Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Study Guide

Contemporary politics deeply influenced Dante's literary and emotional life, and had
a major influence on the writing of the Inferno. Renaissance Florence was a thriving,
but not a peaceful city: different opposing factions continually struggled for
dominance there. The Guelfs and the Ghibellines were the two major factions, and
in fact that division was important in all of Italy and other countries as well. The
Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor were political rivals for much of this time period,
and in general the Guelfs were in favor of the Pope, while the Ghibellines supported
Imperial power. By 1289 in the battle of Campaldino the Ghibellines largely
disappeared from Florence. Peace, however, did not insue. Instead, the Guelf party
divided between the Whites and the Blacks (Dante was a White Guelf). The Whites
were more opposed to Papal power than the Blacks, and tended to favor the
emperor, so in fact the preoccupations of the White Guelfs were much like those of
the defeated Ghibellines. In this divisive atmosphere Dante rose to a position of
leadership. in 1302, while he was in Rome on a diplomatic mission to the Pope, the
Blacks in Florence seized power with the help of the French (and pro-Pope) Charles
of Valois. The Blacks exiled Dante, confiscating his goods and condemning him to be
burned if he should return to Florence. Dante never returned to Florence. He
wandered from city to city, depending on noble patrons there. Between 1302 and
1304 some attempts were made by the exiled Whites to retrieve their position in
Florence, but none of these succeeded and Dante contented himself with hoping for
the appearance of a new powerful Holy Roman Emperor who would unite the
country and banish strife. Henry VII was elected Emperor in 1308, and indeed laid
seige to Florence in 1312, but was defeated, and he died a year later, destroying
Dante's hopes. Dante passed from court to court, writing passionate political and
moral epistles and finishing his Divine Comedy, which contains the Inferno,
Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
The Inferno can therefore be read as a piece of propaganda against Dante's
enemies (the Pope, the Black Guelphs). Although this may be more applicable to the
other two parts of the Divine Comedy, the Inferno is also a mystical religious poem.
However, the political side of it is much more prominent. In any case, many of the
concerns raised in the Inferno are widely applicable to Renaissance Italy:
factionalism, violence, the volatile mixture of mystic Christianity and hardheaded
mercantile activity, conflict with other cultures, aristocratic notions of honor and
revenge, the combination of Chuch and State...
The Inferno was of course written before the invention of the printing press, and was
probably not widely read ? of course, at that time, very little could be said to be
widely read, given literacy rates and lack of printed materials. Copyrights also did
not exist, so we can discount the idea that Dante was writing to appeal to a large
audience. He depended on aristocratic patrons, but the Inferno does not seem to
have been written with patronage in mind either: there are few or no glowing
references to Lord such-and-such's benevolence, as appear in many pre-copyright
books. Probably Dante wrote the Inferno largely to gratify himself, to denounce his
enemies and gain a certain amount of revenge. But also we cannot doubt that
Dante wanted very much to be acclaimed as a poet. In Hell, he often offers to tell
people on earth about the damned souls, so that their memories will not be
forgotten: fame was a very important thing for Dante. The Divine Comedy was his
master-piece, the work that would finally give him his place with Virgiland Homer.
Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Character List
Dante
Dante, as he wrote himself, appears to be a man of passionately held opinions.
Although he faints with pity at Francesca da Rimini's story, and feels deeply for the
misfortunes of many of the damned, he can also show himself to be merciless, as in
his dealings with Mosca. His character can be guessed at by examing his
relationship with Florence. His attitude towards his native city is frought with
emotion: he seems to love Florence very much, and to consider himself strongly
bound to the city. At the same time, he roundly condemns Florentines for their

unpeaceful ways, and sometimes seems to consider the city irretrievably corrupted.
Dante is often frightened by what he sees in Hell, but Virgil's words give him
courage. He loves and admires his guide very much.
Virgil
This Roman poet wrote the Aeneid, which dealt in part with the adventures of
Aeneas, who descended to the underworld. This may be why Dante chose to use
him as a guide in his poem. The fictional Virgil is like an older, stronger, and wiser
version of Dante himself: they seem to share the same moral beliefs, and of course
they are both poets. Virgil's attitude toward Dante is appropriately paternal: he
shows Dante the right way and even lifts him up and carries him if necessary.
However he will also scold Dante if his charge shows an unbecoming interest in an
infernal squabble. Unlike Dante, Virgil is a true inhabitant of Hell: he is a damned
soul, though a virtuous man. This colors his character with a calm despair which is
not seen in the fiery Florentine.
Beatrice
Dante's idealized beloved, Beatrice, appears very little in the Inferno. The historical
Beatrice married another man and died long before the Inferno was written, but the
fictional one is a blessed spirit in heaven, who watches over Dante. She is the one
who sends Virgil to lead him to safety. She represents all the Christian virtues, and
Dante's struggle to reach her mirrors his struggle to reach God.
The heavenly messenger (Canto IX)
The messenger is sent by God to make the fallen angels in Dis let Dante and Virgil
in. The inhumanity of the heavenly messenger stands in marked contrast to the
suffering souls in Hell: Dante takes more care to make his sinful characters
sympathetic than the good ones. The heavenly messenger is good, but he is not
likable even as he rescues Virgil and Dante he disdains to speak to them.
Charon (Canto III)
Charon is the demon who ferries souls across the Acheron into Hell.
Minos (Canto V)
Minos is a terrible demon who judges the damned souls and decides where in Hell
they will be punished. He is a figure from Classical mythology: he was the son of
Zeus and Europa.
Cerberus (Canto VI)
Cerberus is a doglike demon in the third circle. Virgil calms him by throwing mud
into his mouth.
Plutus (Canto VII)
Plutus is a wolf-like demon who praises Satan in a grating voice. Plutus is a Pagan
figure, strongly connected with avarice. In Roman mythology he is the king of the
underworld; here he is merely a servant of the Devil, whose cry probably means:
"Oh Satan, oh Satan, the most powerful one!"
Phleygas (Canto VIII)
Phleygas is the boat-man of the river Styx, like Charon for the Acheron. He
resentfully ferries Dante and Virgil across.
The Furies (Canto IX)
Women with snakes for hair from Classical mythology. Their names are Megaera,
Allecto, and Tisiphone.
Geryon (Canto XVII)
is a monster who symbolizes fraud itself. His face was human, gracious and honestlooking, but his body was a combination of a bear and a serpent, and his tail had a
scorpion's sting.
The Malebranche
This name refers to a group of devils who patrol the lake of pitch where the
barrators are punished in Malebolge. They are fierce-looking and dangerous bit not
very smart. The name means "evil-claws," and is also a family name in Lucca.
Individual Malebranche are:
Malacoda
"evil-tail."
Alichino
same root as "harlequin."
Calcabrina
"he who can walk on brine."

Cagnazzo
"big dog," also a family name in Lucca.
Libicocco
"winds," from the two winds libeccio and sirocco.
Barbariccia
"curly beard."
Draghignazzo
"big dragon."
Circiatto
"hog."
Farfarello
"evil ghost."
Rubicante
"he who grows red."
Graffiacane
"he who scratches dogs," also a family name from Lucca.
Nimrod
is a huge giant who talks in an unknown tongue and blows a huge bugle. In the
Bible, he ruled in Babylon when the Tower of Babel was built it was supposed to be
tall enough to reach the sky. God was angered by the lofty ambitions of his
creations, and punished mankind by making them speak in different languages.
(Formerly all men had spoken the same language, thus permitting the kind of
cooperation that resulted in the Tower). Nimrod's punishment, as we see, is to speak
a language that nobody else understands, and to understand no other languages:
he is truly isolated.
Briareus and Ephialtes
rebelled against the Olympian gods, who dealt with them in much the same way as
the Biblical god dealt with Nimrod.
Antaneus
was born after the rebellion, therefore he is unfettered, though still imprisoned.
Homer
is the great Greek epic poet.
Horace (65-8 BC)
was a Roman satirist-moralist.
Ovid (43 BC- 17 AD)
was the Roman author of the Metamorphoses.
Lucan (39-65)
was another Roman poet.
Electra
was the mother of Dardanus, who founded Troy.
Hector
was the peace-loving but warlike prince of Troy who was killed by Achilles with
divine aid in Homer's Iliad.
Aeneas
is the subject of Virgil's Aeneid. A Trojan, he escaped from his city after its fall, and
after living with and abandoning Dido, the Queen of Carthage, he went to Italy.
Julius Caesar
was the Roman leader whose rule ended the republic. He was assassinated by
Brutus and Cassius (found in Judecca).
Camilla
died defending her homeland, Latium.
Penthesilea
was the Queen of the Amazons who was killed by Achilles.
King Latinus
was the king of Latium.
Lavinia
was Latinus' daughter and she married Aeneas.
Lucius Junius Brutus
(not the one who killed Caesar), drove out Tarquin the Proud, the last Roman king, in
510 BC. Lucretia's death prompted Brutus' action after she committed suicide after
having been raped by Tarquin.

Julia
was the daughter of Caesar and Pompey's wife.
Marcia
was Cato's virtuous wife.
Cornelia
was an exemplary mother.
Saladin
was the Sultan of Egypt from 1171 to 1193. Though he was Muslim, he was famous
among Christians for his nobility.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
were all Greek philosophers. Aristotle was particularly venerated during the
medieval and early Renaissance period. Democritus, Empedocles, Zeno, Diogenes,
Thales, Anaxoragas and Heraclitus were also philosophers, though less well known.
Averroes (1126-1198)
was an Arabian philosopher who commented on the works of Aristotle.
Dioscorides, Hippocrates, Galen (2nd century), and Avicenna (980-1037)
were all physicians whose works influenced the medicine of Dante's time very
much.
Orpheus and Linus
are mythological Greek poets and musicians.
Tully, Cicero and Seneca
were Roman moral poets.
Euclid (around 300 BC)
was a mathematician and Ptolemy (2nd century BC) was an astronomer whose
geocentric conception of the universe was very influential.
Semiramis
was an immoral queen of Assyria, and is supposed to have legalized incest.
Cleopatra, queen of Egypt
she had both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony as lovers. She committed suicide to
avoid being taken captive by the Romans.
Helen
the most beautiful woman in the world and the queen of Sparta, was abducted by
Paris, starting the Trojan War.
Achilles
fought heroically in theTrojan War, but unpatriotically stopped when he found he
couldn't have the female captive he wanted.
Tristan
was a knight of medieval romance who fell magically in love with his patron's
queen, Ysolde. They died because of their love.
Dido
queen of Carthage, loved Aeneas and killed herself when he abandoned her.
Francesca da' Rimini and Paolo Malatesta
The historical identities of Francesca and her lover are well known. Francesca da
Rimini was married around 1275 to Gianciotto Malatesta of Rimini for political
reasons. She unfortunately fell in love with her husband's younger brother Paolo
and he with her. When her husband discovered their adultery, probably in 1285, he
killed them both.
Ciacco
a gluttonous Florentine who predicts some of Florence's political future for Dante.
Filippo Argenti
Filippo Argenti is a Florentine who tries to attack Dante, and is later attacked by his
fellow-sinners. He is a historical figure: he was called Argenti because he shod his
horse with silver (argento means silver). There are various reasons why Dante's
dislike of him was so strong: Filippo Argenti, one of the Adimari clan, was a Black
Guelf. (Dante was a member of the rival party, the White Guelfs.) Filippo apparently
had slapped Dante at one time, offending his aristocratic sense of honor, and his
brother received Dante's goods, which were confiscated from him by the Commune
of Florence when he was exiled in 1302 (see Dante's biography).
Farinata degli Uberti
Farinata, a famous Ghibelline leader, was referred to before, in Canto VI. After the
battle of Montaperti in 1260, when the Ghibellines won, they proposed to destroy

Florence, but Farinata intervened and saved the city. When Dante said that
Farinata's people could not return to Florence, he means the defeat and exile of the
Ghibelline party. The Uberti (Farinata's family) were exiled in 1280. Farinata is
represented as a fairly noble character, though he was damned for Epicureanism.
Epicurus was a Greek philosopher whose philosophy has been misunderstood by
many moralists. He denied the immortality of the soul and thought that the Gods
were not interested in human affairs. The greatest good, then, was pleasure: not
debauchery, but the peaceful cultivation of the virtues. Epicurean philosophy had
been popular in Florence, especially among the Ghibellines, such as Farinata. He
and his wife were posthumously excommunicated in 1283, and their bones were
scattered.
Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti
an Epicurean (see above), and the loving father of Guido Cavalcanti, a famous poet
and a friend of Dante, also an Epicurean. He is thrown into despair at the thought
that his son might be dead.
Pope Anastasius
Dante believed Anastasius (496-498) to be a follower of Photinus's heresy, which
held that Christ was not divine.
The Minotaur
is a figure from Greek mythology: he was half man and half bull, the offspring of a
bull and the Queen of Crete, Pasiphae, who was cursed with insane love for the bull
and had a hollow cow built, in which the Minotaur was conceived. The Minotaur lived
in a labyrinth beneath the palace and each year it killed and ate seven young men
and seven girls who were given as tribute to Crete by defeated territories. The
Minotaur was finally killed by Theseus (the Duke of Athens) with the help of the
Cretan king Minos' daughter Ariadne.
The centaurs
were other mythological creatures, half horse and half man. They were notorious for
their volatile tempers and violent behavior.
Nessus
tried to rape Deianira, Hercule's wife, and was shot for it with a poisoned arrow. In
revenge, Nessus gave Deianira a robe dipped in his blood, which he said would
make the wearer fall in love with her. When Hercules was in love with Iole, Deianira
gave him the robe, which poisoned him and made him die in agony.
Chiron
was a somewhat different centaur, the tutor of Achilles, a wise and cultivated being:
thus he is the one Virgil wants to talk to.
Alexander
is probably Alexander the Great of Macedon (356-323 BC), who made great
conquests in a short lifetime.
Dionysius the Elder
was tyrant of Syracuse from 405 to 367 BC (not to be confused with the God of
wine).
Ezzelino III (1194-1259)
a Ghibelline, massacred the citizens of Padua.
Obizzo II d'Este (1247-1293)
was a Guelph who may have been killed by his own son.
The two Riniers
were famous highwaymen.
Pier della Vigna (1190-1249)
was the minister, private secretary and counselor of Frederick II until he fell into
disfavor and was put in prison and blinded. There he committed suicide, and
appears in the Inferno in the form of a black and twisted tree which bleeds when a
twig is broken. Dante makes it clear that he thinks Pier was innocent of the charges
raised against him, although his suicide damns him. Pier's speech deserves to be
read carefully: the repetitions and juxtapositions of certain words give a solemn
measure to his lines.
Lano
is probably Arcolano of Siena, who belonged to the Spendthrift Club, a group of
young noblemen who wasted time and money on frivolous and extravagent

entertainments. According to Boccaccio, when Arcolano ran out of money he sought

death in battle.
Jacopo da Santo Andrea
was a notorious squanderer.
The anonymous Florentine suicide
is a thorn bush broken during Jacopo's flight from the black hounds. Little is known
about him except that he hanged himself.
Capaneus
was one of the seven legendary kings who beseiged Thebes. Apparently Capaneus
boasted that even Jove couldn't stop him, and was hit by a thunderbolt in
retribution. In Hell he is still proud and rebellious against God.
Ser Brunetto Brunetto Latini (1220-1294)
a Guelph Florentine, was a famous political leader and writer. He wrote an
encyclopedia in French, called Li Livres dou tresor, and an Italian poem, the
Tesoretto. Although Brunetto was not actually Dante's teacher, he seems to have
been an important influence and a close friend. Dante treats him with affection and
respect.
Priscian of Cesarea
was a Latin grammarian of the Middle Ages.
Francesco d'Accorso
was a lawyer at Bologna and Oxford.
Andrea de'Mozzi
the Bishop of Florence was transferred for his scandalous lifestyle by the Pope
Boniface VIII (the Servant of His servants) to Vicenza. He died soon after, apparently
worn out by sodomy (his tendons strained by sin).
Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, Jacopo Rusticucci
These three Florentine sodomites were all famous and honorable political leaders,
evidently well respected by Dante despite their personal sins.
The usurers
are punished by having to sit on flaming sand with flakes of fire falling on them.
They include members of the families Gianfigliazzi, Obriachi and Scrovegni.
Reginaldo Scrovegni' s son tried to atone for his father's ill-gotten wealth by
commissioning the great painter Giotto to paint a chapel named for him.
The panders and seducers
are whipped by demons.
Venedico Caccianemico
is supposed to have delivered his own sister Ghisolabella to the lustful designs of a
Marquis. In fact he was not yet dead when the Inferno supposedly takes place;
Dante was probably unaware of this.
Jason
was a hero in Greek legend who voyaged on his ship the Argo with his companions,
the Argonauts. They stopped at the island of Lemnos, where the women had killed
the men, except for Hypsipyle who had saved her father's life; Jason seduced and
abandoned her. Medea, a princess of a different island, turned against her own
people to help Jason in his quest, and was also abandoned; she avenged herself by
killing the children she had had with Jason.
Flatterers
were punished by being put in a pit full of human excrement.
Alessio Interminei of Lucca
whom Dante had a hard time recognizing because of his filthiness, was there
because of his flatteries.
Thais
was a harlot who had said that she was very grateful to her lover.
Pope Nicholas III
Pope Nicholas III was elected in 1277 and died in 1280; his reference to cubs of the
she-bear refers to his family name, Orsini. To "advance the cubs" would be to
promote his own family members in the Church hierarchy without regard to their
legitimacy. This was indeed common practice in the Church, which was by no means
free of the patronage systems which dominated the rest of political networking.
This, and other forms of corruption within the Church, were known as simony.
According to the Bible (Acts 8:9-24), Simon Magus tried to purchase the power of

