Hell Through Dante's Eyes
18:29 Jun 23 2008
Times Read: 813
Dark Wood, cantos 1-2
Heading
Dark Wood
Icons
Three Beasts, Virgil
Allusions
Straight Way, Simile, Synesthesia, Greyhound, Aeneas and Paul, Three Blessed Women
Dark Woods
The dark forest--selva oscura--in which Dante finds himself at the beginning of the poem (Inf. 1.2) is described in vague terms, perhaps as an indication of the protagonist's own disorientation. The precise nature of this disorientation--spiritual, physical, psychological, moral, political--is itself difficult to determine at this point and thus underscores two very important ideas for reading this poem: first, we are encouraged to identify with Dante (the character) and understand knowledge to be a learning process; second, the poem is carefully structured so that we must sometimes read "backwards" from later events to gain a fuller understanding of what happened earlier.
Characteristic of Dante's way of working, this "dark wood" is a product of the poet's imagination likely based on ideas from various traditions. These include the medieval Platonic image of chaotic matter--unformed, unnamed--as a type of primordial wood (silva); the forest at the entrance to the classical underworld (Hades) as described by Virgil (Aeneid 6.179); Augustine's association of spiritual error (sin) with a "region of unlikeness" (Confessions 7.10); and the dangerous forests from which the wandering knights of medieval Romances must extricate themselves. In an earlier work (Convivio 4.24.12), Dante imagines the bewildering period of adolescence--in which one needs guidance to keep from losing the "good way"--as a sort of "meandering forest" (erronea selva).
Three beasts:
The uncertain symbolism of the three beasts--a leopard (or some other lithe, spotted animal), a lion, and a she-wolf--contributes to the shadowy atmosphere of the opening scene. Armed with information from later episodes, commentators often view the creatures as symbols, respectively, of the three major divisions of Dante's hell: concupiscence (immoderate desires), violence, and fraud (though some equate the leopard with fraud and the she-wolf with concupiscence). Others associate them with envy, pride, and avarice. Perhaps they carry some political meaning as well (a she-wolf nursed the legendary founders of Rome--Romulus and Remus--and thus came to stand as a symbol of the city). Whatever his conception, Dante likely drew inspiration for the beasts from this biblical passage prophesying the destruction of those who refuse to repent for their iniquities: "Wherefore a lion out of the wood hath slain them, a wolf in the evening hath spoiled them, a leopard watcheth for their cities: every one that shall go out thence shall be taken, because their transgressions are multiplied, their rebellions strengthened" (Jeremiah 5:6).
It is perhaps best, at this early stage, to take note of the salient characteristics of the animals--the leopard's spotted hide, the lion's intimidating presence, the she-wolf's insatiable hunger--and see how they relate to subsequent events in Dante's journey through hell.
Virgil:
As guide for his character-self--at least through the first two realms of the afterlife (hell and purgatory)--Dante chooses the classical poet he admired most. Virgil (70-19 B.C.E.), who lived under Julius Caesar and then Augustus during Rome's transition from republic to empire, wrote in Latin and was--he still is--most famous for his Aeneid. This epic poem recounts the journey of Aeneas from Troy (he is a Trojan prince)--following its destruction by the Greeks--eventually to Italy, where he founds the line of rulers that will lead to Caesar and the Roman empire of Virgil's day. The poem, in fact, is in one sense a magnificent piece of political propaganda aimed at honoring the emperor Augustus. Two episodes from Virgil's epic were of particular interest to Dante. Book 4 tells the tragic tale of Aeneas and Dido, the queen of Carthage who kills herself when Aeneas--her lover--abandons her to continue his journey and fulfill his destiny by founding a new civilization in Italy. Book 6, in which Aeneas visits the underworld to meet the shade of his father (Anchises) and learn future events in his journey and in the history of Rome, provides key parts of the machinery of the afterlife--primarily mythological monsters and rivers--that Dante uses to shape his own version of the afterlife, hell in particular.
