angels
“…’You need not be cast down
by my vexation, for whatever plot
these fiends may lay against us, we will go on.
This insolence of theirs is nothing new:
they showed it once at a less secret gate…
And through it at this moment a Great One
comes’” (118-125)
• Took Lucifer’s side in rebellion against God
• Defend the city of Dis (lower hell) just as they once resisted
Christ's arrival at the gate of hell.