conferring the Holy Spirit. "Simony" thus means the sale of spiritual goods, such as
ecclesiastical offices or indulgences. Simony in the Catholic Church was one of the
reasons the Reformation developed: Martin Luther among others strongly objected
to the pratice of selling indulgences (by buying an indulgence, one bought
forgiveness for a sin, and dispensed with years spent in Purgatory).
Tiresias
was a soothsayer in Greek mythology who turned from a man into a woman and
back again.
Amphiaraus
is another of the seven kings who fought Thebes. He foresaw his death and tried to
avoid battle, but died in an earthquake all the same.
Manto
was a Theban soothsayer who legendarily founded Mantua.
Michael Scot and Guido Bonatti
were court astrologers and Asdente was a shoemaker who prophecied in Parma at
the end of the 13th century.
The Navarrese barrator
had been damned fortaking graft in the household of King Thibault. His trickery and
successful escape from the Malebranche give a rare example of human success
over immortals, and a bending from the inexorable divine will.
Two Italian barrators
were Fra Gomito of Gallura who was a sovereign swindler, and also another
Sardinian, Don Michele Zanche (whose murderer can be found in the ninth circle).
The two of them often talk together about Sardinia.
The two Jovial Friars, Catalano and Loderingo
were part of an orderalso known as the Knight's of Saint Mary. The order was
founded with the intention of keeping peace between warring factions. However the
Friars often neglected their duties: the two that were in charge of maintaining peace
in Florence instead oversaw a period of increased violence.
Caiaphas
was the high Jewish priest under Pontius Pilate, the Roman who oversaw Jerusalem
when Jesus was crucified.
Vanni Fucci
stole from the treasury of San Jacopo, which was kept in the sacristy of the
Cathedral of Pistoia. Rampino Foresi was accused of the crime and was nearly
executed, while Fucci escaped.
Cianfa Donati and Agnello de' Brunelleschi
were both noble Florentine thieves. Apparently Cianfa is the snake who combines
with Agnello. Puccio Sciancato was from a noble Ghibelline family in Galigai.
Francesco de' Cavalcanti was murdered bythe people of the town Gaville, and his
family in revenge killed almost everyone in Gaville.
Ulysses (or Odysseus in the Greek form)
was a crafty member of the Greek army which beseiged Troy after the Trojan prince
Paris ran off with the Spartan queen Helen. After ten years were spent in useless
battle, Ulysses and Diomedes came up with a plan to make a huge hollow wooden
horse, fill it with Greek soldiers, and leave it in front of Troy as a "gift." It worked: the
Trojans took it in and in the night the soldiers came out and laid waste to the city.
Ulysses appears here as a tragic hero, whose flaw (an insatiable desire to voyage)
eventually caused his death.
Guido da Montefeltro (1220-1298)
a famous Ghibelline leader who became a friar, was damned because he trusted
Boniface's unconditional absolution of his sins (he was a crafty and unscrupulous
commander). Boniface wanted to defeat the Colonna family, and asked Guido's
advice, assuring him of absolution. Following his counsel, he offered the Colonna
family amnesty if they surrendered, and when they did he massacred them. Guido's
shade suffers bittery misery, and is made to appear less guilty than Boniface.
Mohammed
is of course the founder of Islam, and Ali is his nephew and successor. There is no
indication that Mohammed (570-632) and Ali are not Italian, and the inclusion of the
founder of Islam and his nephew among Italians and Christians shows how little
Christians of the period understood Islam. Mohammed was often thought to be an

apostate Christian, which explains his classification among sowers of schism:

according to Dante he did not start a new religion, but merely divided an old one. Ali
married Mohammed's daughter Fatima and claimed to be the successor to the
caliphate. Other Muslims did not agree, and the schism resulted in two separate
sects of Islam, the Sunnites and the Shiites.
Fra Dolcino
founded an order called the Apostolic Brothers, which believed in holding goods and
women in common. They were condemned as heretics by Pope Clement V, and had
to take to the hills to avoid the authorites. Eventually their food supplies gave out
and they had to surrender; Fra Dolcino was burned alive in 1307, presumably before
Dante wrote this canto.
Guido del Cassero and Angiolello di Carignano
were thrown overboard on their way to a parley held by the tyrant Malatestino.
The Ghibelline Mosca de' Lamberti
was mentioned in Canto VI. He helped create the feud between the Ghibellines and
the Guelfs when in 1215 he advised the Amidei family to kill a Guelph,
Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti, for breaking his engagement to be married to an
Amidei girl.
Bertran de Born (1140-1215)
was a troubadour poet among other things his beautiful works deserve to be read if
they can be obtained and was thought by some to have incited Prince Henry to
rebell against his father Henry II.
Geri del Bello
Dante's father's cousin, was a troublemaker who was killed by a Sacchetti. He was
finally avenged in 1310, and the pointless feud begun between the Alighieri and the
Sacchetti lasted until 32 years later.
Griffolino of Arezzo
cheated Albero of Siena by claiming that he could teach him to fly for a large sum of
money. He was burned as a heretic by Albero's protector (and perhaps his father),
the Bishop of Siena.
Capocchio
was burned at the stake for alchemy in 1293.
Gianni Schicci
impersonated Simone Donati's uncle Buoso Donati, who had just died: on Simone's
request, Gianni, pretending to be Buoso, dictated a new will in favor of Simone. He
also left himself Buoso's best mare, the lady of the herd.
Myrrha
daughter of the king of Cyprus, fell incestuously in love with her father, and
impersonated another woman so as to sleep with him. When she was discovered,
she fled execution, and was changed into a myrrh tree by the gods.
Master Adam
was a counterfeiter whose body is swollen up with dropsy. He longs for revenge on
the people who prompted him to counterfeit coins.
Sinon
tricked the Trojans into bringing the wooden horse filled with Greek soldiers into Troy
(see Canto XXVI).
The wife of Potiphar
falsely accused Joseph of making advances toward her.
The two sons
of the Florentine noble Alberto degli Alberti are Napoleone and Alessandro.
Napoleone was a Ghibelline and Alessandro was Guelph; they murdered each other
between 1282 and 1286.
Mordred
Arthur's nephew (and according to some versions, his incestuously conceived son),
tried to seize power in England and was killed by his uncle for his treachery.
Focaccia
was a noble White Guelph who murdered his cousin. Sassol Mascheroni also
murdered a relative.
Camiscion de' Pazzi
shared a fortress with Ubertino until he murdered him. He hopes that Carlino will
"absolve him" because Carlino was a member of his family who had committed a

graver act of treachery which would make his own appear less serious by contrast:
Carlino betrayed his party (the Whites).
Bocca degli Abati
was another Guelph who betrayed his party: during the battle of Montaperti in 1260,
he cut off the hands of the person carrying the Guelph flag, and the loss of the flag
panicked the Guelphs, who were then defeated. Remember that the Ghibelline
Farinata (Canto X) saved Florence after that battle by opposing the plan to destroy
the city. Bocca is rebellious and doesn't tell Dante who he is even when Dante
cruelly tears out his hair.
Ganelon
is a legendary figure, who was part of Charlemagne's army in the epic, the Song of
Roland. When Charlemagne was returning to France after wars with the infidels in
Spain, Ganelon betrayed the rear guard of the army, led by Roland. Roland was too
proud to blow his horn for help, so the rear guard was massacred. Roland finally did
blow the horn, and the rest of the army returned to find their dead (including
Roland), and to avenge them. Ganelon was given a traitor's death.
Count Ugolino
is a tragic figure who is frightening in the depth of his hatred. He and his children
were starved to death by the Archbishop Ruggieri whose head he eats in Hell. His
sorrow for the slow deaths of his sons and grandsons, and his despair at his own
inability to help them fuel an undying hatred for their murderer.
Fra Alberigo
was a Jovial Friar who had his relatives Manfred and Manfred's son killed during a
banquet. He summoned the assassins by ordering figs. He resents his punishment:
when he says that his figs have been repaid with dates, he is complaining that his
punishment is too severe: dates were more expensive than figs.
Branca Doria
killed his father-in-law Michele Zanche (see Canto XXII) during a banquet.
Judas Iscariot
was the apostle who betrayed Christ. In the Bible he identified Christ for his
enemies by kissing him for thirty pieces of silver
Marcus Junius Brutus
and Gaius Cassius Longus assassinated Julius Caesar in 44 BC, and both committed
suicide two years later.

Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Summary

The Inferno is the first part of Dante Alighieri's poem, the Divine Comedy, which
chronicles Dante's journey to God, and is made up of the Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio
(Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise). The poems are quite short: it would take about
as long to read the whole Inferno as it would to read the detailed canto summaries
and analyses, although they might be helpful for understanding Dante's difficult
language. In the Inferno, Dante starts on ground level and works his way downward;
he goes all the way through the earth and Hell and ends up at the base of the
mountain of Purgatory on the other side. On the top of Purgatory there is the
terrestial paradise (the garden of Eden), and after that he works his way through the
celestial spheres. The plot of the Divine Comedy is thus very simple: it is the
narrative of Dante's journey towards redemption. The Inferno is generally thought to
be the best and most interesting part, which may be a result of its inverse structure:
the moral plot is less visible because Dante descends into Hell. God is almost totally
absent, and Dante, not excessively constrained by piety, feels free to make Hell
colorful and lively, which is not necessarily the case in the Paradiso.
The Inferno begins when Dante, in the middle of his life, is lost in a metaphorical
dark wood that is, sin. He sees a sunlit hill but it unable to climb it because three
wild beasts frighten him back (these symbolize different sins). Fortunately he then
meets the spirit of the Roman epic poet Virgil, who says that he has been sent
by Beatrice to lead him to salvation. (Beatrice was the spirit of a woman Dante
loved very much, who had died years before.) However, Virgil says, they must go
through Hell to get there. Dante is a little frightened, but is encouraged by the
thought that Beatrice is looking over him.

First Dante and Virgil go through the space outside Hell in the underworld, where
the neutral spirits, who were neither good nor bad, are left to bewail their fate
neither Heaven nor Hell will accept them. Then they come to the Acheron, an
infernal river, where the boatman Charon ferries the damned souls into Hell. An
earthquake leaves Dante unconscious, and when he wakes up they are in the first
circle of Hell, Limbo.
In Limbo there are the virtuous non-Christians: ancient Greek and Roman heroes,
philosophers, and so forth. There are also some worthy Arabs, and the virtuous Jews
of the Old Testament were there until Christ took them to Heaven. Dante is pleased
to find himself accepted as an equal by the great classical poets. The spirits in
Limbo are not tormented: they live in green meadows with a gentle sadness. Virgil
was one of them.
They passed to the second circle, where the demon Minos judged the sinners and
assigned them their place in Hell. In the second circle the lustful were punished by
having their spirits blown about by an unceasing wind. Dante spoke with the spirit of
Francesca da' Rimini, who had fallen unhappily in love with her husband's younger
brother. He felt so sorry for her that he fainted from grief.
When Dante awoke they were in the third circle, where the gluttons were punished.
After Virgil pacified the doglike demon Cerberus, they saw where the gluttons lay in
the mud, tormented by a heavy, cold rain. One of them, Ciacco, predicted the
political future of Florence for Dante.
In the fourth circle they had to pass the demon Plutus, who praised Satan. There the
avaricious and the prodigal rolled weights around in opposite directions, berating
each other for their sins. They came to the Styx, where the wrathful and the sullen
were tormented. The wrathful fought in the muddy water and the sullen sank
beneath it and lamented in gurgling voices. The boatman Phleygas resentfully
ferried them across, passing the wrathful shade of Filippo Argenti, who tried to
attack Dante.
They then came to the walls of the city of Dis, but the fallen angels inside barred
their way. Fortunately a messenger from heaven came to their aid and opened the
gates, then left.
The sixth circle held heretics, who were imprisoned in red-hot sepulchers. Dante
spoke with Farinata, a great-hearted Epicurean who predicted Dante's exile from
Florence. He also met Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, the father of his friend Guido. They
passed the tomb of a heretical pope.
They came to a stinking valley. Taking a moment to get used to the stench, Virgil
explained to Dante the structure of Hell. It was cone shaped and was made up of
increasingly tight circles. In Dis they would see the punishments of the violent, the
fraudulent, and traitors. These were more serious sins than those of the earlier
circles, which resulted from human weakness and overindulgence.
In the first ring of the seventh circle they passed the Minotaur and met a group of
centaurs, who shot the sinners who tried to escape with their arrows. The first ring
was made up of the violent against others: tyrants and murderers. These were
tormented in a river of boiling blood: the Phlegethon.
In the second ring they found a black forest full of twisted trees. These were
suicides: Dante spoke to one after seeing a broken twig bleed. The suicide was Pier
della Vigna, who had committed suicide while wrongfully imprisoned by his patron.
They were interrupted by two souls dashing through the forest, chased by black
hounds. These were those who had been violent to their own possessions: those
who had squandered their goods.
In the third ring there were the violent against God: blasphemers, sodomites, and
usurers. These were punished by having to sit or walk around on flaming sand under
a rain of fire. Dante spoke affectionately with one sodomite, Ser Brunetto, who had
been something of a mentor for him when he was alive. Thre other Florentines, also

people Dante respected, asked him news about the city, and he said that it was
doing badly.
Virgil called up the monster Geryon, who symbolized fraud, from the eighth circle,
while Dante spoke with some usurers. Geryon took Dante and Virgil down to the
eigth circle on a terrifying ride. The eigth circle was Malebolge, and was formed of
ten different enclosures in which different kinds of fraud were punished.
In the first, Dante saw naked sinners being whipped by demons. He recognized one
of them as Venedico Caccianemico, who had sold his sister to a lustful Marquis. He
also sawJason. These were panders and seducers: people who used fraud in matters
of love.
In the second, flatterers were mired in a stew of human excrement.
In the third, the simonists were punished by being stuck upside down in rock with
their feet on fire. Notably, Dante spoke with Pope Nicholas III there, who predicted
that the current pope would also be damned for that sin. Dante was very
unsympathetic.
In the fourth enclosure, diviners, astrologers, and magicians were punished by
having their heads on backwards. Dante was sad to see such a distortion of
humanity, but Virgil hardened his heart.
In the fifth, barrators were flung into a lake of hot pitch, and were guarded by devils,
the Malebranche. Dante was frightened to see a devil come with an official from
Lucca and throw him in. Virgil convinced the Malebranche that they should be
allowed to pass unharmed, and they were given an escort of demons. As they were
passing along, one sinner did not dive into the pitch fast enough and was caught by
a devil. Through trickery he managed to get away unharmed, however, and two
devils fell into the pitch, while Dante and Virgil discreetly left.
Eventually pursued by irate devils, Dante and Virgil quickly went to safety in the
sixth pouch of Malebolge, where hypocrites were made to wear heavy lead robes.
They included two Jovial Friars, dishonest leaders of Florence.
They had a hard time reaching the seventh enclosure, where thieves were bitten by
serpents, and then transformed into serpents themselves. Dante saw some famous
thieves change shapes in this way. One of them predicted political misfortune for
Dante.
In the eighth pouch, fraudulent counselors were aflame. Dante learned the story of
Ulysses' death, and heard the bitter tale of Guido da Montefeltro, who had been
tricked into advising the pope to massacre some people, thinking that his soul was
protected by a papal absolution.
Dante was horrified by the gore in the ninth pouch, where sowers of scandal and
schism were maimed by a devil with a sword. Among them he saw the founder of
Islam and his nephew, and also the leader of a contemporary heretical order.
In the tenth pouch there were three groups of falsifiers. The falsifiers of metals
(alchemists) were plagued by a disease like leprosy. Dante spoke with two of them,
who energetically scratched their scabs off. The second group was made up of those
who impersonated other people, like Gianni Schicci and Myrrha. These were insane.
There were also counterfeiters and liars.
Moving on to the ninth circle, Dante was frightened by a loud bugle blast. What he
thought was a city with towers turned out to be a number of giants,
including Nimrodand those who had rebelled against the Olympians. A
comparatively blameless giant helped Dante and Virgil into the pit of the ninth
circle.
In the first ring of the ninth circle, Dante saw sinners frozen into ice (the circle was a
frozen lake). These were traitors against their kin, including two brothers who had
murdered each other. The second ring, where sinners were deeper in the ice, held