Virgil also wrote four long poems, the Georgics, which deal mostly with agricultural themes (though they contain other important material--e.g., the famous story of Orpheus and Eurydice in the fourth Georgic). And he wrote ten pastoral poems (Eclogues), the fourth of which celebrates the birth of a wonderchild and was thus commonly interpreted in the Christian Middle Ages as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus
Straight way:
When Dante says he has lost the "straight way"--diritta via (Inf. 1.3)--he again leaves much to our imagination, with the result that we can perhaps relate to the protagonist by imagining many possible meanings for this deviation from the "straight way" (also translated as the "right way"). In medieval thought, abandonment of the "straight way" often indicates alienation from God. However, Dante certainly views such veering as a grand metaphor for the moral and societal problems of his world in addition to any spiritual or psychological issues the phrase may suggest. Dante's notion of the "straight way" appears in all three realms of the afterlife as well as in the world of the living
Simile:
Dante uses numerous similes--comparisons usually with "as" and "so"--to help us imagine what he claims to have seen by describing something similar that is more likely to be familiar to us. The first simile occurs in Inferno 1.22-7. Here Dante compares his narrow escape from danger to the experience of a man who, after arriving safely on shore, looks back at the sea that almost claimed his life. Look for other similes in cantos 1 and 2.
Synesthesia
Meaning a "mixing of senses," synesthesia occurs when one of the five senses is used in a description that normally calls for one of the other senses. When Dante says he was driven back to the place "where the sun is silent" (Inf. 1.60), we wonder how the sun--usually associated with light and therefore sight--can have somehow lost its voice. Look for another example of synesthesia in canto 1. What is the effect of these strange descriptions? How do they contribute to the overall atmosphere of the scene?
Greyhound
The greyhound (veltro) is the first of several enigmatic prophecies in the poem to a savior figure who will come to redirect the world to the path of truth and virtue (Inf. 1.100-11). Although Dante may be alluding to one of his political benefactors--Cangrande, whose name means "big dog"--he probably intends for the prophecy to remain as unspecific (and therefore tantalizingly open to interpretation) as the three beasts and the overall atmosphere of the opening scene.
Aeneas and Paul
Declaring himself unworthy to undertake this journey to the realms of the afterlife, Dante compares himself unfavorably to two men who were in fact granted such a privilege (Inf. 2.10-36). The apostle Paul claims in the Bible to have been transported to the "third heaven" (2 Corinthians 12:2), and Aeneas visits the underworld in book 6 of Virgil's Aeneid. These two otherworldly travelers are linked through their association with Rome, seat of both the empire and the church. Dante, contrary to Augustine and others, believed the Roman empire in fact prepared the way for Christianity, with Rome as the divinely chosen home of the Papacy.
The Three woman
Similar to other epic poems, the Divine Comedy begins in medias res ("in the middle of events"). This means something has happened prior to the opening action that provides a catalyst for the journey. In this case, Virgil explains in canto 2 that he was summoned to Dante's aid by Beatrice, who was herself summoned by Lucia at the request of a woman able to alter the judgment of heaven (Inf. 2.94-6). This last woman, who sets in motion the entire rescue operation, can only be Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus according to Dante's faith. "Lucia" is Saint Lucy of Syracuse, a Christian martyr closely associated with sight and vision (her name means "light" and she was said to have gouged out her eyes to protect her chastity). Beatrice, who will reappear as a major figure later in the poem, was the inspiration for Dante's early love poetry (she died in 1290 at age 24) and now plays the role of his spiritual guide as well. Along with Virgil, these "three blessed women"--Mary, Lucia, Beatrice--thus make possible Dante's journey to the realms of the afterlife.
"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita" (1.1)
Midway along the road of our life
"Io non Enëa, io non Paulo sono" (2.32)
I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul
What do the three "danteworlds"--hell, purgatory, and paradise--mean to you? How do you envision them? How do you think they might relate to one another and to the world(s) in which we live?
