Introduction

 Virgil (author of Aeneid) his guide

Entrance & “Lobby”

 Gate inscription: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”
 “the Uncommitted”
 People who did NEITHER right nor wrong

Entrance & “Lobby”
 Pontius Pilate
 Punishment: pursued/stung by wasps/hornets, other insects drink blood/tears
 Contrapasso
 Symbolic instance of “poetic justice”

Crossing into Hell

 Ferried across by Charon
 Does not want to take Dante (still alive)

Circle One: Limbo

 Similar to Fields of Asphodel
(Hades)
 Neutral (neither punishment nor reward)
 Green fields, castle (“wisest men of antiquity”)

Circle One: Limbo

 Divided into groups of
“wantonness, violence, and fraud”
 Descending in level, increasing in severity (lower = worse)

Circle Two: Lust
 Minos – “judge of the dead”
(determines which “circle” each soul is
“sentenced” to here)
 Punishment: souls “blown back & forth by terrible winds of violent storm”
 Contrapasso – mirrors the power of lust to “blow about” one’s desires aimlessly

Circle Three: Gluttony
 Guarded by Cerberus
 3-headed guardian dog
 Punishment: souls forced to lie in a
“vile slush” created by equally foul, icy rain
 Contrapasso – gluttons lie sightless, heedless of others, mirroring the empty, cold, selfish nature of their sin

Circle Four: Greed
 Avaricious or miserly (hoarded possessions)
 Prodigal (squandered possessions)
 Punishment: souls forced to “joust” using great weights pushed with their chests
 Contrapasso – “so absorbed in their activity (i.e. focused on wealth) they have lost their sense of self ”

Circle Five: Anger
 Punishment
 Wrathful – fight on the surface of the river Styx
(marshlands/swamp)
 Sullen – lie beneath the water
 Contrapasso: Eternally “at war” with each other
 Souls in Hell are eternally fixed in the state in which they arrive
 No redemption/salvation possible at this point

Circle Six: Heresy
 But first…
 “lower parts of Hell” lie within Dis (city)
 Protected by walls/fallen angels, surrounded by
Stygian marsh
 Active, not passive, sins here
 Dante, at first, refused entry
 Poem begins to deal with sins “philosophy and humanism cannot understand”

Circle Six: Heresy

 Punishment: trapped in flaming tombs
 Contrapasso: heretics denied the immortality of the soul, and are punished with eternal pain
(burning)

Circle Seven: Violence

 Violent / malicious sins punished here

Circle Seven: Violence
 Guarded by the Minotaur
 ½ man, ½ bull
 Divided into three rings
 Outer ring
 Violent against people/property
 Punishment: immersed in Phlegethon (river of boiling blood & fire) to a “level commensurate with their sins”
 Contrapasso: greater the sin, deeper the immersion
 Centaurs patrol the ring, fire arrows at any who attempt to rise higher than allowed

Circle Seven: Violence
 Middle Ring
 Suicides
 Punishment: transformed into thorny bushes, fed upon by Harpies
 Contrapasso: can only “speak” if broken (twig broken from branch)
 Broken, in part, by profligates
(uncaring)

Circle Seven: Violence
 Middle Ring
 Profligates (wastefully extravagant)
 Punishment: pursued & mauled by dogs
 Contrapasso: “threw away” wastefully their lives, in part they “throw away” lives of suicides (pursuit by dogs, destruction of suicide bushes)

Circle Seven: Violence
 Inner Ring
 Violent against God (blasphemers)
 Violent against nature (usurers)
 Punishment: desert of flaming sand, fiery snakes rain from the sky
 Blasphemers lie on the sand, usurers sit, others wander about in groups
 Contrapasso: the culture of the day saw these sins as “unnatural and sterile,” like the fire rain/fire sands

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Frauds (deliberate, knowing evil)
 Malbolge
 10 “Bolgie” (ditches of stone)

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Bolgia 1: Panderers and seducers
 Punishment: march in separate lines in opposite directions, whipped by demons
 Contrapasso: used passions of others to drive them to do bidding, now driven by whip-wielding demons

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Bolgia 2: Flatterers
 Punishment: engulfed in human excrement
 Contrapasso: excrement symbolic of the words used to flatter

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Bolgia 3: simony
 Selling of church offices
 Punishment: placed head-first into holes in rock, flames burning soles of feet
 Contrapasso: holes symbolize baptismal fonts

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Bolgia 4: sorcerers, astrologers, false prophets
 Punishment: heads twisted around backwards
 Contrapasso: response to attempts to “see into the future”

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Bolgia 5: corrupt politicians
 Punishment: immersed in a lake of boiling pitch
 Contrapasso: represents the sticky, black nature of corrupt deals/actions

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Bolgia 6: hypocrites
 Punishment: walk wearing gilded lead cloaks
 Contrapasso: cloaks represent the falsity of actions, which also weighs them down & makes spiritual progress impossible

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Bolgia 7: Thieves
 Punishment: bitten by snakes/lizards
 Bites cause transformation, loss of identity
 Contrapasso: as they stole in life, their identity is “stolen”

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Bolgia 8: fraudulent advisers / evil counsellors
 Punishment: concealed w/in flames
 Contrapasso: “hidden” within the flames, as their true motives were
“hidden”

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Bolgia 9: sowers of discord
 Punishment: demon hacks their bodies apart with a sword
 Contrapasso: as they divided others, their bodies are divided

Circle Eight: Fraud
 Bolgia 10: falsifiers
 Alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, impostors
 Punishment: disease affliction
 Contrapasso: they are themselves a
“sickness” on society

Circle Nine: Treachery
 Ringed by “classical & Biblical giants”
 4 “rounds”
 Frozen in ice at progressively greater depths

Circle Nine: Treachery
 Round 1(Caina)
 Family (chins)
 Round 2 (Antenora)
 Community (same as Caina)
 Round 3 (Ptolomaea)
 Guests (lying in ice, only faces uncovered)
 Round 4 (Judecca)
 Liege lords / benefactors
 Completely encased, distorted positions

Circle Nine: Treachery
 Satan
 Waist-deep
 Three faces
 Six wings (create icy winds of Hell)
 Each face chews a traitor
 Brutus
 Cassius
 Judas Iscariot