those who betrayed their parties and their homelands. Dante tormented one of
these, Bocca, to make him confess his name.
Two sinners were frozen close together, with one eating the other's head. Dante
learned that the cannibal was Count Ugolino, who had been starved to death with
his innocent children by the Archbishop Ruggieri.
Dante spoke with some other sinners in the third ring, who had assassinated their
guests. He learnt to his surprise that it was possible for a soul to be in Hell when its
body was still living.
In the fourth ring, traitors against their benefactors were totally covered in ice.
Finally, at the bottom of Hell, Dante saw the gigantic figure of Lucifer, who ground
up Judas, Brutus, and Cassius in his three mouths. Virgil and Dante climbed on
Lucifer all the way through the center of the earth and to the other side, where they
finally emerged in the southern hemisphere.
Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Summary and Analysis of Cantos I-IV
Canto I: Summary:
Dante recounts that in the middle of his life, he found himself lost in a dark forest,
having lost the right path while half asleep. Worried and frightened, he was
comforted by the sight of a hill, the top of which was sunlit. However, when he tried
to climb the hill to reach the brighter regions, he found his way blocked by three
savage animals: first a leopard, then a lion, then a she-wolf. Dante was too
frightened to continue, and retreated back to the forest, where fortunately he met
the shade of Virgil, his literary hero. Virgil informed him that the three beasts were
impassible: the she-wolf would reign until the greyhound came and slew her, and
restored peace to Italy. In the meantime, Virgil would lead Dante to salvation, but
first they must pass through Hell. Virgil would not be able to take Dante all the way
to Paradise, since as a Pagan he had no right to enter there instead a more worthy
soul would take him the final part of the way. Dante gladly accepted his offer.
Canto I: Analysis:
The Inferno is an opaque poem, which lends itself particularly well to complicated
interpretation, and no doubt was intended as such. Metaphors and symbolism are
found in every line, and to give a complete description of all the interpretations that
have been made would be a huge undertaking. However, in order to fathom the
sheer richness of the poem, it is necessary to have an understanding of the more
widely accepted interpretations.
The Inferno was written during Dante's exile from Florence, whereas it purports to
recount events that occurred much earlier. A passage in Canto XXI, 112-114, has
been used by commentators to fix the fictional date of Canto I as the night before
Good Friday, April 7, 1300. (In 1300 Dante was 35 years old: half of the Biblical span
of 70 years.) The morning spent trying to climb the hill is thus Good Friday. One
should note the careful correlation of Christian symbolic time with events in the
poem.
Since Dante wrote the Inferno after he was exiled in 1301, this made it possible for
him to make accurate "predictions" about events which had already occurred, thus
lending an aura of truth to his genuine prophecies.
The dark forest is a metaphor for everything that Dante thought was wrong in 1300.
This could include inner confusion and sin, the necessary imperfection of the world
(as opposed to Paradise and God), political corruption, the absence of true
authority, the bad behavior of the Pope, etc. Redemption is associated with
struggle, in this case the struggle uphill, which is made impossibly difficult by the
continual temptations of sin. The leopard is thought to symbolize lust, the lion pride,
and the she-wolf avarice. The identity of the greyhound has been widely disputed:
Christ, Dante himself, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Dante's benefactor Cangrande
della Scala are some candidates. Since Dante strongly supported the imperial claim

to authority, it seems most likely that the greyhound is the Holy Roman Emperor,
Henry VII (elected in 1308, probably before the Inferno was written, but after it
"took place.")
Canto II: Summary:
It was evening. Dante invokes the Muses to help him tell his story. He began to
doubt his worthiness to make the great voyage through Hell, and compared his
weakness to the strength of "he who fathered Sylvius" (Aeneas) and ""the Chosen
Vessel," (St. Paul) who had descended to Hell and returned from there victoriously.
He asked Virgil for guidance, and Virgil told him not to surrender to cowardice. In
order to give him heart, Virgil said that Beatrice herself had descended from
Paradise to Limbo to find him (Limbo is the place in Hell for worthy Pagans who lived
before Christ). Concerned about Dante, she had asked Virgil to lead him to safety.
Gallantly, Virgil had agreed. He discovered that not only Beatrice, but two other
blessed ladies, Lucia and Rachel, were also concerned for Dante, having been
warned by "a gentle lady" that he risks damnation. Hearing that his love had not
forgotten him, Dante was much encouraged, and he resolved to unflinchingly follow
Virgil wherever he would lead him.
Canto II: Analysis:
The mixture of different literary genres and themes is particularly evident in this
canto, though it occurs throughout the poem. The Inferno is part epic, modelled in
some ways on Virgil's Aeneid. It is also a deeply Christian poem full of traditional
symbolism, describing a Hell quite different from that of the Ancients. Hell is not
simply the underworld where the dead are, but is specifically the place where the
wicked are punished, each according to his sin. The ultimate goal is to reach God.
The third theme is that of courtly love: much medieval literature deals with the love
of a knight for an unattainable and lovely lady. In the literature of courtly love, the
knight's hopeless devotion spurs him on to chivalric feats which he accomplishes in
order to honor his chosen lady. In some lyrics of courtly love, the perfection of the
desired lady undermines the religious morality of the poetry: a Christian should love
God above all else. However, Dante deftly melds the two genres by loving a lady
who is dead: there is no risk of physical sexuality, and since Beatrice is a blessed
soul, she can be accepted as a link between Dante and God: by aspiring to Beatrice
in the courtly manner, Dante becomes all the more Christian. This rationalization
would not have been accepted by the sterner Protestant sects, but in the courtly
early 14th century, no one could find fault with it. Dante's journey through Hell is
thus an epic adventure, a mystical religious experience, and a way to honor his
beloved.
Dante's admiration for Virgil and his identification of himself with Aeneas and St.
Paul should be understood in the context of his pro-Imperial politics. The Aeneid was
written in order to create a heroic past for the Roman Empire; Dante hopes to
predict the success of the Holy Roman Empire, which unites the martial virtues of
the Romans with the Christian virtues. (The Holy Roman Empire, incidentally, is the
name given to a variable dominion including much of Germany and some of Italy. It
was never as powerful or as coherent as the true Roman Empire, and its glorious
name says more about Imperial ambitions than realities.)
Dante describes heavenly justice in terms of a stern judgement, presumably that of
God-the-father and Christ, tempered by the merciful pleas of the Virgin Mary (the
"gentle lady") and other female saints and saintly beings. Justice is then a
masculine attribute, and mercy is feminine.
Canto III: Summary:
Dante and Virgil arrived at the gateway of Hell, whose famous inscription ends with
the words: "Abandon hope, ye who enter here." The damned shall suffer eternally
and Hell will endure forever, in Dante's vision. Past the gate, Dante heard voices of
suffering and despair that made him weep. Virgil told him that he was hearing the
laments of the morally neutral people, the "sorry souls of those who lived without
disgrace and without praise," as well as the angels who sided neither with God nor

with Satan in Satan's rebellion. These cowardly people were tormented by wasps,
flies and worms. They are shut out of both Hell and Heaven, disdained by the forces
of good and evil alike.
Dante and Virgil approached the shore of the river Acheron, which forms the
boundary of true Hell. Charon, a demon in the shape of an old man, warned the
waiting souls of the torments in store for them, and told Dante that he, a living man,
could not cross the river. However Virgil told him that God had willed it, and Charon
could not countermand that order. The exhausted, bitter and despairing damned
souls were forced by Charon across the Acheron on his boat. Even as the first group
of the damned crossed the river, more crowds assembled on the bank, waiting,
unable to resist their fate. The earth trembled and Dante, terrified, fell unconscious.
Canto III: Analysis:
The inscription on the gate is the only text Dante reads in Hell. In it, different
attributes are assigned to different members of the Trinity: God-the-father is "divine
authority," Christ is "highest wisdom," and the Holy Ghost is "primal love." Dante
will very rarely refer to God directly: just as Mary is known as "a gentle lady," God is
known as these different forces. The eternal things made before Hell are the
heavens, the angels, and primal matter, which were made on the first day.
Dante's rejection of the lukewarm, neutral souls might seem overly harsh: although
they did nothing evil, their torments are great. This, and Dante's lack of compassion
for them, are evidence that he was no believer in moderation or compromise. Just
as he firmly and unrelentingly espoused his political position, he expects others to
do the same. The genuinely sinful souls may be more blame-worthy, but as we shall
see, Dante also finds them to be more worthy of compassion.
One of the neutral souls is singled out: he who made "the great refusal." He is
thought to be Pope Celestine V, who was elected Pope in July 1294, and abdicated
five months later, which allowed Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303), a bitter enemy of
Dante, to come to power. There are unflattering references to Boniface VIII in Cantos
XIX, lines 52-57, and XXVII, line70.
Charon and the Acheron are both borrowed from Classical mythology: Dante uses
Pagan characters and geography in his Christian underworld. In the Italian
Renaissance, there was great renewed interest in Classical mythology and
literature, which was sometimes at odds with Christian beliefs, since theoretically
even the greatest Greeks and Romans were all worthy of damnation. Dante is
careful to make sure that his veneration for Antiquity is kept within the bounds
prescribed by Christianity, as we shall see in the description of Limbo in the next
Canto.
Canto IV: Summary:
Dante awakened to find himself on the brink of an abyss. Seeing Virgil turn pale, he
was afraid to go into it, but Virgil explained that his palor was the result of
compassion rather than of fear: the first circle of Hell contained his people.
In the first circle, Limbo, there were sighs rather than wails: it was peaceful yet sad.
Multitudes of people, infants, women, and men, stayed there. Virgil explained that
these were those who were virtuous, but lacked baptism and hence could not be
saved. Virgil was one of them. Dante was sorry to see these unhappy good souls,
and asked if anyone had ever been able to leave Limbo. Virgil said that he had seen
a Great Lord come and rescue Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, Rachel, and other early
Israelites.
They came to the place where particularly honorable shades were, and Virgil was
welcomed by four giants, Homer, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan. Dante was very pleased
to find himself accepted into their number as the sixth great intellect. Speaking of
solemn things, they came to the castle of Limbo, surrounded by a green meadow,

where the great non-Christian souls lived. Dante lists both characters of Classical
literature (Electra, Hector, Aeneas...), famous Romans (Caesar, Lucretia...),
philosophers, writers, scientists, doctors, and musicians. He gives particular honor
to "the master of men who know" (Aristotle), and also mentions famous Arabs,
Avicenna and Averroes.
Leaving these heroic souls, Dante and Virgil continued on into darkness.
Canto IV: Analysis:
In this canto Dante addresses one of the great moral problems of Christianity, which
was particularly pressing for Renaissance scholars who revered the Ancients.
Baptism is necessary for salvation, but it seems essentially unfair that all the good
people who lived before Christianity, or who never heard of it, should suffer for
something over which they had no control. Dante solves this problem by keeping
the good Pagans and infidels in Hell, but giving them a painless and honorable fate.
Limbo is not a happy place, but it is contemplative and calm. Its inhabitants are not
tormented and they can converse with one another among green fields and noble
castles.
The Great Lord is Christ, and his coming to Limbo is the harrowing of Hell, which in
Christian teaching occurred after the crucifixion, when the good people of the Old
Testament were posthumously saved.
Dante modestly pays himself a great compliment by having the great authors of
Classical times accept him as one of them. Readers of the Inferno were presumably
supposed to agree with these noble shades. It is important to notice that, according
to Dante, no literature of importance had been written since Antiquity before
Dante's work. This was a sentiment shared by many Renaissance writers, who
ignored the medieval period and saw themselves as the direct heirs of the great
Classical tradition.
The veneration of Aristotle is not accidental. In Dante's time, Aristotle was
commonly referred as The Philosopher, the fount of all wisdom. The scholastic
tradition of philosophy and theology, which was very powerful throughout the
Renaissance period, is specifically that which united Aristotelian thought and
Christian beliefs. Late medieval and Renaissance thinkers had a great deal of
respect for received knowledge and the printed word, perhaps partly because there
were so few books. Thus, although they were Christian, they were often unable to
conceive of a system of knowledge which did not derive at least partially from the
Ancients. After Dante's time, a rival group began to emerge, made up of those who
preferred Plato to Aristotle. The fact that Dante was an Aristotelian is one reason he
is often classified as a medieval poet rather than one of the Renaissance. Of course
these classifications, though useful, are generally arbitrary: some historians strongly
dispute the idea that time can be divided into specific periods.
Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Summary and Analysis of Cantos V-VIII
Canto V: Summary:
Dante and Virgil descended into the second circle of Hell, where the demon Minos, a
conoisseur of sin, assigns each guilty soul its rightful place: after hearing what the
soul has to say, he wraps his tail around his body, and the number of times the tail
wraps around is the number of the circle where the sinner must go. Minos
challenged Dante and Virgil, but is silenced when Virgil claims a divine order.
The first circle is characterized by a wind which whirls the souls about endlessly,
never giving them a chance to rest. These are the lustful, including those who died
for love:Semiramis, Cleopatra, Helen, Paris, Tristan, Achilles, Dido... Dante was
struck by pity, and asked to speak to two souls who clung together as they were
blown around. The souls floated over to him, and one of them spoke, telling how she
had fallen in love while reading about Lancelot with her lover. She described the
great power of love, and the deaths she and her lover suffered for it, deeply

affecting Dante, who recognized her as Francesca. The other soul wept, and Dante
fainted out of pity.
Canto V: Analysis:
Minos is another figure from Classical mythology: he was the son of Zeus and
Europa. Hell is divided into seven circles, according to the seriousness of the sins.
Thus the first, Limbo, is the least blame-worthy, and the second, where the lustful
are tormented, is also relatively mild. This moral structure gives us insight into the
relative gravity of different sins in Dante's mind. As we see here, carnal sins are
relatively unimportant, and lust (which is so closely linked with love, to which Dante
is not immune) is viewed with a great deal of compassion. One should note the
relative abundance of female sinners here: in medieval Christian thought lust was
often closely associated with women. A priest who felt himself tempted by the flesh
might commonly associate the object of his desire with the desire itself: if men are
tempted, women are seductresses. Dante's inclusion of many women in this circle
is, however, a very mild form of this kind of prejudice.
Semiramis, Queen of Assyria, is supposed to have legalized all sorts of sexual
immorality, including incest. Cleopatra committed suicide after the defeat of her
lover Mark Antony. Helen's beauty started the Trojan War when Paris desired her.
Tristan was a knight who drank a love potion and fell in love with Isolde, the wife of
his king. Dido committed suicide after she was abandoned by Aeneas.
The historical identities of Francesca and her lover are well known. Francesca da
Rimini was married around 1275 to Gianciotto Malatesta of Rimini for political
reasons. She unfortunately fell in love with her husband's younger brother Paolo
and he with her. When her husband discovered their adultery, probably in 1285, he
killed them both. Dante was then around 20 years old, and must have been
profoundly saddened by the tragic affair: thus their story affects him more deeply
than those of more distant historical and literary figures. The description of their
falling in love over a chivalric romance testifies to the power of literature, a feature
which probably appealed to Dante since he includes it so prominently.
Canto VI: Summary:
Dante awoke to find himself in the smaller third circle, surrounded by new suffering.
The circle was filled with cold, heavy, dirty rain and the souls there lay unhappily in
the stinking mud. They were also tormented by the three-headed doglike demon
Cerberus. Virgil tamed Cerberus by throwing some mud into his mouths, allowing
Dante to speak to one soul in particular who sat up out of the filth. The spirit said
that he had died after Dante's birth, but Dante did not recognize him. He then said
that he had been a Florentine named Ciacco, and that he had been damned for
gluttony, like the other inhabitants of the third circle. Dante was sorry for his plight,
and asked about the future of Florence, "that divided city." He was told that there
would be fighting, and "the party of the woods" would chase out the other, but that
soon the other would regain power with the help of "one who tacks his sails," and
would hold it for a long time, though injustly. There were two just men in Florence,
but no one listened to them. Dante then asked about some particular people who he
describes as good: Tegghiaio, Farinata, Arrigo, Mosca, Jacopo Rusticucci. Ciacco
replied that they were much deeper in Hell and that he might see them later. Then
he "fell as low as his blind companions," not to arise until Judgement Day. Dante
asked Virgil whether their condition would be better or worse after that Day, and
Virgil said that being more "perfect," they would suffer more.
Descending downward, they found "Plutus, the great enemy."
Canto VI: Analysis:
Each succeeding circle of Hell is smaller because Hell is like an enormous funnel.
Caicco's prophecy is an account of the political events in Florence from 1300 (the
supposed date of the Inferno) to whenever the Inferno was actually written: that is,
it predicts events that had already taken place.