Dante literally faces a mid-life crisis. What problems or issues do you associate with such an event? Can you think of any recent representations--in movies, books, the news, and so on--of some sort of mid-life crisis?
Gate of Hell, canto 3
Cowards
This idea of a marginal place--inside the gate of hell but before the river Acheron--for souls neither good enough for heaven nor evil enough for hell proper is a product of Dante's imagination, pure and simple. Possible theological justification for Dante's invention may be found in Apocalypse (Revelation) 3:16: "But because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth." Included among these cowardly souls--also known as fence-sitters, wafflers, opportunists, and neutrals--are the angels who refused to choose between God and Lucifer. What does this original idea say about Dante's view of human behavior and its relation to the afterlife? What might Dante's conception of this region imply about hell proper and its eternal inhabitants?
Gate of Hell
It is not until the beginning of canto 3 that Dante finally enters hell-- at least its outer region--by passing through a gateway. The inscription above this gate--ending with the famous warning to "abandon all hope"-- establishes Dante's hell as a creation not of evil and the devil but rather of his Christian God, here expressed in terms of the Trinity: Father (Divine Power), Son (Highest Wisdom), and Holy Spirit (Primal Love).
Charon
In the classical underworld (Hades), which Dante knew best from book 6 of Virgil's Aeneid, Charon is the pilot of a boat that transports shades of the dead--newly arrived from the world above--across the waters into the lower world. Like Virgil's Charon (Aen. 6.298-304; 384-416), Dante's ferryman is an irascible old man--with white hairs and fiery eyes-- who at first objects to taking a living man (Aeneas, Dante) on his boat. In each case, the protagonist's guide--the Sybil for Aeneas, Virgil for Dante--provides the proper credentials for gaining passage on Charon's boat.
Terza Rima
This is the rhyme scheme that Dante invents for the 14,233 lines of his poem. Literally translated as "third rhyme," this pattern means that the middle verse of a given tercet (a group of three lines) rhymes with the first and third verses of the next tercet. For example, in the verses of Inferno 3 describing the gate of hell, dolore (2) rhymes with fattore (4) and amore (6), podestate (5) rhymes with create (7) and intrate (9), and so on. Terza rima can thus be expressed with the following formula: aba bcb cdc ded . . . xyx yzyz. A mathematical consequence of this pattern is that the number of lines in any given canto is always a multiple of three with one left over.
Anaphora
Dante occasionally repeats a word or phrase at the beginning of successive verses or tercets (units of three verses) to drive home a point. Inferno 3 opens with a striking example of this poetic device (called anaphora): Dante begins the first three verses containing the words written above the gate of hell with the phrase Per me si va . . . ("Through me one goes . . ."). How does this use of anaphora contribute to the overall tone and meaning of the inscription (Inf. 3.1-9) and to the reaction of Dante and Virgil to the ominous words (Inf. 3.10-18)?
"Great Refusal"
From among the cowardly fence-sitters, Dante singles out only the shade of one who made "the great refusal" (Inf. 3.60). In fact, he says that it was the sight of this one shade--unnamed yet evidently well known--that confirmed for him the nature of all the souls in this region. The most likely candidate for this figure is Pope Celestine V. His refusal to perform the duties required of the pope (he abdicated five months after his election in July 1294) allowed Benedetto Caetani to become Pope Boniface VIII, the man who proved to be Dante's most reviled theological, political, and personal enemy. An alternative candidate is Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who refused to pass judgment on Jesus. Why does Dante refuse to name any of the shades--including the notorious one--in this particular region?
Acheron
This is the first of the rivers and marshes of Virgil's underworld in the Aeneid that Dante includes in his topography of hell. Whereas Virgil makes no clear distinction between the locations and functions of these bodies of water (Charon seems to guard them all), Dante's infernal rivers are more sharply drawn. Here the Acheron functions as a boundary separating the cowardly neutrals from the souls in the circles of hell proper. Charon ferries these shades across the river. This attention to detail reflects Dante's desire to underscore the reality of hell and the protagonist's journey through it.
