CANTOS 3

Dante and Virgil arrive at the gate of hell. Above the gate, there is an
inscription on the lintel. The inscription says that this is the way to the
city of desolation and eternal sorrow. It says that God, moved by justice,
made the gate and tells all those who pass through it to abandon all hope.
Virgil comforts the scared Dante and tells him not to fear.
The inscription's warning defines hell as a place of hopeless suffering and
punishment, but nonetheless created out of divine justice. Dante, though,
does have hope and is miraculously able to go through hell while still a
living, earthly soul.
As they enter hell, Dante hears shrieks, shouts, screams, and
lamentations filling the air. He asks Virgil who these suffering people are,
and Virgil replies that they are people who were neither good nor evil in
life. Together with the angels who sided with neither God nor Satan in
their war, they dwell here at the edge of hell, rejected by both heaven and
hell.
Being pious is more than a matter of simply not sinning. As these noncommittal souls show, one must actively practice virtue and side oneself
with God.
Dante sees these neutral souls, who committed neither to evil nor to
good, chasing after a blank banner. They are naked and continually stung
by wasps and hornets until they bleed. Worms consume the blood and
tears they shed. Dante and Virgil then come to a river, with a crowd of
people waiting at the riverbank. Virgil identifies the river as Acheron and
as they approach, an old man named Charon comes near with a boat, to
ferry souls across the river into hell.
The neutral souls receive a fitting punishment in hell: since they backed
no clear side, they follow a banner that is blank, supporting no clear
leader, and run back and forth with no direction. The idea of a fitting
punishment is a crucial component of Dante's sense of divine justice,
whereby punishment completes and perfects sin. Charon is a character
from pagan mythology whom Dante incorporates into his Christian hell.
Charon tells the souls waiting by the river to despair and not hope for
heaven. When he sees Dante, he tells him to leave, refusing to ferry
across a living man. He tells Dante that this is not his path. But Virgil tells
Charon that it is God's will for Dante to pass through hell while living.
Charon relents, and begins rounding up the souls due for hell, whom
Dante observes chattering with fear and cursing their fortune.
Charon is confused by Dante's transgressing the boundary between the
worlds of the living and the dead. Virgil convinces him to ferry Dante

across the river, though, using only the power of his words, thereby
relating the facts of God's will just as Dante is relating the details of hell.