In this Canto, Dante clearly expresses his anger at Florence and his feeling that the
city was morally as well as politically corrupt (remember that he had been exiled
from Florence in 1302, and was very unhappy with the ruling government). Thus
Ciacco describes Florence as a city "so full of envy that its sack has always spilled,"
and says that there "three sparks that set on fire every heart are envy, pride, and
avariciousness." The party of the woods is that of the White Guelfs, who came to
power after bloodily banishing the Blacks on May Day, 1300. Three years later the
Blacks regained their position, and it was during their reign that Dante was exiled:
this is no doubt why Ciacco says the party will "heap great weights upon its
enemies, however much they weep indignantly." (The White Guelfs tended to try to
limit papal power in Florence, while the Blacks were in favor of it. For a more
detailed account of the factional strife in Florence, see the biography of Dante.) The
"one who tacks his sails" is an insulting allusion to Pope Boniface VIII; the phrase
refers to his ambiguous behavior.
It is not clear who the two just men are. Dante might well be referring to himself as
one of them. It has also been suggested that the two "men" symbolize natural law
and codified law.
The "coming of the hostile Judge" is the Day of Judgement and the judge is Christ.
Note that Christ rarely appears as a merciful figure in the Inferno: mercy is reserved
for female intercessors like Mary and Beatrice (see the analysis of Canto II).
Virgil's statements about the increase in perfection of the damned souls after
Judgement is scholastic: in Aristotelian teaching the soul and the body are more
perfect when they are united. Being more perfect they experience both pleasure
and pain more fully, so the damned will suffer more once their bodies are
resurrected. In scholastic philosophy, the word "perfect" is often used relatively,
which means that its meaning was not the same as it is today. Aristotle probably
used it to signify wholeness or completeness in this case. For a discussion of
scholasticism, see the analysis of Canto IV.
Canto VII: Summary:
The demon Plutus frightened Dante with his grating cry: "Pape Satan, pape Satan
aleppe!" However Virgil told the demon to be silent since Dante's journey was willed
from on high, and they were able to descend into the fourth circle. The spirits there
danced an infernal round while endlessly pushing around great weights. Divided into
two groups, one shouted "Why do you hoard?" and the other, "Who do you
squander?" Dante pitied them, and noticed that many of them appeared to be
tonsured clerics. Virgil told him that these were people who had "spent without
measure." Half of them had been miserly and the others had squandered their
wealth. Many of the misers were indeed "clergymen, and popes and cardinals,
within whom avarice works its excess." Dante thought he might be able to recognize
some, but Virgil said that they were unrecognizable, and that this sight should teach
him not to put too much importance in money, since Fortune controlled it. Fortune,
he said, was a servant of God, whose occupation was to shift worldly wealth from
one people to another. Although she was much maligned by men, she was a blessed
being.
Dante and Virgil came to another infernal river, the Styx; this one was muddy and
swamp-like. It marked the boundary of the fifth circle. In it, furious naked spirits
fought against one another. These were the wrathful. Other spirits, underwater,
were stuck in the slime: these were the slothful and the sullen, who had not
appreciated the sweet air of the sunlit world. They gurgled their lament, which came
to the surface as bubbles.
Finally Dante and Virgil came to the base of a tower.
Canto VII: Analysis:

Pluto is another Pagan figure, strongly connected with avarice. In Roman mythology
he is the king of the underworld; here he is merely a servant of the Devil, whose cry
probably means: "Oh Satan, oh Satan, the most powerful one!"
A modern reader might be surprised to see how little Dante associates clergymen
with any kind of piety or virtue. In Renaissance Italy, popes and cardinals had a very
important secular role as powerful leaders. Many of them were actually soldiers and
led armies. They were elected not because of their superior piety but because of
complex power relationships: patronage was very important, as were connections to
strong families. Although they theoretically had a priviledged link to the divine will,
in practice, as we can see here, they were prone to usual human failings and even
had special occupational sins. The fact that the Church was associated with avarice
reflects its immense wealth in Renaissance Italy: religious taxes, goods and land
seized by the Church's armies, and pious bequests made by wealthy citizens all
contributed to its riches. Monasteries and convents owned huge expanses of land,
which were usually rented out to tenant farmers, and nuns entering convents
brought with them their dowries. Evidently the status of the Church as a financial
power as well as a moral institution was not entirely without conflict, as we can see
from Dante's indignation. The fact that the tonsured spirits are unrecognizable
extends the insult to all deceased clergymen who are not expressly mentioned
elsewhere. Of course, Dante was particularly sensitive about the Church as a
secular power: he opposed the Pope and supported the Emperor. But the secular
nature of many Church activities can be seen by the fact that Dante sees no
difficulty in simultaneously opposing the Pope and being a serious Christian.
The lack of compassion Dante shows for the slothful and the sullen echoes his
disdainful treatment of the neutral spirits in the Ante-Inferno. Always a vigorous
man, his least favorite sins seem to involve a lack of action and a withdrawal from
the world.
Canto VIII: Summary:
Still in the fifth circle, Dante saw two flames at the top of the tower, which were
answered by another fire very far away. He asked Virgil what that meant, and was
told that he would soon see.
A little boat skimmed over to them, and its boatman, Phleygas, thought they were
souls trying to escape, but was told by Virgil of their superior mission. Resentfully,
he ferried them across the Styx. They passed a sinner weeping in the mud; Dante
recognized him and cursed him, supported by Virgil. Dante told Virgil he would like
to see the Florentine sinner dragged underwater, and his fine wish was soon
satisfied: other spirits attacked him, crying "At Filippo Argenti!"
Dante and Virgil grew nearer to the burning city of Dis, full of mosques, where they
were challenged by thousands of fallen angels. The fallen angels were silenced by
Virgil's claim of divine protection, but they retreated back into the city and locked
the gates, trying to keep Dante and Virgil out. Virgil was confident that someone
would help them in.
Canto VIII: Analysis:
The tower that Dante refers to is apparently that of one of the mosques in Dis.
Mosques are of course the temples of Muslims, and are used here to indicate
infidels.
Phleygas is another figure from Pagan mythology, the ferryman of the Styx, as
Charon is that of the Acheron.
Filippo Argenti was a historical figure. He was called Argenti because he shod his
horse with silver (argento means silver). There are various reasons why Dante's
dislike of him was so strong: Filippo Argenti, one of the Adimari clan, was a Black
Guelf. (Dante was a member of the rival party, the White Guelfs.) Filippo apparently
had slapped Dante at one time, offending his aristocratic sense of honor, and his

brother received Dante's goods, which were confiscated from him by the Commune
of Florence when he was exiled in 1302 (see Dante's biography). Dante's
motivations for hating him are thus both political and personal in fact it is often
difficult to distinguish between personal and political issues in this period.
The disdainful pride of the fallen angels reveals their essential error: they are
incapable of repenting their rebellion against God, and are haughty despite their
defeat. Their attempt to keep Dante and Virgil out of Dis echoes an earlier attempt
when they tried to keep Christ out of Limbo when he descended there to rescue the
virtuous Israelites (see Canto IV).
Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Summary and Analysis of Cantos IX-XII
Canto IX: Summary:
Dante and even Virgil were dismayed that their helper was so long in coming. Dante
asked Virgil if spirits from Limbo ever descended into the deeper regions of Hell, and
Virgil answered that it was very rare, but that he had gone even to the darkest
place, Judas' circle, under orders from the witch Erichtho.
Dante suddenly noticed at the top of the tower with the flames, the three furies
stood. They tore their flesh with their talons and wailed threats, but Virgil protected
Dante by covering his eyes so he would not be turned to stone by the Gorgon.
They heard the sound of a great wind and turned to see thousands of damned souls
fleeing from a noble figure who calmly walked across the Styx: heaven's messenger
had come to relieve them. He opened the gate of Dis and rebuked the fallen angels
for their foolish presumption, then turned back on his way like someone with a lot to
do, without speaking to Dante.
Inside the city of Dis, Dante saw a field of graves: burning tombs were spread all
around and inside them souls suffered great torments. Virgil told Dante that these
were the arch-heretics, and that each was burnt more or less according to his
deserts.
Canto IX: Analysis:
This is one of the few moments in the poem when Virgil seems to be unsure of
himself. His fear, and the arrival of the heavenly messenger, make it clear how
much Dante's wellbeing depends on a favorable divine will. Beatrice is not
mentioned directly, but it seems likely that she has kept a careful eye on Dante's
progress, and is ready to intercede for him when necessary. Without his lady's love,
Dante would be lost: his salvation depends on her.
Dante often expresses fear and other emotions which do not belong to the heroic
canon: he is afraid of the wild beasts in the first canto, and of many of the demons
and tortures he sees in Hell. He frequently weeps out of pity and has fainted twice.
The effect of Dante's weaknesses emphasizes how little agency he has: he does
nothing on his own, and follows the path marked out for him by Beatrice and Virgil.
This might be thought to undermine his message: he is not a remarkably heroic
character. However, there are two parts to his message: what he sees, and how he
reacts to what he sees. Because of this separation, the reader might be inclined to
judge Dante's unheroic reactions, but is forced to accept his visions as truth. Since
the historical Dante created both his visions and his reactions to them, this serves
his purpose quite well: the harshest denunciations in the Inferno come not from
Dante himself, but from souls he meets in Hell.
The inhumanity of the heavenly messenger stands in marked contrast to the
suffering souls in Hell: Dante takes more care to make his sinful characters
sympathetic than the good ones. The heavenly messenger is good, but he is not
likable even as he rescues Virgil and Dante he disdains to speak to them. On the
other hand, Francesca da Rimini is a very touching character. Although Dante has a
strong sense of good and evil, his vision is not entirely black and white.

Canto X: Summary:
Dante asked Virgil if the people in the sepulchers could be seen, since the lids were
opened. Virgil answered that the lids would be closed eternally afterJudgement, and
that these were the followers of Epicurus, and all those who did not believe in the
immortality of the soul. Dante was frightened to here a voice from one of the
sepulchers, asking to speak to him since he was a Florentine. Virgil told Dante not to
be afraid, and that he would see the speaker, Farinata, sit up from his grave, which
he did. Farinata asked Dante about his ancestry, and, when told, remarked that they
had been enemies of his party and that he had scattered them twice. Dante replied
that, though scattered, they had managed to return to Florence - as Farinata's
people did not.
Just then they were interrupted by another shade who drew himself up and wept to
see that his son was not with Dante he thought that "high intellect" permitted the
voyage. Dante told him that his son Guido was not with him because divine will
rather than intellect was the cause of his presence, and that Guido did disdain the
one he was being led to. At these words the shade was struck by horror, saying:
"What's that: He did disdain'? He is not still alive? The sweet light does not strike
against his eyes?" Dante hesitated to answer and the shade fell back and
disappeared.
Farinata continued to speak, and warned Dante that before the face of the Lady who
ruled Hell was kindled fifty times, Dante too would learn how hard it was to return.
He asked Dante why Florentines were being so cruel to his people, and Dante
replied that a certain carnage made Florence hate them. Farinata admitted his
participation in the carnage, but reminded Dante that once he had interceded to
save Florence when others were ready to destroy the city.
Dante asked Farinata how much the inhabitants of Hell knew about events in the
world. Farinata said that they were far-sighted: they could see the future but not the
present. When time ended they would no longer see anything. Dante asked Farinata
to tell the other shade that his son was still alive, and that he had only hesitated
because he was wondering about how much he knew.
Virgil called Dante, who quickly asked Farinata who else was there; he answered
more than a thousand, including the second Frederick and the Cardinal.
Continuing on their way, Virgil comforted Dante, who was worrying about Farinata's
warning, reminding him that Beatrice was waiting for him. They came to a stinking
valley.
Canto X: Analysis:
Epicurus was a Greek philosopher whose philosophy has been misunderstood by
many moralists. He denied the immortality of the soul and thought that the Gods
were not interested in human affairs. The greatest good, then, was pleasure: not
debauchery, but the peaceful cultivation of the virtues. Epicurean philosophy had
been popular in Florence, especially among the Ghibellines, such as Farinata. He
and his wife were posthumously excommunicated in 1283, presumably for
Epicurean beliefs, and their bones were scattered.
Farinata, a famous leader, was referred to before, in Canto VI. When Dante said that
his people could not return to Florence, he means the defeat and exile of the
Ghibelline party. The Ubertis (Farinata's family) were exiled in 1280. Farinata's
ominous prediction means that in within 50 months Dante himself would be exiled
and unable to return. The Lady who rules Hell is Proserpina, a goddess associated
with the moon (her face lit once is a month). As we know, and as Dante knew when
writing it, the prediction was correct: Dante was indeed exiled in 1302 and his
attempts to return failed.

