Dante’s Inferno
Lust
Lust

Here Dante explores the relationship--as notoriously challenging in
his time and place as in ours--between love and lust, between the
ennobling power of attraction toward the beauty of a whole person
and the destructive force of possessive sexual desire. The lustful in
hell, whose actions often led them and their lovers to death, are
"carnal sinners who subordinate reason to desire“. Dante's location
of lust --one of the seven capital sins--in the first circle of hell in
which an unrepented sin is punished (the second circle overall) is
similarly ambiguous: on the one hand, lust's foremost location-farthest from Satan--marks it as the least serious sin in hell (and in
life); on the other hand, Dante's choice of lust as the first sin
presented recalls the common--if crude--association of sex with
original sin, that is, with the fall of humankind (Adam and Eve) in
the garden of Eden.
Minos

Typical of the monsters and guardians of hell, Dante's Minos is an
mixture of figures from classical sources who is completed with a
couple of the poet's personal touches. His Minos may in fact be a
combination of two figures of this name--both rulers of Crete--one
the grandfather of the other. The older Minos, son of Zeus and
Europa, was known--because of his wisdom and the admired laws of
his kingdom-- as the "favorite of the gods." This reputation earned
him the office-- following his death--of supreme judge of the
underworld. He was thus charged, as Virgil attests, with verifying
that the personal accounting of each soul who came before him
corresponded with what was written in the urn containing all human
destinies.
Minos' long tail, which he wraps around his body a number of times
equal to the soul's assigned level (circle) of hell is Dante's invention.
How do you think the judged souls travel to their destined
location in hell for eternal punishment? Might Minos' tail be
somehow involved in this unexplained event?
Famous Lovers

Famous Lovers (Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen, Achilles, Paris,
Tristan)
Physical beauty, romance, sex, and death--these are the pertinent elements
in the stories of the lustful souls identified from among the "more than a
thousand" such figures pointed out to Dante by Virgil
 Cleopatra, the beautiful Queen of Egypt, took her own life to avoid
capture by Octavian (the future emperor Augustus); Octavian had defeated
Mark Antony, who was Cleopatra's lover (she had previously been the lover
of Julius Caesar).

Helen, wife of Menalaus (King of Sparta) was said to be the cause of the
Trojan war: acclaimed as the most beautiful mortal woman, she was
abducted by Paris and brought to Troy as his mistress. The "great
Achilles" was the most formidable Greek hero in the war against the
Trojans. He was killed by Paris, according to medieval accounts (Dante did
not know Homer's version), after being tricked into entering the temple of
Apollo to meet the Trojan princess Polyxena.
Lovers

Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta are punished together in
hell for their adultery: Francesca was married to Paolo's brother,
Gianciotto ("Crippled John"). Francesca's shade tells Dante that her
husband is destined for punishment in Caina--the infernal realm of
familial betrayal named after Cain, who killed his brother Abel
(Genesis 4:8)--for murdering her and Paolo. Francesca was the aunt
of Guido Novello da Polenta, Dante's host in Ravenna during the last
years of the poet's life (1318-21). She was married (c. 1275) for
political reasons to Gianciotto of the powerful Malatesta family,
rulers of Rimini. Dante may have actually met Paolo in Florence
(where Paolo was capitano del popolo--a political role assigned to
citizens of other cities--in 1282), not long before he and Francesca
were killed by Gianciotto.
King Arthur?

Lancelot (Guinevere and Gallehaut)
The story of Lancelot and Guinevere, which Francesca identifies
as the catalyst for her affair with Paolo (Inf. 5.127-38), was a
French romance popular both in poetry (by Chrétien de Troyes) and
in a prose version known as Lancelot of the Lake. According to this
prose text, it is Queen Guinevere, wife of King Arthur, who kisses
Lancelot, the most valiant of Arthur's Knights of the Round Table.
Francesca, by giving the romantic initiative to Paolo, reverses the
roles from the story. To her mind, the entire book recounting this
famous love affair performs a role similar to that of the character
Gallehaut, a friend of Lancelot who helps bring about the
adulterous relationship between the queen and her husband's
favorite knight.
Short answer essay

What is the logical relationship between
the vice of lust and its punishment in
Dante's hell?