DANTE’S INFERNO Andy Morales Daniela Flores THE DIVINE COMEDY • Epic poem by Dante Alighieri • Divided into three poems: Inferno (depths of hell) Purgatorio (terrace of purgatory) Paradiso Last (sphere of heaven) GATES OF HELL • Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. • Good VS evil. • Constantly tormented and chased by hornets and snakes, forcing them into action. • Angels RIVER • Boundary of hell and many souls can wait a boat ride from Charon who appears in Greek mythology on the river into heads. FIRST CIRCLE. LIMBO • They’ve done great deeds, lived morally right lives, but either didn’t accept Christianity. • Virtuous non-Christians and unbaptized pagans who are punished with eternity in an inferior form of Heaven. • Catle with 7 gates. Chastity Charity Temperance Diligence Patience Kindness Humility • Homer • Socrates • Aristotle • Cicero • Hippocrates • Julius Caesar SECOND CIRCLE. LUST • Punished by being blown violently back and forth by strong winds. • Neither peace nor rest. • Winds: restlessness of a person who is led by the desire for fleshly pleasures. HISTORY AND MYTHOLOGY • Cleopatra • Tristan • Helen of Troy • And others who were adulterous during their lifetime. THIRD CIRCLE. GLUTTONY • Souls of gluttons who are overlooked by a wormmonster Cerberus. • Punished by being forced to lie in a vile slush that is produced by never-ending icy rain. VILE SLUSH • Personal degradation of one who overindulges in food, drink, and other worldly pleasures, while the inability to see others lying nearby represents the gluttons’ selfishness and coldness. • Dante speaks to a character called Ciacco who also tells him that the Guelphs will defeat and expel the Ghibellines from Florence which happened in 1302 before the poem was written (after 1308). FOURTH CIRCLE. GREED • Souls divided into two groups – those who hoarded possessions and those who lavishly spent it – jousting. • They use great weights as a weapon, pushing it with their chests. PLUTUS • Both groups guarded by Pluto (Greek mythology: god of money and wealth). • Two poets don’t try to speak to them. • Dante says to see many clergymen including cardinals and popes. FIFTH CIRCLE OF HELL RIVER STYX • Wrathful. Punished by being at the bank/surface/underneath the river, fighting with each other endlessly. • Sullen. Submerged at the bottom of the river, choking on the mud. • Phlegyas. LOWER HELL Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics posits the existence of “[t]hree dispositions counter to Heaven’s will: / Incontinence, malice, insane brutality”. CITY OF DIS • Fallen angels guard the entrance, and deny entry to Virgil and Dante, as Dante is alive. • Dante is scared, Virgil is waiting, when three Furies come and call Medusa to turn Dante into stone. • Before anything happens, an angel appears and demands the fallen ones to let Virgil and Dante pass. They do, an so they enter the Sixth Circle of Hell. SIXTH CIRCLE OF HELL • Heretics. • Epicureans. • All in burning coffins. SEVENTH CIRCLE OF HELL • Divided in three rings. • Those who were violent: • Against one’s neighbor. • Against oneself. • Against God. FIRST RING • Guarded by the Minotaur. • The place is a ravine, and at the center there’s a river of blood, guarded by Centaurs (Chiron) with bows and arrows. • Boiling river of blood: those who were violent towards their neighbors. The Centaurs help kept them in. SECOND RING • A forest of twisted, dark trees, full with Harpies. • The souls tormented here are the trees, they are the ones who were violent against themselves or their possessions, (committed suicide or were squanderers). • The Harpies break their twigs, causing them pain like that of dismemberment. THIRD RING • A desert of hot sand. Fire is falling ceaselessly. • Divided in three zones: • Blasphemers, who lie on the sand. • Sodomites, who walk constantly under the fire. • Usurers, who sit under the fire with purses around their necks. GERYON EIGHT CIRCLE OF HELL MALEBOLGE Ten pits. Punishment for those who committed fraud. • Ten pits. Punishment for those who committed fraud. • Bolgia One: Panderers and Seducers. Forced to march around their circle as they’re lashed by demons. • Bolgia Two: Flatterers. Immersed in a river of excrement. • Bolgia Three: Simoniacs. Stuck headfirst in holes with their feet exposed, lit in flames. • Bolgia Four: Astrologers, Seers, Sorcerers, Diviners, False Prophets. They have their heads twisted backwards. • Bolgia Five: Businessman and Politicians. Thrown into a river of boiling tar. Guarded by the Malebranche. • Bolgia Six: Hypocrites. Forced to wear a heavy cloak made of gold and lead. Caiaphas is here. • Bolgia Seven: Thieves. They’re bitten by serpents and other reptiles, sometimes they combust and sometimes they transform into reptiles themselves. • Bolgia Eight: False counselors, Deceivers. Constantly ablaze. • Bolgia Nine: Schismatics. They’re disfigured by a demon with a sword, depending of their sins. • Bolgia Ten: Falsifiers. • Alchemists: Leprosy. • Evil Impersonators: Insanity. • Counterfeiters: Dropsy and Thirst. • Liars: Fever, Headache, maybe Tuberculosis. NIMROD AND ANTAEUS NINTH CIRCLE OF HELL • Frozen lake, Cocytus. • TRAITORS. • Of Kin: Caina. Frozen body, head out. • Of Country: Antenora. • Of Guests: Ptolomea. Frozen backs, face out. • Of Benefactors.: Judecca. CENTER OF THE NINTH CIRCLE • Lucifer/Satan/Dis/Beelzebub. • Frozen, only the torso is visible. Three faces, chewing on three sinners. • Three sets of wings, who flap and keep the Cocytus frozen. • Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius.