The son Guido was Guido Cavalcanti, and his father was Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti.
Guido was a famous poet and a friend of Dante's, which explains why his father
hoped to see him with Dante visiting Hell. Guido had married Farinata's daughter.
From the reference to his absence, we can imagine that he was not as pious or
devout as Dante himself. Although Guido was alive in April 1300, when the action
presumably takes place, he died the next August, so he was dead when the Inferno
was written.
The carnage Dante and Farinata refer to is the battle of Montaperti in 1260. The
Ghibellines won, and proposed to to destroy Florence, but Farinata intervened and
saved the city.
The second Frederick was the King of Sicily and Naples, and was the Holy Roman
Emperor from 1215 to 1250. The Cardinal is the Ghibelline Ottaviano degli Ubaldini,
who was made Cardinal in 1244. The fact that an Epicurean could be a cardinal
emphasizes the secular nature of such ecclesiastical positions.
Canto XI: Summary:
Dante and Virgil passed the huge flaming tomb of the Pope Anastatius, and Virgil
decided that they should wait a while to grow used to the terrible stench in the
seventh circle. To spend the time usefully, Dante asked Virgil to explain some things
about the structure of Hell. Virgil said:
There are three smaller circles past the sixth circle, holding the spirits of people
guilty of different forms of fraud, which God finds very displeasing. The upper circle,
the seventh, holds the violent, and is itself divided into three circles, punishing
violence against God, one's self, and one's neighbors, in the order of most to least
serious. Those who are violent against their neighbors are tyrants and murderers;
those who are violent against themselves are suicides or squander their
possessions; and those who are violent against God are blasphemers, sodomites,
and usurers. The eighth circle holds those who practise fraud against people who
trust them: flatterers, hypocrites, sorcerers... In the ninth circle, treachery, the
greatest of all sins, is punished. The ninth circle is the center of the city of Dis.
Dante asked Virgil why the spirits of the first circles were not punished in Dis, since
God was angry with them. Virgil answered that if he had read his Ethics, he would
know that of the three faults which offend Heaven, incontinence, malice, and mad
bestiality, incontinence was the least serious. The sins of incontinence, then lust,
gluttony, avarice, wrath... were not as severely punished as the others.
Dante then asked why usury was so serious a sin. Virgil again referred to Aristotle,
and said that usurers followed neither nature nor art, the acceptable ways of
making a living. He then said that they should move on.
Canto XI: Analysis:
This canto gives a tangled but essentially straightforward description of Hell's moral
geography. We have:
Ante-Hell (the neutral spirits and angels who did not take sides)
1st circle: Limbo (the virtuous non-Christians)
2nd circle: LUST (Francesca da' Rimini and her lover, among others)
3rd Circle: GLUTTONY
4th Circle: AVARICE and PRODIGALITY
5th Circle: WRATH and SULLENNESS

The wall of Dis, where Dante and Virgil are let in by the heavenly messenger. The
rest of the circles are in the city of Dis.
6th Circle: HERESY (Farinata and Guido's father)
7th Circle: VIOLENCE
against their neighbors: tyrants and murderers
against themselves: suicides and squanderers
against God: blasphemers, sodomites, usurers
8th Circle: FRAUD
panders and seducers
flatterers
simonists
diviners, astrologers, magicians
barrators
hypocrites
thieves
fraudulent counselors
scandal mongers
falsifiers of metals, persons, coins, and words
9th Circle: TREACHERY
traitors to kin
traitors to homeland
traitors to guests
traitors to benefactors
The important questions here are how much this structure reflects Dante's personal
beliefs, and why it takes this particular form. For example, a modern reader would
not find it intuitive that usury (lending money with interest) and homosexuality were
considered more serious sins than murder. From a modern Protestant perspective,
all sins are basically equal in God's eyes, and it makes no real sense to try to
classify them at all, so the existence of a structured Hell is in itself a problem.
In order to understand the existence of the structure, we can examine Virgil's
explanation of it. He draws his reasoning from Aristotle, mentioning both the Ethics
and the Physics. Aristotle treats sins resulting from incontinence (the excessive
indulgence in things which are acceptable in moderation) fairly mildly, since they
are the product of human weakness rather than genuine malice. The fact that a
Pagan philosopher is referred to as an authority on what is essentially a matter of
religious doctrine shows how great the reverence for Aristotle was.
The idea that fraud and usury are worse than murder and tyranny might be related
to the political and cultural make-up of Renaissance Florence. As can be seen by the
constant strife between the Ghibellines and the Black and White Guelfs, fighting

was a common occurence, and sometimes a single insult could be enough to start a
blood feud. Aristocrats deeply concerned with family honor powerfully influenced
Florence's culture; these would be inclined to countenance bloodshed. But they
would be deeply hostile to those who sought power by other means: rich merchants
did not rise altogether uncontested, especially in the earlier years of the
Renaissance. Also, Dante had a fair amount of experience with government, and
probably knew how harmful fraud and corruption could be.
Canto XII: Summary:
Dante and Virgil descended into the seventh circle on a rocky mass of fallen stones
which had collapsed, according to Virgil, when Hell had been robbed of its most
treasured possessions. They passed the Minotaur, who bit himself in fury and ran
berserk, but was unable to reach them.
They came to a river of boiling blood, the Phlegethon, where Virgil said those who
injure others violently are forced to burn. They were challenged by centaurs armed
with bows and arrows, including Nessus, Chiron, and Pholus. Their duty was to shoot
any soul who came to far out of the river of blood. Virgil explained to Chiron the
circumstances of Dante's journey, and he gave them Nessus as an additional guide.
Along the river's banks Dante saw some souls who were up to their heads in blood;
these, according to Nessus, were bloody tyrants like Alexander and Dionysius,
Ezzelino and Obizzo of Este. Further upstream they came to others whose throats
and heads were clear of the blood; one of these was the one who impaled the heart
that drips blood upon the Thames. The river became shallower and shallower, but
Nessus explained that it would again deepen in its circular path to the deepest part
where the tyrants were punished, including Attila, Pyrrhus, Sextus and Rinier of
Corneto and Rinier Pazzo, as well as those already mentioned. They forded the river
at the shallowest point.
Canto XII: Analysis:
The Minotaur is a figure from Greek mythology: he was half man and half bull, the
offspring of a bull and the Queen of Crete, Pasiphae, who was cursed with insane
love for the bull and had a hollow cow built, in which the Minotaur was conceived.
The Minotaur lived in a labyrinth beneath the palace and each year it killed and ate
seven young men and seven girls who were given as tribute to Crete by defeated
territories. The Minotaur was finally killed by Theseus (the Duke of Athens) with the
help of the Cretan king Minos' daughter Ariadne.
The centaurs were other mythological creatures, half horse and half man. They were
notorious for their volatile tempers and violent behavior. Nessus tried to rape
Deianira, Hercule's wife, and was shot for it with a poisoned arrow. In revenge,
Nessus gave Deianira a robe dipped in his blood, which he said would make the
wearer fall in love with her. When Hercules was in love with Iole, Deianira gave him
the robe, which poisoned him and made him die in agony. Chiron was a somewhat
different centaur, the tutor of Achilles, a wise and cultivated being: thus he is the
one Virgil wants to talk to.
Alexander is probably Alexander the Great of Macedon (356-323 BC), who made
great conquests in a short lifetime. Dionysius the Elder was tyrant of Syracuse from
405 to 367 BC (not to be confused with the God of wine). Ezzelino III (1194-1259), a
Ghibelline, massacred the citizens of Padua. Obizzo II d'Este (1247-1293) was a
Guelph who may have been killed by his own son.
The heart that still drips blood is that of Prince Henry, killed during mass by Guy,
son of Simon de Montfort. According to Villani's Chronicles, a statue of Henry,
holding a casket containing his heart, was placed on London Bridge. According to
superstition, the heart would bleed until the murder was avenged.
The two Riniers were famous highwaymen. Dante thus draws his examples both
from antiquity and from relatively recent history.

Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Summary and Analysis of Cantos XIII-XVI

Canto XIII: Summary:
Across the bloody river, in the second ring of the seventh
circle, Dante and Virgil came to a strange and sad forest. The leaves were black and
all the trunks were gnarled; there were no flowers. The Harpies (foul birdlike
creatures with human faces) nested there. Virgil instructed Dante to look around
carefully. Dante could not see anyone, but heard sighing voices all around. Virgil told
him that he would understand if he broke off a twig, so Dante did so. A voice from
that thornbush cried out and the wound bled, frightening Dante. Virgil apologized to
the tree and asked him to tell his story so that Dante could honor his memory in the
world of the living. The spirit said that it had been Frederick's faithful confidant, but
that jealous courtiers had turned Frederick against him, and he had committed
suicide in despair. He told Dante that he had always been loyal to Frederick, and
asked him to tell people this. Dante was too overcome by pity to speak, and asked
Virgil to ask the spirit questions in his place. The spirit explained how suicides came
to be sad trees: Minos sent them to the seventh circle as seeds, to sprout wherever
they fell. After the last judgement they would bring their bodies down, but would not
inhabit them, since as suicide's they had no right to take them again: instead they
would hang their bodies on their trees.
Suddenly they were interrupted by two souls who were hunted through the forest by
black bitches. One was referred to as Lano; the other, who could not run fast
enough, fell into a bush and was torn to pieces by the dogs. Virgil led Dante to the
bush that had been wounded by the struggle; it lamented its fate and said that it
was not responsible for the indecent life led by Jacopo da Santo Andrea (the spirit
who had been dismembered). Virgil asked the bush who it had been; it replied that
it was from Florence (the city whose first patron gave way to John the Baptist), and
that it had made a gallows place of its own home.
Canto XIII: Analysis:
This vision of Hell is one of the most striking scenes in the Inferno. The desolate
forest made up of black, twisted trees which bled if they were broken seems
strangely fitting as the place of punishment for suicides. Although Dante the author
assigns suicides a deep place in Hell, Dante the character cannot help being
suffocated by pity for them.
The first speaking soul is that of Pier della Vigna (1190-1249), who was the minister,
private secretary and counselor of Frederick II until he fell into disfavor and was put
in prison and blinded. There he committed suicide. Dante makes it clear that he
thinks Pier was innocent of the charges raised against him, although his suicide
damns him. Pier's speech is an example of a particular rhetorical style and deserves
to be read carefully: the repetitions and juxtapositions of certain words give a
solemn measure to his lines. The "whore" who inflamed people against him is envy.
Lano is probably Arcolano of Siena, who belonged to the Spendthrift Club, a group of
young noblemen who wasted time and money on frivolous and extravagent
entertainments. According to Boccaccio, when Arcolano ran out of money he sought
death in battle. Jacopo da Santo Andrea was a notorious squanderer. It is not
altogether clear what difference there is between these squanderers and the
prodigals in the fourth circle. It seems that these acted consciously and selfdestructively (for example, the Spendthrift Club and Arcolano's quasi-suicide), which
might explain it.
The first patron of Florence was the God of War, Mars. Cast out by the second, John
the Baptist, Mars proceeded to torment his former city with strife and
bloodshed. The anonymous Florentine suicide cannot be identified, and is probably
supposed to symbolize widespread despair in Florence.
Canto XIV: Summary:

Out of love for their native city, Florence, Dante gave the anonymous spirit the
branches that had broken from him, and then continued on his way to the third ring
of the seventh circle. There the woods gave way to sand, and many naked souls
were miserable there, exposed in different degrees to the flakes of fire which rained
down from above, setting the sand on fire when they fell. Dante asked Virgil who a
particular spirit was, who did not seem to care about the fires. The giant spirit
himself answered, and claimed that he feared God no more in death than he had in
life. Virgil berated him and said that his madness was a suitable punishment for his
arrogance and blasphemy, then informed Dante that this was Capaneus, one of the
seven kings who beseiged Thebes. They continued on, keeping to the edge of the
forest to avoid the burning sand, and came to a thin red stream. Virgil explained
that within the mountain Ida in Crete there was a gigantic statue of an old man,
whose head was made of gold, his arms and chest of silver, brass down to the legs,
his legs of iron and his right foot of clay. Each part of him except his golden head is
cracked, and the tears that drip down the cracks make all the infernal rivers: the
Acheron, the Styx, Phlegethon, and finally Coctyus. The rivulet Dante saw was
presumably water from the Phlegethon dripping down to the Cocytus. Dante wanted
to know where Lethe was (another mythological infernal river, associated with
forgetting), and Virgil answered that he would see it, but in the palce where spirits
cleansed themselves of repented guilt. They then left the circle through a path that
didn't burn.
Canto XIV: Analysis:
Capaneus was one of the seven legendary kings who beseiged Thebes. Apparently
Capaneus boasted that even Jove couldn't stop him, and was hit by a thunderbolt in
retribution. Joves is associated with Jehova here, strangely enough: one wouldn't
think that disobedience to a Pagan god would warrant damnation by a Christian
god. However Jove is often associated with Jehova in early literature, perhaps
because of the similarity of their names, and their preeminent positions as the head
of the gods and the only god.
The image of the gigantic statue of the old man is Dante's own, although it draws
on imagery from Ovid and Daniel 2:31-35. In Ovidian legend, the golden age was
followed by the silver, the brass, and iron, as humans fell from their early innocence
and goodness. This bears some resemblance to the Jewish and Christian myth in
which humans fell from innocence in the Garden of Eden to a general wickedness
around the time of the Great Flood. In Dante's image, the clay leg symbolizes the
Church, and the iron leg is the Empire; the old man rests more on the clay leg than
the iron because of the superior power of the Church over the Empire in Dante's
time. Its being made of clay symbolizes its corruption and unreliability. Damietta is
in the east so the statue faces west, toward Rome.
Canto XV: Summary:
Dante and Virgil walked along a kind of dyke between the river and the fiery sands,
which Dante compares to those of the Flemings. They came across a group of men
who were trudging along the sands; one of them recognized Dante and greeted him
affectionately. At first Dante could not tell who it was because of the effect of the
heat on his face, but then he respectfully greeted him as Ser Brunetto. They spoke
together, walking slowly (Brunetto was not allowed to stop). Dante explained how
he happened to be journeying through Hell and Brunetto predicted a happy ending
to his journey. He said that if he had not died, he would have helped Dante more in
his work, and warned him of the ingratitude of the people who came down from
Fiesole, who were presumptuous, avaricious, and envious. Brunetto said that Dante
would have an honorable future and should not bind himself to a party since neither
of them deserved him. In return, Dante said that he wished Brunetto were still alive,
and said that he would always remember his kind paternal image and the teaching
he had received. He also said that he was not afraid of Fortune, to Virgil's
commendment. Dante wanted to know who Brunetto's companions were, but he
told him that most of them were not worth knowing, though some were men of
letters and fame. They were all stained by the same sin, and included Priscian and

Francesco among others. Brunetto then had to leave Dante, and asked him to hold
his Tesoro dear. He ran ahead as though winning a race at Verona.
Canto XV: Analysis:
Although the spirits here are tormented for the sin of sodomy, it is not explicitly
mentioned in this canto. Indeed, Dante's behavior towards Brunetto is unfailingly
respectful and affectionate. Brunetto Latini (1220-1294), a Guelph Florentine, was a
famous political leader and writer. He wrote an encyclopedia in French, called Li
Livres dou tresor, and an Italian poem, the Tesoretto. Although Brunetto was not
actually Dante's teacher, he seems to have been an important influence and a close
friend.
The reference to the people of Fiesole comes from the legendary history of Florence.
Florentines believed that Florence had been founded by noble Romans, but that in
had been peopled in part by inhabitants of the town Fiesole in the mountains above
Florence these were the rough trouble-makers who caused all of Florence's ills.
According to Villani's Chronicles, the mixture of the two different peoples accounted
for Florence's exceptional and volatile nature.
Priscian of Cesarea was a Latin grammarian of the Middle Ages, and Francesco
d'Accorso was a lawyer at Bologna and Oxford. The third person, referred to
enigmatically by Brunetto, is Andrea de'Mozzi, the Bishop of Florence (the city lies
on the river Arno) who was transferred for his scandalous lifestyle by the Pope
Boniface VIII (the Servant of His servants) to Vicenza. He died soon after, apparently
worn out by sodomy (his tendons strained by sin).
The final image of Brunetto running to catch his companions is an example of
Dante's ability to turn a negative situation into a positive one. Brunetto is forced to
eternally walk along the burning sands, and is not allowed to fall too far behind his
companions however, his running to catch up is represented not as a punishment
but as a victory. He is the winner of a race.
Canto XVI: Summary:
When Dante had almost reached the place where the waters fell down to the next
circle, three shades ran up to him, and called for him to stop, since he was a
Florentine. Dante was struck with pity by the burn marks on their skin, and Virgil
told him that these were honorable men and well worth talking to. One of the
shades said that his companions were men of high degree: Guido Guerra, grandson
of the good Gualdrada, and Tegghiaio Aldrobandi; he himself was Jacopo Rusticucci.
Dante wanted to embrace them but dared not descend to the burning sands, so
instead he said he was sorry for their state, and explained the reason for his
journey. Jacopo wished him good fortune, and asked him whether the virtues still
flourished in Florence; he had heard from a recent arrival, Guigliemo Borsiere, that
the city wasn't doing well. Dante replied: "Newcomers to the city and quick gains
have brought excess and arrogance." The three shades then asked him to
remember them to the living, and ran off.
Dante followed Virgil to a roaring cascade which fell into a deep chasm. Dante gave
Virgil the cord he wore around his waist, and Virgil threw one end of it down the
chasm. To Dante's amazement, a horrific figure soon appeared, swimming up the
cord.
Canto XVI: Analysis:
The three Florentine sodomites were all famous and honorable political leaders,
evidently well respected by Dante despite their personal sins. Again, as in the last
canto with Brunetti, there is little reference to the sin itself, and the attitude of
Dante towards the sinners is extremely polite and respectful. Unlike some other
cases, he does not seem to consider himself offended by their sin, perhaps because
sodomy is defined as violence against God, and hence not particularly harmful to
anyone else.