"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" (3.9)
Leave behind all hope, you who enter
"che visser sanza 'nfamia e sanza lodo" (3.36)
those who lived without shame and without hono
How does the punishment of the cowards fit the vice? Looking closely at 3.52-7 and 3.64-9, express this relationship--what we call the "contrapasso"--in the form of a simile ("just as in life they... , so now in hell they...") or in an ironic, causal phrase ("Because in life they failed / refused to..., now in hell they...."). Try to identify several possibilities or levels for the contrapasso.
Circle 1, canto 4
Limbo
The concept of Limbo--a region on the edge of hell (limbus means "hem" or "border") for those who are not saved even though they did not sin--exists in Christian theology by Dante's time, but the poet's version of this region is more generous than most. Dante's Limbo--technically the first circle of hell--includes virtuous non-Christian adults in addition to unbaptized infants. We thus find here many of the great heroes, thinkers, and creative minds of ancient Greece and Rome as well as such medieval non-Christians as Saladin, Sultan of Egypt in the late twelfth century, and the great Islamic philosophers Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroës (Ibn Rushd). For Dante, Limbo was also the home of major figures from the Hebrew Bible, who--according to Christian theology--were "liberated" by Jesus following his crucifixion (see Harrowing of Hell).
Classical Poets (Homer, Ovid, Lucan, Horace)
Among the magnanimous shades in Limbo is a distinguished group of four classical poets--Homer (8th century B.C.E.), Horace (65-8 B.C.E.), Ovid (43 B.C.E. - 17 C.E.), and Lucan (39-65 C.E.)--who welcome back their colleague Virgil and honor Dante as one of their own (Inf. 4.100-2). The leader of this group is Homer, author of epic poems treating the war between the Greeks and Trojans (Iliad) and Ulysses' adventurous return voyage (Odyssey). Although Dante had no direct familiarity with Homer's poetry (it wasn't translated and Dante didn't read Greek), he knew of Homer's unsurpassed achievement from references in works by Latin writers he admired. Dante knew works of the other three poets--each wrote in Latin--very well, particularly Ovid's Metamorphoses (mythological tales of transformations, often based on relations between gods and mortals) and Lucan's Pharsalia (treating the Roman civil war between Caesar and Pompey); Horace was best known as the author of satires and an influential poem about the making of poetry (Ars poetica). The vast majority of characters and allusions from classical mythology appearing in the Divine Comedy derive from the works of these writers, primarily those of Ovid and Lucan in addition to Virgil.
Harrowing of Hell
This event is the supposed descent of Christ--following his crucifixion-- into Limbo, when he rescued and brought to heaven ("harrowing" implies a sort of violent abduction) his "ancestors" from the Hebrew Bible. Virgil supplies an eye-witness account, from his partially informed perspective, in Inferno 4.52-63. Since, according to Dante's reckoning, Christ's earthly life spanned thirty-four years, the harrowing can be dated to 34 C.E. Only suggested in the Bible, the story of Christ's post-mortem journey to hell appears in apocrypha--books related to but not included in the Bible--such as the Gospel of Nicodemus. So prominent was this story in the popular and theological imaginations that it was proclaimed as church dogma in 1215 and 1274. Dante's version of the harrowing, as we see from repeated allusions to the event during the protagonist's journey, emphasizes the power--in both physical and psychological terms--of Christ's raid on hell.
Aristotle
"The master of those who know" (Inf. 4.131). So respected and well known was Aristotle in the Middle Ages that this phrase is enough to identify him as the one upon whom other prominent philosophers in Limbo-- including Socrates and Plato--look with honor. Dante elsewhere follows medieval tradition by referring to Aristotle simply as "the Philosopher," with no need of additional information. Aristotle's authority in the Middle Ages owes to the fact that almost all his works were translated into Latin (from their original Greek and / or from Arabic) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By contrast, only one work by Plato--the Timaeus--was available in Latin translation (partial at that) in Dante's day. A student of Plato's, tutor to Alexander the Great, and founder of his own philosophical school, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) wrote highly influential works on an astonishing range of subjects, including the physical universe, biology, politics, rhetoric, logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and ethics. Next to the Bible, he was the most important authority for two of Dante's favorite Christian thinkers, Albert the Great and his student Thomas Aquinas, both of whom strove to validate the role of reason and to sharpen its relationship to faith. The influence of Aristotelian thought on Dante is perhaps most apparent in the content of a philosophical work (Convivio), the argumentation of a political treatise (De Monarchia), and the moral structure of hell (Inferno).
