Additional Notes on Dante’s Inferno
Dante’s Hell is based on a law of symbolic retribution – the talion or “divine justice.”
Dante believed that the world, including art, is created by the “divine word,” and that all
meaning ultimately comes from God. The Inferno, then is a poem about the consequences
of denying God. In essence, the punishments fit the crimes. The lower eight circles are a
structured according to the Aristotelian concept of virtue and vice and are grouped into
sins of incontinence (corresponding to the she-wolf), sins of violence (corresponding to
the lion), and sins of malice and fraud (corresponding to the leopard).
The inhabitants of the nine Circles of Hell:
Circle One: LIMBO
Dante’s Limbo is inhabited by the Virtuous Pagans, those born without the light of
Christ’s revelation. While they are not tormented, their lack of baptism prohibits them
from coming into the light of God. Their suffering comes not from torture, but from the
fact that they have no hope. A few of the notable inhabitants of Limbo: the great Greek
and Roman Poets, including Homer, Ovid, Horace, Lucan, and, of course, Virgil; the
great philosophers, including Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato, among others; the heroes and
heroines, including Aeneas, Hector, and Electra.
Circle Two: THE CARNAL
Circle Two is guarded, not surprisingly, by Minos, the semi-beast who passes judgment
and determines where the various unfortunate souls go. The Carnal are those whose
judgment was betrayed by their appetites; their sin was in succumbing to their passions.
Symbolically, a dark whirlwind spins in and around them, representing their being swept
forever in the tempest of Hell. Not only are they denied the light of God, but the light of
reason of well. Some of the more famous inhabitants of this circle are Cleopatra,
Achilles, Paris, and Helen of Troy. Dante seems to pay special attention to Francesca da
Rimini and her lover, Paolo, who were caught sharing a kiss while reading a book about
Lancelot and Guinevere; Francesca was already married, to Giovanni Malatesta, a man
she did not love and only married because she was tricked into believing she was
marrying Paolo, Giovanni’s brother. Upon being caught in a compromising position,
Giovanni murdered both his brother and Francesca. The Carnal are most likely those
whose sins are symbolically/allegorically represented by the she-wolf depicted at the
outset of Dante’s quest.
Circle Three: THE GLUTTONOUS
Circle Three greets Dante with a vile sludge reminiscent of sewer waste mixed with snow
and rain. This circle is literally a garbage dump. The souls of the damned lay in this
sludge, guarded by Cerberus, the infamous three-headed dog of hell who, like those he
guards, is chronically ravenous. In life, the gluttons did virtually nothing but eat and
drink incessantly, producing only garbage and human waste.
Circle Four: THE HOARDERS AND WASTERS
In Circle Four, there are two angry mobs, the members of each pushing at a huge
boulder-like weight. One mob is comprised of hoarders, the other of wasters. Their sin
is that, in life, they thought only of money. The weight they attempt in vain to move is
the burden (“dead weight”) that encumbers them as a result of their single-minded focus
on material excess. Additionally, their souls have become so dimmed that none of the
souls is distinguishable from the others; they all look virtually the same.
Circle Five: THE WRATHFUL
In Circle Five, there are numerous souls attacking one another in a foul slime. These are
the ones who, in life, were full of wrath. Beneath the slime, as Virgil tells Dante, lie the
souls of the sullen – those who, in life, refused to welcome the light of the sun. Thus,
they are trapped under the fetid waters of the river Styx, and muffled, gurgling versions
of their voices can be heard, “singing” a sort of parody of a hymn.
LOWER HELL***
Circle Six: THE REBELLIOUS ANGELS
Up until this point in the poem, Virgil has been able to hide his fear, but when he and
Dante come upon Circle Six, he becomes clearly anxious. Here, the poets encounter the
three Furies, symbols of Eternal Remorse, who attempt to call forth Medusa. Suddenly, a
storm shakes Hell, and the Heavenly Messenger appears, scattering the rebellious angels.
Once inside Circle Six, the poets find a countryside that appears to be a giant cemetery.
Tombs, with their lids removed and engulfed in flames, are everywhere; cries of anguish
from the dead are all around them. These are the tombs of what Dante regarded as
heretics, by Dante’s definition those who wronged God by denying immortality. Since
they espoused (and taught) the belief that the soul dies with the body, their punishment is
an eternal graved in “the fiery morgue of God’s wrath.”
Circle Seven:
Circle Seven is inhabited by the violent, and is divided into three “rings:
The “outer ring,” populated by those who are violent in destroying people AND property,
surrounded by a river of boiling blood.
The “middle ring,” inhabited by those who have done violence to themselves – suicides –
who have been turned to thorny, black trees. Unlike many of the other souls in hell, who
still retain their corporeal forms, suicides, having alienated their souls from their bodies,
must spend eternity in the “bodies” of trees, with their own corpses handing from the tree
limbs. Also, the “profligates,” those who do violence to their own possessions, are
punished here, as in Dante’s time, doing violence to one’s own property was considered
the same as doing violence to one’s own person.
The “inner ring” is populated by those violent against God, art, and nature, including
blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers. They inhabit a desert of flaming sand where fire
rains from the sky.
Circle Eight: THE FRAUDULENT/DECEITFUL
The inhabitants of the lowest two circles are punished for sins of malice – deliberate
fraud or treachery – and can only be reached by descending a vast cliff into the “pit” of
hell. Circle Eight, called Malebolge, is divided into ten ditches, each inhabited by a
different population of sinners: panderers and seducers; flatterers; those guilty of simony;
sorcerers and false prophets; corrupt politicians; hypocrites; thieves; fraudulent advisors;
those who spread discord; falsifiers and counterfeiters – those who impersonate, commit
perjury, and commit all manner of fraud. The inhabitants of each ditch suffer distinct
torments, including being steeped in human excrement (flatterers), being forced to wear
colorful and extremely heavy lead cloaks (hypocrites), having their bodies ripped apart
(those who spread discord), and suffering from various diseases and afflictions
(falsifiers/counterfeiters).
Circle Nine: THE TRAITORS
The inhabitants of Circle Nine are distinguished from those in Circle Eight because they
are well aware of their treachery, and in fact knowingly and deliberately commit it. The
traitors, like the frauds, are separated into several groups, including traitors to kin, traitors
to political leaders, traitors to guests, and traitors to lords and benefactors. These last are
in the most harsh section of Hell, the one inhabited by Satan, who eternally consumes the
bodies of Cassius and Brutus, murderers of Julius Caesar, and the head of Judas Iscariot,
who betrayed Jesus.