Dante's condemnation of Florence may be a reference to mercantile activity

(remember that fraud and usury are strongly condemned). Evidently mercantile
values do not coexist peacefully with aristocratic ones.
At the end of the canto, Dante says that he would rather not say what he saw,
because it seems so improbable that no one would believe it however,
consideration for truth forces him to go ahead. This is a fairly standard ploy used by
writers of fiction in order to gain credibility. It would be interesting to know if any of
Dante's contemporaries believed that his journeys had actually taken place. It
seems unlikely, but is possible.
Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Summary and Analysis of Cantos XVII-XX
Canto XVII: Summary:
The monster that had approached them, Geryon, symbolized fraud itself. His face
was human, gracious and honest-looking, but his body was a combination of a bear
and a serpent, and his tail had a scorpion's sting. Virgil suggested that Dante go
speak with some shades who sat on the sand nearby while he parleyed with Geryon.
Accordingly, Dante approached a group of despondent people who sat flicking off
the flakes of fire which continually fell on them. Purses decorated with emblems
hung from their necks: one had a yellow purse with an azure lion, one a bloodred
purse bearing a white goose, and one was white with an azure pregnant sow. The
last one asked Dante what he was doing there and told him that Vitaliano would be
punished there too, and someone who had a green purse with three goats.
Then Dante went back to Virgil who had come to an agreement with Geryon by
which he would let them ride on his shoulders and take them down to the next
circle. Dante was touchingly frightened, and although he didn't dare say it, wished
he could ask Virgil to hold him tightly so he would not fall off. Then Geryon swam
out into the air, descending in great sweeps through many torments, and finally set
his passengers down on a rock, and disappeared.
Canto XVII: Analysis:
Geryon appears in classical mythology, but in a different form from Dante's
monster: there he is made up of three human bodies, or three heads with one body.
In mythology, he is not particularly associated with fraud, but here the connection is
quite clear. Someone practicing fraud appears to be just and good, just as Geryon's
head is noble in appearance but their hidden motives are evil, just as Geryon's
body is bestial, and his tail is venemous. Note that when Geryon lands on the edge
of the ravine, he lets his tail hang over the side where it is not seen.
The sinners Dante sees are usurers, and their purses bear emblems which make it
possible to identify their families, since family emblems were common in Florence.
The azure lion on gold refers to the Gianfigliazzi family, for example. Interestingly
enough, the one who speaks (and has a sow on his purse) was Reginaldo Scrovegni;
his son tried to atone for his father's ill-gotten wealth by commissioning the great
painter Giotto to paint a chapel named for him.
Here Dante the author allows himself to make predictions about which he cannot be
sure: Vitaliano and the one with the three goats were not dead when the Inferno
was written. His including them in the prediction may have been risky, since they
were living and might have been offended however usurers were probably used to
people making critical remarks about their activities. By calling the one with the
three goats the "sovereign cavalier," Dante mocks the willingness of Florentines to
grant a noble title to a banker and a usurer, Giovanni Buiamonte dei Becchi.
Dante's fright and his reliance on Virgil during the ride on Geryon's back give a
human perspective on a terrifying vision, which is all the more nightmarish for the
lack of detail.

Canto XVIII: Summary:

The eigth circle is called Malebolge, which means "Evil-Pouches," because the circle
is divided into ten different sections around the chasm in the middle. In the first
pouch, Dante saw sinners being scourged by demons as they unsuccessfully tried to
escape the whips. Dante thought he saw someone he knew, and although the shade
tried to conceal himself by lowering his head, Dante did indeed recognize him to
be Venedico Caccianemico. He asked him why he was being punished there, and
Venedico explained that he had persuaded a girl named Ghisolabella to do what the
Marquis wanted: he was a pander. Venedico also said that there were many other
people from Bologna there, like him. A demon then interrupted their conversation
and make Venedico go with the others. Climbing along the ridge, Dante then
pointed out to Virgil another shade who looked noble even though he was being
lashed. This, Virgil said, was Jason, who was being punished for his behavior towards
Hypsipyle, a girl he had seduced and abandoned, and Medea. The inhabitants of the
first pouch are thus panders and seducers.
In the next pouch, sinners waded through masses of human excrement, of which
they tried in vain to clean themselves. Dante recognized one, Alessio Interminei of
Lucca, despite his filthiness; Alesso said that he was there because of his flatteries.
Virgil pointed out another sinner, a filthy woman who had been Thais, a harlot who
had said that she was very grateful to her lover.
Canto XVIII: Analysis:
In contrast to the honorable sodomites, the sinners here are represented as
shameful and disgusting. Even Jason cannot retain much dignity, since he is
perpetually running around under the whips of the demons. They do not ask Dante
to to tell about them in the outside world, but rather seem to try to avoid
recognition. Since their sins are all based on deception, this is not out of character:
perhaps they do not wish to lose whatever good reputation they still had.
Venedico is supposed to have delivered his own sister Ghisolabella to the lustful
designs of a Marquis. In fact he was not yet dead when the Inferno supposedly takes
place; Dante was probably unaware of this.
In Greek legend, Jason was a hero who voyaged on his ship the Argo with his
companions, the Argonauts. They stopped at the island of Lemnos, where the
women had killed the men, except for Hypsipyle who had saved her father's life;
Jason seduced and abandoned her. Medea, a princess of a different island, turned
against her own people to help Jason in his quest, and was also abandoned; she
avenged herself by killing the children she had had with Jason.
The punishment of the flatterers is the most disgusting one so far, and seems rather
appropriate. Not much is known about the sinner Dante recognized, and Virgil's
story of Thais is a somewhat garbled version of a play by Terence, Eunuchus.
Canto XIX: Summary:
This canto opens with a condemnation of the simonists, followers of Simon Magus.
Dante and Virgil came to the next section of Malebolge, where the livid rock was
perforated by large holes. Feet stuck out of each hole (the sinner was buried headdownwards in the rock) and the feet were on fire, and kicked and writhed
desperately. One of them seemed to be tormented more than the rest, and Dante
wanted to know who it was, so Virgil suggested that they descend down to where
the heads were. Dante asked the sinner to speak, and was surprised to hear himself
addressed as Boniface: evidently the speaker expected Pope Boniface to join him
there in punishment. Dante made it clear that he was someone else, and the sinner
explained depairingly that he had been Pope, and was damned for his avarice and
corruption of the Church his simoniacal practices. He predicted that Boniface would
be punished there also, as would his successor, "a lawless shepherd from the west."
Dante was so angry at the extent of the corruption that he attacked the sinner
(Pope Nicholas III) and all other simoniacal popes in a scathing invective, accusing

them of trampling on the good and lifting up the wicked. They had introduced the
seven headed one who sits on the waters into the world. Dante lamented the fact
that Constantine had given the early pope a treasure.
Nicholas III kicked his heels in response and Virgil, pleased with Dante, carried him
up to the next valley.
Canto XIX: Analysis:
According to the Bible (Acts 8:9-24), Simon Magus tried to purchase the power of
conferring the Holy Spirit. "Simony" thus means the sale of spiritual goods, such as
ecclesiastical offices or indulgences. Simony in the Catholic Church was one of the
reasons the Reformation developed: Martin Luther among others strongly objected
to the pratice of selling indulgences (by buying an indulgence, one bought
forgiveness for a sin, and dispensed with years spent in Purgatory). However in the
Inferno Dante shows no sign of wishing to separate from the Church; rather he calls
for reform.
Pope Nicholas III was elected in 1277 and died in 1280; his reference to cubs of the
she-bear refers to his family name, Orsini. To "advance the cubs" would be to
promote his own family members in the Church hierarchy without regard to their
legitimacy. This was indeed common practice in the Church, which was by no means
free of the patronage systems which dominated the rest of political networking.
Nicholas' prediction about the lawless shepherd from the west is a product of the
lag between the fictional date of the Inferno and the actual time of its composition:
Clement V was elected in 1305. His time as Pope began one of the more
complicated Papal eras, the Babylonian Captivity, which is the name given to the
time when the Pope was based in Avignon rather than Rome. Clement was politically
close to the king of France. During the Babylonian Captivity there were sometimes
two or even three different Popes claiming legitimacy at the same time: we can see
why Dante may have been disillusioned with the system. One should also remember
his political position as a White Guelph, and that he was generally in favor of
Imperial power over Papal power.
The reference to the one who sits on the waters is taken from St. John's Apocalypse:
he saw the Whore of Babylon (a symbol of worldly corruption) riding on a sevenheaded monster. Here the Whore is the corrupted Church; the seven heads are the
seven sacrements and the ten horns are the commandments.
Canto XX: Summary:
In the next valley Dante saw sad processions of weeping spirits whose heads were
set backwards on their bodies so that their tears ran down their backs. Dante wept
to see the sad distorsion of humanity, but Virgil told him that pity was inappropriate
where God had set the punishment. He told him to look up and see Amphiaraus,
and Tiresias who had turned into a woman and back again, and Aruns, and the
sorceress Manto. She had founded Virgil's home-city, Mantua, Virgil said: after her
father died and her city was enslaved, she wandered through many lands, finally
settling in a land in a marsh with her slaves. After she died the city was called
Mantua after her; this, Virgil said, was the only true story of the origins of Mantua.
Dante asked Virgil if any of the passing souls were worthy of notice, and accordingly
Virgil pointed out Eurypylus, an augur of the time of the Trojan War, as well as
Michael Scot, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente. There were also women who had left their
spinning to become diviners.
Dante and Virgil continued on their way, because time was short.
Canto XX: Analysis:
The sinners here are diviners, astrologers, and magicians, and their activies (since
they are punished in the seventh circle) are all classified as fraud. This is interesting
because it implies that they used trickery rather than genuine magic: apparently

Dante did not believe in astrology and its like. He is somewhat exceptional in this,
as it is by no means true that by 1300 most people did not believe in magic.
Although practitioners of magic might easily have been persecuted as heretics or
impious witches, their arts still provoked fear and awe in many people. Most of them
tried to forsee the future, for which their heads are now turned backwards so that
they can't see in front of themselves at all.
It is strange that Virgil tells Dante not to weep at the misery of the soothsayers:
Dante frequently weeps with pity, and Virgil does not rebuke him. Virgil himself grew
pale when he entered Limbo. It would be an interesting question to try to discover
what it is about sorcery that arouses Virgil's anger and pious disdain to such a point.
Amphiaraus is another of the seven kings who fought Thebes. He foresaw his death
and tried to avoid battle, but died in an earthquake all the same. Manto was a
Theban soothsayer. Michael Scot and Guido Bonatti were court astrologers and
Asdente was a shoemaker who prophecied in Parma at the end of the 13th century.

Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Summary and Analysis of Cantos XXI-XXIV

Canto XXI: Summary:
The next valley held a pool of boiling tar, which reminded Dante of the pitch the
Venetians used to patch up their ships. While Dante was watching the
tar, Virgil warned him to look out. Turning around, he saw a black demon racing up,
carrying a sinner which he cast into the pool, calling out to the other deomns, the
Malebranche, that it was an elder of Saint Zita. He said he was going back for more,
and that there were plenty of grafters in that city. The sinner tried to get out of the
pitch, but other demons thrust him down with long hooks, taunting him all the
while. Virgil told Dante not to be afraid of the demons, and went over to speak with
them. At first they looked menacing, but when Virgil told them that they were there
by divine will, the head demon, Malacoda, gave them an escort made up of the
demons Alichino, Calcabrina, Cagnazzo, Barbariccia,Libicocco, Draghignazzo, Circiat
to, Graffiacane, Farafrello and Rubicante. Dante was not pleased to have an escort,
but Virgil again told him not to be frightened: the demons' growling faces were
meant to scare the sinners. As a signal to begin, the leader, Barbariccia, "made a
trumpet of his ass."
Canto XXI: Analysis:
The sinners here are being punished for the civil equivalent of simony: they have
sold offices and have been generally corrupt. While this is perhaps not as serious as
simony since officials are not entrusted with the well-being and morality of the holy
Church it is nonetheless a serious matter. Interestingly, when Dante was exiled the
charges laid against him were of this nature. Whether or not they had any validity is
not necessarily clear.
The Venetians, mentioned here in relation to the pitch they use to caulk their ships,
were famous sailors, and Venice derived its power during this period mainly as a
result of its merchant ships and strong navy.
The elder of Saint Zita is an official from Lucca: the elders were ten citizens who
sharde executive authority with the chief magistrate. Just as Florence had a
reputation for inner strife and Bologna was a city of sexual immorality, Lucca is
associated here with widespread corruption.
The various names of the devils, which take up so much of this canto, have a
variety of fantastic meanings:
Malebranche: "evil-claws," also a family name in Lucca. (This describes the devils as
a group: they are the Malebranche.)
Malacoda: "evil-tail."

Alichino: same root as "harlequin."

Calcabrina: "he who can walk on brine."
Cagnazzo: "big dog," also a family name in Lucca.
Libicocco: "winds," from the two winds libeccio and sirocco.
Barbariccia: "curly beard."
Draghignazzo: "big dragon."
Circiatto: "hog."
Farfarello: "evil ghost."
Rubicante: "he who grows red."
Graffiacane: "he who scratches dogs," also a family name from Lucca.
Even without their meanings, the names have a wild and frightening sound.
Canto XXII: Summary:
The canto opens with Dante's meditation on the rareness of the bugle by which the
devils marched. As they went along Dante noted that the sinners stayed out of the
pitch as much as they dared (like dolphins showing their backs out of water or frogs
by the side of a pond) but dived back in when they saw the demons coming. One
was too slow, however, and Graffiacane pulled him up by his hair; the demons
wanted to tear him to pieces. Dante asked Virgil to find out who he was, and
accordingly Virgil asked him. He answered that he was from Navarre and had taken
graft in the household of King Thibault. He said there was an Italian under the pitch
close by, a Fra Gomito of Gallura who was a sovereign swindler, also another
Sardinian, Don Michele Zanche. Then the demons could hardly be held off any
longer. The Navarrese said that if they would stand back, he would whistle and by
that signal other Italians would come close. The devils reluctantly agreed, and the
Navarrese craftily dove back in the pitch. Calcabrina and Alichino, fighting over
whose fault the escape was, fell into the pitch themselves, and Dante and Virgil left
during the confusion.
Canto XXII: Analysis:
This is one of the few cantos that justifies the name Divine Comedy: most of this
Comedy is not very funny at all. Dante's mock-solemn discussion of Barbariccia's
tremendous fart makes it clear that these demons are rather comic despite their
frightening appearances. They are far removed from the pure and inexorable
heavenly messenger, for example.
The crafty escape of the Navarrese barrator from the demons is another
exceptionally comic element. Trickster tales were important throughout the middle
ages, and Dante was familiar with Aesop's fables. The theme of a weak but
unscrupulous character escaping through trickery from the authorities is played out
here, and despite the trickster's faulty morals, we cannot help but admire his
unwillingness to get his companions in trouble. Also, the fairly complicated social
network developped by these barrators is quite striking: they have alert signals to
warn of the demons' coming and when it is all clear. Perhaps the vitality of these
sinners results from the nature of their punishment: they are pitted against the
terrifying but evidently stupid devils, rather than an inexorable rain of fire or a redhot tomb. It is to their advantage to band together and cooperate, which seems to
relieve the natural state of despair of a damned spirit.
Canto XXIII: Summary:

Dante continued on silently, and Dante compared the adventure of the last canto to
Aesop's fable of the mouse and the frog. However they were afraid that the devils
would chase after them, enraged by their humiliating experience. Indeed the
Malebranche were in pursuit, so Virgil took up Dante like a mother carrying a child
out of a burning house, and slid down to the next valley, where the devils were
unable to follow.
The sinners there were dressed in magnificent gilded robes, but the robes were
made out of heavy lead and so the spirits wept as they trudged around. Dante
asked Virgil to find someone he knew; a spirit overhearing them called out for them
to wait for him. Two spirits came up and saw that Dante was alive, then they told
him that they and their fellow-sufferers were hypocrites. Dante said he was from
Florence, and asked them who they were. They said they were the Jovial Friars,
Catalano and Loderingo, who had been chosen to keep the peace in Florence, and
had acted hypocritically. Dante began an invective against them, but his attention
was caught by a sinner crucified on the ground, so that the lead-bearing spirits
walked over him. Fra Catalano said that that man had counseled the Pharisees to let
one man, rather than a nation, suffer, and that others in the same cousel were also
impaled here.
Virgil asked Fra Catalano how to get out, and he answered that it was possible to
climb across the ruins of the bridge that the Malebranche had told them about.
Virgil was angered to hear that the devils had lied to them, and he strode off,
followed by Dante.
Canto XXIII: Analysis:
Dante's reference to the fable of the mouse and the frog makes it clear that he was
familiar with Aesop's works, and that the events in the preceeding canto were
intentionally fable-esque.
The relationship between Virgil and Dante is rather peculiar. Dante emphasizes the
paternal nature of Virgil's love for him; all the same it is strange to hear about
Dante, a grown man of 35, being picked by by Virgil and tenderly carried around. If
we remember Canto IV, the spirits of Homer and his companions (of which Virgil is
one) are described as being giant, so perhaps Virgil really is a huge and imposing
character. In that case, the image of Virgil carrying Dante makes more sense. It
might still be interesting to investigate possible homoerotic undertones: since Dante
was well educated in classical culture, he was presumably not a stranger to the
bizarre heroic relationships between men and boys which crop up so frequently in
Greek literature. Of course, Dante is devoted to Beatrice: but she is almost more of
an ideal of goodness than a person, and so far Dante has been much more
physically intimate with Virgil than with her although this doesn't necessarily mean
anything. A good way to look at this problem would be to find the instances where
the love between Dante and Virgil is mentioned, and to compare them both to the
parts where Beatrice is mentioned, and to descriptions of Ancient Greek
homosexuality, and, if possible, to Renaissance paternal and filial discourse, to see
what matched what. It might also be good to look at the talk between Dante and
Brunetto in Canto XV: while Dante affectionately mentions Brunetto's paternal
attitude toward him, we are aware that Brunetto is homosexual.
The Jovial Friars, also known as the Knight's of Saint Mary, were an order founded
with the intention of keeping peace between warring factions. However the Friars
often neglected their duties: the two that were in charge of maintaining peace in
Florence instead oversaw a period of increased violence. The fact that cities were
known to submit their political systems to outsiders is an indication of their
divisions: neither faction was willing to let someone from the other exercise power,
so they would choose some neutral from somewhere else. This did not always have
the desired results.
The man who was crucified on the ground is the high Jewish priest under Pontius
Pilate,Caiaphas. The one man who suffered instead of the nation is of course Jesus
Christ.

Canto XXIV: Summary:

The canto opens with a carefully developed metaphor: a shepherd in early spring is
discouraged to see the fields white with frost, but a couple hours later it is warm
and green and he takes his flocks out to graze. Just so did Virgil's anger pass quickly
and turn into the sweetness with which he usually treated Dante. They clambered
up the great crags between the pouch of the hypocrites and the next, a difficult
labor. When Dante ran out of breath, Virgil encouraged him to keep on manfully.
They climbed down almost to the next valley, and to his horror Dante saw masses of
venemous serpents there. As he watched, he saw naked sinners running terrifiedly
among the snakes; one sinner was bitten and flamed into ashes, but his dust then
reformed itself into human shape, like the phoenix.
Virgil asked him who he was, and he answered that he was Vanni Fucci from Pistoia.
Dante knew him, and the sinner was ashamed. He said that he was damned for
stealing ornaments from the sacristy. Then, lest Dante enjoy the sight of his
damnation too much, Vanni Fucci predicted the misfortunes of the White Guelphs,
which he told Dante "to make [him] grieve."
Canto XXIV: Analysis:
The shepherd metaphor at the beginning of this canto deserves to be read with
great attention. Although the description of spring itself is very florid and literary,
the account of the shepherd who slaps his thigh in disgust and despair when he
sees the frost is startlingly vivid. We remember then that Dante lived among
ordinary people whose livelihood depended on the seasons not just with the heroic
shades of long-dead poets.
The phoenix is a mythological bird who burns itself to death every five-hundred
years, only to rise from the ashes unharmed. There is only one phoenix.
Vanni Fucci stole from the treasury of San Jacopo, which was kept in the sacristy of
the Cathedral of Pistoia. Rampino Foresi was accused of the crime and was nearly
executed, while Fucci escaped.
Vanni Fucci's prediction is extremely complicated and unclear, dealing with clouds
and vapors and tempests. It will make more sense if one realizes that in
contemporary meteorology, thunderstorms were caused by the interaction of a fiery
vapor and watery clouds. Here the vapor from Val di Magra is a Black Guelph
commander who defeated the misty Whites in a metaphorical thunderstorm.
Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Summary and Analysis of Cantos XXV-XXVIII
Canto XXV: Summary:
When Vanni Fucci had finished his speach he cursed God with obscene gestures,
andDante was pleased to see him attacked by some snakes who coiled around him
tightly. Then he saw a centaur, Cacus, who was covered in snakes as well, who was
killed for his thievery by Hercules. Dante then saw three shades who wanted to
know who he was. He didn't recognize them, but one of them called another Cianfa.
A strange and horrifying scene followed: a serpent with six feet closely grasped one
of the shades, and as though they were made of warm wax, the two melted
together. The other shades were horrified by the shade's metamorphosis; they
called him Agnello. Agnello turned into a doubled serpent monster and crawled off.
Then a little serpent pierced through the stomach of one of the other sinners and as
the transfixed shade and the serpent stared at each other, they slowly changed
shape: the serpent turned into a man and then man into a serpent. The new-made
man told the third shade that he had wanted Buoso to run on all fours like he had
done. Dante noted that the only soul who did not change shape was Puccio
Sciancato, and the other, who had originally been a small serpent, was he who had
made Gaville grieve.

Canto XXV: Analysis:

The shape-changing scene should be read carefully: its horror cannot be understood
in a summary. Dante's shocking account of the metamorphosis derives its force
from the detail of the gradual change: flesh does not simply disappear to reappear
in a new form, but is rather a malleable substance like wax or clay. Note that
Dante's serpents can have legs: there was no clear biological distinction between
snakes and dragons at that time. The early biologist Aldrovandi's great work on
serpents and dragons makes that clear: it includes both vipers and beasts with
scales and wings breathing fire.
Cianfa Donati and Agnello de' Brunelleschi were both noble Florentine thieves.
Apparently Cianfa is the snake who combines with Agnello. Puccio Sciancato was
from a noble Ghibelline family in Galigai. The one who made Gaville grieve was
Francesco de' Cavalcanti. The people of the town Gaville murdered him, and his
family in revenge killed almost everyone in Gaville. Note that many of these
thieves, who broke into shops and stole cattle, were of noble birth and of good
family: Renaissance Italy was a lawless place.
The torment here seems to be based on the idea that there are not enough human
bodies for everyone the others take the forms of serpents. These thieves ar
reduced to continually stealing each other's human shape.
Canto XXVI: Summary:
Dante ironically congratulates Florence for her greatness: her name is known
throughout Hell. But retribution will come.
In the eighth valley he saw as many flames as a farmer sees fireflies when he sits
on a hill in the evening. Dante could not see very clearly since the scene was
indistinct, and Virigl explained that each fire held a damned soul. One of the fires
seemed to be double, and indeed Virgil said there were two souls in it: Ulysses and
Diomedes, who were punished together for the fraudulent scheme of the Trojan
Horse. Dante wanted very much to hear them speak, which Virgil permitted on
condition that he do the talking (since the Greeks might be disdainful of Dante's
speech).
Ulysses told the story of his death: his love for his family had not been enough to
stop him from exploring, so he set out into sea with a ship and some men. By the
time they got to the place where Hercules set up his boundary stones they were old
and tired, but Ulysses convinced them to go on with a fiery speech. After crossing
the ocean for months they saw a great mountain before them. At first they were
glad, but a whirlwind from the strange land rose up and sank their ship, and the sea
closed over them.
Canto XXVI: Analysis:
Dante makes use of acid irony in his mock praise of Florence. Hell is not an
honorable land where many Florentine settlements denote conquering greatness.
The metaphor of the farmer and the fireflies is similar to that of the shepherd in
Canto XXIV. Here, however, it does not seem as innocent, since the "fireflies" are
really burning people. One might wonder why Dante chose that particular
metaphor: did he want to make the description vivid by using a familiar image? Did
he want to tone down the horror of the scene by describing it in terms of harmless
insects? Did he want to make his readers uncomfortable by the juxtaposition of a
peaceful landscape and a scene of torture? Or some combination of these?
Ulysses (or Odysseus in the Greek form) was a crafty member of the Greek army
which beseiged Troy after the Trojan prince Paris ran off with the Spartan
queen Helen. After ten years were spent in useless battle, Ulysses and Diomedes
came up with a plan to make a huge hollow wooden horse, fill it with Greek soldiers,
and leave it in front of Troy as a "gift." It worked: the Trojans took it in and in the

night the soldiers came out and laid waste to the city. Dante evidently did not
approve. His disapproval may be related to the myth that Romans were the
descendants of Aeneas, a Trojan who escaped and went to Italy (the subject of
Virgil's Aeneid).
The boundary stones of Hercules means Gibraltar, which was more or less the end
of the world by Greeky standards: Ulysses and his men sailed out into the Atlantic
Ocean, never to return. The mountain they found was probably the Mountain of
Purgatory, which for Dante was the only body of land in the southern hemisphere.
Remember that Dante wrote more than a century before Columbus's voyages.
Canto XXVII: Summary:
The flame of Ulysses and Diomedes was silent, and Virgil gave it permission to
leave. Then Dante and Virgil's attention was drawn by the strange noise another
flame made. It sounded like a fire, but in pain, and reminded Dante of the Sicilian
bull. Finally it was able to speak, and asked them to tell it what was happening in
Romagna the soul's homeland. Dante answered that Romagna was currently at
peace, though there was war in its tyrants' hearts. he gave more detailed
descriptions of the various cities, then asked the shade for his name, so he could
tell the world about him. The shade did not think Dante could return to the world,
and so was not too ashamed to say that he had been first a soldier, then a friar,
trying to make amends for his misdeeds. However the Pope had asked his counsel
for his illegitimate warfare against Christians (the shade had had a reputation for
craftiness). The friar had not wanted to compromise his soul, but when the Pope
offered to absolve him in advance, the friar gave him the advice he wanted. When
he died, Saint Francis came for him (he had been a Franciscan friar) but a devil
claimed him because he had given fraudulent advice. One cannot be absolved
without repenting, and one cannot repent something and will it at the same time, so
the Pope's absolution did not do him any good, and he was damned.
The flame departed and Dante and Virgil moved on their way.
Canto XXVII: Analysis:
The description of the sound produced by the flame is very interesting, and shows
the great extent of Dante's macabre imagination. The Sicilian bull was hollow and
made out of bronze for the 6th century tyrant of Sicily. When victims were roasted in
it, their screams were supposed to sound like the bellowing of a bull. As Dante
points out, the bull's maker was the first one to be killed in it. According to this
comparison, if the victim burning in the bull sounds like an enraged bull, the voice
within the flame must sound like a tormented fire whatever that may be.
The former friar is Guido da Montefeltro (1220-1298), a famous Ghibelline leader,
and the Pope involved is Boniface VIII, not a favorite of Dante's. Boniface wanted to
defeat the Colonna family, and asked Guido's advice, assuring him of absolution.
Following his counsel, he offered the Colonna family amnesty if they surrendered,
and when they did he massacred them. Boniface's unholy use of his supposed
powers of absolution and excommunication are an example of why he woul,
according to Dante, end up head-downward with his feet being burned for simony.
Canto XXVIII: Summary:
The bloodshed and gore that Dante saw in the next valley (the ninth) surpassed all
the great literary wars, he said. He saw a shade whose entire chest was ripped
open; the shade drew the two flaps of flesh apart with his hands and said he
was Mohammed. Ali was there, with his face split open, and all the others were also
sowers of scandal and schism, who were split themselves for their sins. A devil cut
them open, and when they healed, he cut them again. Mohammed then asked who
Dante was, and Virgil explained the situation. Mohammed told them to warn Fra
Dolcino that he should provide himself with food, since if he died being beseiged, he
would end up there also. Another sinner, horribly maimed, told Dante he was Pier da
Medicina, and asked him to warn Messer Guido and Angiolello that they would be

drowned through treachery. In exchange, Dante asked him to show him who detests
Rimini, a certain Curio, and he did: Curio was there with his tongue slit. Another
whose hands were cut off said that he was Mosca. Then, to his horror, Dante saw a
man walk by holding his severed head in his hand. The head said he was Bertran de
Born, who through bad counsel had made a son and father hate one another: he
was himself divided as punishment.
Canto XXVIII: Analysis:
There is no indication that Mohammed (570-632) and Ali are not Italian, and the
inclusion of the founder of Islam and his nephew among Italians and Christians
shows how little Christians of the period understood Islam. Mohammed was often
thought to be an apostate Christian, which explains his classification among sowers
of schism: according to Dante he did not start a new religion, but merely divided an
old one. Ali married Mohammed's daughter Fatima and claimed to be the successor
to the caliphate. Other Muslims did not agree, and the schism resulted in two
separate sects of Islam, the Sunnites and the Shiites.
Fra Dolcino founded an order called the Apostolic Brothers, which believed in
holding goods and women in common. They were condemned as heretics by Pope
Clement V, and had to take to the hills to avoid the authorites. Eventually their food
supplies gave out and they had to surrender; Fra Dolcino was burned alive in 1307,
presumably before Dante wrote this canto.
Guido del Cassero and Angiolello di Carignano were thrown overboard on their way
to a parley held by the tyrant Malatestino.
The Ghibelline Mosca de' Lamberti was mentioned in Canto VI. He helped create the
feud between the Ghibellines and the Guelfs when in 1215 he advised the Amidei
family to kill a Guelph, Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti, for breaking his
engagement to be married to an Amidei girl.
Bertran de Born (1140-1215) was a troubadour poet among other things his
beautiful works deserve to be read if they can be obtained and was thought by
some to have incited Prince Henry to rebell against his father Henry II.
Cantos XXIX-XXXII

Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Summary and Analysis of Cantos XXIX-XXXII

Canto XXIX: Summary:
Virgil asked Dante why he was staring so intently at the mutilated shades, and he
answered that he thought he saw one of his ancestors. Virgil said that he had seen
that shade a certain Geri del Bello threatening Dante while he was speaking to
someone else. Dante explained that Geri's murder had still not been avenged,
which was why Geri's shade was so angry and scornful toward his descendant.
Speaking of this, they came to the next and final pouch of Malebolge.
Dante wanted to put his hands over his ears because of the lamentations of the
sinners there, who were afflicted with scabs like leprosy, and lay sick on the ground,
furiously scratching their skin of with their nails: it was worse than the great
hospitals.
Two of the shades leaned against one another and scratched themselves mercilessly
like a stableboy currycombing a horse. Virgil asked them if there were any Italians
there, to which they replied, weeping, that they were Italians. Virgil explained the
situation of the journey, and Dante asked them who they were, so he could tell the
world above, and their memory would not fade. One answered that he was from
Arezzo and had been burned by Albero of Siena because he had boasted that he
could fly and then failed to teach Albero the art. However his damning sin was
alchemy. Dante told Virgil that the Sienese were extremely vain, and the other
sinner agreed, listing the names Stricca, Niccolo, Caccia d'Asciano, and Abbagliato
as examples. This sinner said he was the alchemist Capocchio.

Canto XXIX: Analysis:

From Dante's preoccupation with his unavenged ancestor we can see that he was
not immune to the feuding spirit of the times. One murder could be the beginning of
a deadly quarrel between families as revenge followed revenge. Geri del Bello,
Dante's father's cousin, was a troublemaker who was killed by a Sacchetti. He was
finally avenged in 1310, and the pointless feud begun between the Alighieri and the
Sacchetti lasted until 32 years later.
Leprosy hardly exists in western cultural consciousness today, but in Dante's time
the disease was much more common and much more terrifying. Because of the slow
and disfiguring deaths suffered by lepers, and because of similarities with a skin
disease mentioned in the Bible, the victims of which were called unclean, lepers
were made to live in communities apart from healthy people. They had to ring bells
to warn people of their presence when they collected alms. In some places, the time
when a new leper went to join his or her companions was marked by a ritual "burial"
to symbolize that the leper was dead as far as healthy people were concerned: the
leper would stand in a grave and be sprinkled with earth. Lepers occupied a peculiar
cultural space: on one hand they were sometimes thought to be closer to God
because they began their purgatories on earth, and on the other hand the disease
was supposed to result from immoral behavior, particularly sexual immorality. The
fact that leprosy here is a divine punishment for sin is characteristic of medieval
attitudes. Note that the bubonic plague has not yet made its appearance, which
would come in 1348. It might be interesting to wonder how the Inferno might have
been different if it had been written after then. He might have approved of the
plague decimating Florence: a scourge from God to punish their misdeeds.
Alchemy is another thing which was very important in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, and has disappeared now, though scientists as recent as Isaac Newton
were deeply concerned with alchemical questions. Alchemists spent their time
trying to turn base metals into gold. They were associated with strange knowledge
and mystery; their activities were not so far removed from sorcery. Alchemy might
be said to be a forerunner of modern chemistry, since it involved experiments with
metals of course no one ever succeeded. Because turning base metals into gold
was impossible, alchemists were also associated with fraud: as Capocchio says, he
was good at imitating fine metals, not at making them. These two alchemists
are Griffolino of Arezzo, who cheated Albero of Siena by claiming that he could
teach him to fly for a large sum of money. He was burned as a heretic by Albero's
protector (and perhaps his father), the Bishop of Siena. Capocchio was burned at
the stake for alchemy in 1293.
The names listed by Capocchio in regard to Siena's vanity were members of the
Spendthrift Club (see Canto XIII).
Canto XXX: Summary:
The madness that Dante saw next surpassed the great examples of antiquity:
Athamas was driven insane by Juno so that he slaughtered his wife and children
thinking they were lions, and Hecuba, the queen of Troy, went mad with grief after
the city fell and she found the bodies of her children Polyxena and Polydorus. Two
mad shades came running up; one bit Capocchio in the neck. The alchemist from
Arezzo was afraid, and said that that was Gianni Schicci, and that the other mad
shade was Myrrha, who had changed shape to trick her father into having sex with
her. Gianni Schicci had faked a death and pretended to be someone else for selfish
reasons.
Dante looked around and saw some deformed shades: one had a dropsy which
made him look like a lute. He said he was Master Adam and that he was tormented
by thirst for his crime of counterfeiting. Adam wanted to revenge himself on Guido,
Alessandro, and their brother, because they had incited him to make false coin.
Two sinners who lay prone on the ground and gave off steam were being punished
for lying; they were Sinon the Greek and the woman who blamed Joseph. Sinon
struck Adam, he retaliated, and a quarrel began over whose sin had been worse.
Virgil told Dante to stop listening to their curses, and Dante was very much

ashamed of his vulgar curiosity. Virgil forgave him, but said that it was base to listen
to such things.
Canto XXX: Analysis:
The madness of Athamus was a result of Jupiter's infidelity and Juno's jealousy:
Jupiter loved Semele, daughter of Cadmus, the king of Thebes and she bore him
Bacchus, the god of wine. Athamus' wife was Ino, Semele's sister. Hecuba's
daughter Polyxena was sacrificed on Achilles' tomb, and her son was murdered. She
went mad, howling like a dog, and drowned herself. It's debatable whether Dante's
description of the madness of the impersonators actually surpasses the classical
examples. However the practice of describing something in terms of something
similar but less serious was commonly used, though it was rather daring of Dante to
set himself up in opposition to the Ancients.
Gianni Schicci impersonated Simone Donati's uncle Buoso Donati, who had just
died: on Simone's request, Gianni, pretending to be Buoso, dictated a new will in
favor of Simone. He also left himself Buoso's best mare, the lady of the herd. Puccini
wrote a comic opera on this story, called Gianno Schicci: the aria "O mio babbino
caro" is very famous.
Myrrha, daughter of the king of Cyprus, fell incestuously in love with her father, and
impersonated another woman so as to sleep with him. When she was discovered,
she fled execution, and was changed into a myrrh tree by the gods.
These sinners, who tricked other people into thinking they were someone else, are
punished by becoming confused about their own identities: they are insane.
Sinon tricked the Trojans into bringing the wooden horse filled with Greek soldiers
into Troy (see Canto XXVI). The woman is the wife of Potiphar, who falsely accused
Joseph of making advances toward her.
Canto XXXI: Summary:
Dante and Virgil continued on towards the ninth circle. Dante was nearly deafened
by a gigantic bugle blast, and seemed to see a city surrounded with towers in front
of them (because it was quite dark it was hard to see far). Virgil told him that it was
not a city: what he thought were towers were really giants, standing in the central
pit so that Dante could see them from the waist up. Coming closer, Dante saw that
this was true, and he was thankful that Nature made no more giants, and that the
only large animals were inoffensive, like elephants and whales. A giant shouted
"Raphel mai amecche sabi almi," but Virgil told him to blow the bugle strapped
across his chest instead. He was Nimrod, whose fault it was that different peoples
spoke different languages. His own language was unlike any on earth.
Another giant's arms were tied fast, one behind and one in front, by a massive
chain. He was Ephialtes, who had rebelled against Jove. Dante wanted to see
Briareus, but instead they spoke to Antaneus, who was not chained. Virgil asked
Antaneus to pick him and Dante up and put them down in the ninth circle at the
bottom of the pit. In exchange Dante would give him fame by telling about him on
earth. Antaneus hastily did so.
Canto XXXI: Analysis:
The giants here are mainly noteworthy for having rebelled against God, or having
otherwise used their great stature or abilities to challenge the divine preeminence.
Like many Renaissance rulers, Dante's Machavellian God thoroughly disapproves of
overly powerful subjects, and has imprisoned these giants in the coldest reaches of
Hell.
In the Bible, Nimrod ruled in Babylon when the Tower of Babel was built it was
supposed to be tall enough to reach the sky. God was angered by the lofty
ambitions of his creations, and punished mankind by making them speak in
different languages. (Formerly all men had spoken the same language, thus
permitting the kind of cooperation that resulted in the Tower). God's technique of
"divide and conquer" has been used with great success by less divine tyrants.

Nimrod's punishment, as we see, is to speak a language that nobody else

understands, and to understand no other languages: he is truly isolated.
Briareus and Ephialtes rebelled against the Olympian gods, who dealt with them in
much the same way as the Biblical god dealt with Nimrod. Antaneus was born after
the rebellion, therefore he is unfettered, though still imprisoned.
Canto XXXII:Summary:
Dante begins with an invocation to the Muses to help him tell his tale. As he was
walking in the ninth circle, he heard a voice telling him to be careful where he put
his feet so as not to trample on his fellow-men. Looking down, he saw that he was
walking on a frozen lake, in which the shades of traitors to their kin were locked
fast, and miserable with cold. He saw two frozen together, and asked them who
they were; their eyes and lips were frozen shut with tears. Another sinner told him
they were: the sons of Alberto near Bisenzio. Other sinners there were he whose
chest was shattered by Arthur, andFocaccia, and Sassol Mascheroni. The speaker
said he was Camiscion de' Pazzi, and that he was still waiting for Carlino to absolve
him.
Walking on, Dante was horrified to see the thousands of frozen faces. By mistake he
kicked one of them, who wept , and asked him if he had come to avenge
Montaperti. Dante asked Virgil to let him wait a minute and speak with the shade,
and he asked the sinner who he was, offering to give him fame in the outside world.
The sinner was not attracted by the offer, and Dante became cruel, threatening to
pull out all his hair. He had already pulled out a handful with another shade
addressed Dante's victim as Bocca. Dante prepared to go on his way, promising to
tell the world about Bocca's filthy deeds, and Bocca told him the names of some
others as well: him of Duera, one of the Beccheria, Gianni de'Soldanieri and
Tebaldello and Ganelon.
Continuing on, Dante saw two shades frozen in a hole. One of them was gnawing
the other's skull. Dante asked the gnawer why he so hated his companion.
Canto XXXII: Analysis:
Dante's Hell gets colder and colder as you descend further down. This first ring of
the ninth circle is called Caina, and holds traitors to kin (the name doubtless comes
from that of Cain, the son of Eve and Adam, who treacherously murdered his brother
Abel). The ninth circle is a frozen lake made by the river Cocytus.
The two sons of the Florentine noble Alberto degli Alberti are Napoleone and
Alessandro. Napoleone was a Ghibelline and Alessandro was Guelph; they murdered
each other between 1282 and 1286. He whose chest was shattered by Arthur
is Mordred, Arthur's nephew (and according to some versions, his incestuously
conceived son), who tried to seize power in England and was killed by his uncle for
his treachery. Focaccia was the nickname of a noble White Guelph who murdered
his cousin. Sassol Mascheroni also murdered a relative.
Camiscion de' Pazzi shared a fortress with Ubertino until he murdered him. He hopes
that Carlino will "absolve him" because Carlino was a member of his family who had
committed a graver act of treachery which would make his own appear less serious
by contrast: Carlino betrayed his party (the Whites). Bocca degli Abati was another
Guelph who betrayed his party: during the battle of Montaperti in 1260, he cut off
the hands of the person carrying the Guelph flag, and the loss of the flag panicked
the Guelphs, who were then defeated. Remember that the Ghibelline Farinata
(Canto X) saved Florence after that battle by opposing the plan to destroy the city.
The others mentioned also betrayed their parties. Unlike the others, Ganelon is a
legendary figure, who was part of Charlemagne's army in the epic, the Song of
Roland. When Charlemagne was returning to France after wars with the infidels in
Spain, Ganelon betrayed the rear guard of the army, led by Roland. Roland was too
proud to blow his horn for help, so the rear guard was massacred. Roland finally did
blow the horn, and the rest of the army returned to find their dead (including
Roland), and to avenge them. Ganelon was given a traitor's death.
Dante's cruelty is striking. He generally appears to be fairly sensitive character,
easily moved by the sufferings of the damned and sometimes he even seems weak

and frightened. What is it about Bocca which makes him so cruel? When he tortures
him he doesn't even know who he is, except that he was damned for treachery. It
may be relevant, however, that Bocca was a Guelph who betrayed his party to the
Ghibellines since Dante was also a Guelph.
Divine Comedy-I: Inferno Summary and Analysis of Cantos XXXIII-XXXIV
Canto XXXIII: Summary:
The sinner who had been eating his companion's head raised his own and
told Dantewhy he hated his companion so much:
He was Count Ugolino and his companion was the Archbishop Ruggieri. Ugoloino
had been captured by Ruggieri and imprisoned in a tower with his two sons and two
grandsons. One night he dreamed that a wolf and his whelps was hunted down by
Ruggieri, and he awoke to hear his sons and grandsons weeping for bread in their
sleep. At the time when their food was usually brought, Ugolino heard people nailing
the tower shut. Ugolino stonily did not weep, but the boys did, and asked him what
was wrong. The next day he bit his hands out of grief, and the boys, thinking he was
doing it out of hunger, offered him their flesh to eat so he tried to stay calm, to
keep them from worrying. On the fourth day Gaddo died, crying: "Father why do you
not help me?" In the next few days the other boys died too, and Ugolino went blind.
On the sixth day the boys were all dead, and Ugolino mourned for them for two
days then "fasting had more force than grief."
After telling this story, Ugolino looked mad with sorrow and hate, and bit Ruggieri's
skull with his strong teeth. Dante lamented the wicked ways of Pisa, where this had
taken palce, and said that even if Ugolino had been said to betray some fortresses,
there had been no need to subject his innocent children to the same cruel death:
Brigata, Uguiccione, Anselmo, and Gaddo.
Moving on, Dante saw other sinners who were frozen flat on their backs. Their very
tears prevented them from weeping, because they froze over their eyes. Dante
seemed to feel a wind, and Virgil told him he would soon see what caused it.
One of the sinners begged him to free his eyes from the ice, and Dante said he
would if he would tell him who he was. The sinner said he was Fra Alberigo, whose
figs had been repaid with dates. Dante was surprised because he thought Alberigo
was still alive. Alberigo answered that his body was still alive: when a soul becomes
a traitor, the soul goes to Hell and a demon uses its body. For example, Ser Branca
Doria's soul was there. Dante insisted that Doria was still living, and Alberigo
answered that Doria's soul had come to Hell even before the soul of his victim,
Michele Zanca, who was in the pitch in Malebolge.
Alberigo then asked Dante to free his eyes, and Dante refused: "it was courtesy to
show him rudeness." The canto ends with an invective against the corruption of the
Genoese.
Canto XXXIII: Analysis:
The moving story of the deaths of Ugolino and his children is, perhaps with the
exception of the story of Francesca da' Rimini, the most tragic moment in this
Comedy. Ugolino della Gherardesca was a Pisan Ghibelline who negotiated with the
powerful Guelphs of Lucca and Florence and ceded them three castles. Ugolino was
forced out of the office of chief magistrate of Pisa in 1288, and returned to Pisa at
the invitation of the Archbishop Ruggieri, who betrayed and imprisoned him, along
with his sons Gaddo and Uguiccione, and his grandsons Anselmo and Nino
(nicknamed Brigata). In March 1289, after they had been imprisoned for nine
months, the tower was locked up.
Gaddo's cry is reminiscent of that of Christ in Matthew 27:46: "My God, my God,
why hast Thou forsaken me?" A painful irony results from this: Ugolino was not an
omnipotent God, nor was he even in a position to help anyone.
One rather disturbing issue in this story is that of cannibalism. We know, of course,
that Ugolino has been gnawing Ruggieri's head, which is presumably linked to his

death by starvation. But did Ugolino eat his children two days after they were all
dead? What does the phrase "then fasting had more force than grief" really mean?
Ugolino begins chewing on Ruggieri's head immediately after he says it. Of course it
is possible that Ugolino was simply too weak to mourn anymore, and that he
collapsed into the lethargy which ended in his own death. Logically, it does not
seem realistic that he would eat his sons and grandsons when it would only put off
his death by a little time, and he certainly seems to have loved them very much.
Fra Alberigo was a Jovial Friar who had his relatives Manfred and Manfred's son
killed during a banquet. He summoned the assassins by ordering figs. When he says
that his figs have been repaid with dates, he is complaining that his punishment is
too severe: dates were more expensive than figs. Branca Doria killed his father-inlaw Michele Zanche (see Canto XXII) during a banquet.
Canto XXXIV: Summary:
Dante and Virgil continued on, and passed sinners who were completely covered by
ice, deep below them in the frozen lake. Finally Virgil told Dante to look and see the
center of Hell itself. Dante was awed by the sight of Lucifer, a gigantic figure who
dwarfed the giant Nimrod. He had three heads and bat-like wings they were the
cause of the freezing wind. His six eyes wept and the tears mixed with the blood of
the sinners he was grinding between his teeth: the three mouth held Judas Iscariot,
Brutus, and Cassius. Judas was in the front mouth, and was clawed as well as bitten.
Virgil told Dante that night had come, and it was time to leave. He picked Dante up
and climbed down Lucifer's body. After a certain point, it suddenly seemed to Dante
as though Lucifer were upside-down. Finally they made their way through a cavern.
Dante asked Virgil why Lucifer had seemed to change, and why the sun had moved
so quickly. Virgil answered that they were now in the southern hemisphere: there is
was morning when it was night on the other side. Lucifer had fallen into the
southern hemisphere, which was why almost all the land was in the nothern
hemisphere, where it had fled. Dante saw the sky through an opening in the cavern,
and finally they emerged to see the stars.
Canto XXXIV: Analysis:
The four rings of the ninth circle are Caina (traitors to kin), Antenora (traitors to
party), Ptolomea (traitors to guests), and Judecca (traitors to benefactors).
Lucifer's three faces make a perverted trinity, echoing the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost. Judas Iscariot was the apostle who betrayed Christ: in the legend, he
identified Christ for his enemies by kissing him, for thirty pieces of silver. Marcus
Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longus assassinated Julius Caesar in 44 BC, and
both committed suicide two years later.
The detailed discussion of the change in the direction of the gravitational force is
one indication that Columbus was not being terribly original when he argued that
the world was round. The spherical shape of the earth is taken for granted by Dante,
though he is excited over its implications. Dante's earth is a solid sphere. The
northern hemisphere is mostly covered by land and the southern sphere is mostly
covered by water. The gigantic figure of Lucifer almost spans the diameter of the
earth, and his heads and upper body are in the northern hemisphere, with his legs
in the southern part. Thus Virgil and Dante climb down from his head to his waist,
and up from his waist to his feet. The space between his head and the surface of
the earth is taken up by Hell, which is cone shaped.
Dante emerges when it is night, before dawn on Easter Sunday. In symbolic holy
time, he has been "dead" for the time after the crucifixion and before Christ rose,
and now he rises with Christ.