che sanza speme vivemo in disio" (4.42)
that without hope we live in desire
"sì ch'io fui sesto tra cotanto senno" (4.102)
so that I was sixth among such intellect
Consider Virgil's behavior and his psychological / emotional state in Limbo, in particular the effects on Virgil of the Harrowing of Hell (4.52-63). What does this canto tell us about Dante's attitude toward Virgil?
What are the implications of Dante's self-identification as "sixth" among the great poets (4.102)?
Circle 2, canto 5
Lust
Here Dante explores the relationship--as notoriously challenging in his time and place as in ours--between love and lust, between the ennobling power of attraction toward the beauty of a whole person and the destructive force of possessive sexual desire. The lustful in hell, whose actions often led them and their lovers to death, are "carnal sinners who subordinate reason to desire" (Inf. 5.38-9). From the examples presented, it appears that for Dante the line separating lust from love is crossed when one acts on this misguided desire. Dante, more convincingly than most moralists and theologians, shows that this line is a very fine one indeed, and he acknowledges the potential complicity (his own included) of those who promulgate ideas and images of romantic love through their creative work. Dante's location of lust --one of the seven capital sins--in the first circle of hell in which an unrepented sin is punished (the second circle overall) is similarly ambiguous: on the one hand, lust's foremost location--farthest from Satan--marks it as the least serious sin in hell (and in life); on the other hand, Dante's choice of lust as the first sin presented recalls the common--if crude--association of sex with original sin, that is, with the fall of humankind (Adam and Eve) in the garden of Eden.
Minos
Typical of the monsters and guardians of hell, Dante's Minos is an amalgam of figures from classical sources who is completed with a couple of the poet's personal touches. His Minos may in fact be a combination of two figures of this name--both rulers of Crete--one the grandfather of the other. The older Minos, son of Zeus and Europa, was known--because of his wisdom and the admired laws of his kingdom-- as the "favorite of the gods." This reputation earned him the office-- following his death--of supreme judge of the underworld. He was thus charged, as Virgil attests, with verifying that the personal accounting of each soul who came before him corresponded with what was written in the urn containing all human destinies: "He shakes the urn and calls on the assembly of the silent, to learn the lives of men and their misdeeds" (Aen. 6.432-3). The second Minos, grandson of the first, exacted harsh revenge on the Athenians (who had killed his son Androgeos) by demanding an annual tribute of fourteen youths (seven boys and seven girls) as a sacrificial offer to the Minotaur, the hybrid monster lurking in the labyrinth built by Daedalus.
Minos' long tail, which he wraps around his body a number of times equal to the soul's assigned level (circle) of hell (Inf. 5.11-12), is Dante's invention. How do you think the judged souls travel to their destined location in hell for eternal punishment? Might Minos' tail be somehow involved in this unexplained event? Dante leaves this detail to our imagination.
The original Italian of the first line describing Minos --"Stavvi Minòs orribilmente, e ringhia" (Inf. 5.4)--is a wonderful example of onomatopoeia (the sound of the words imitating their meaning) as the repeated trilling of the r's in "orribilmente e ringhia" evokes the frightening sound of a growling beast.
Francesca (and Paolo)
Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta are punished together in hell for their adultery: Francesca was married to Paolo's brother, Gianciotto ("Crippled John"). Francesca's shade tells Dante that her husband is destined for punishment in Caina--the infernal realm of familial betrayal named after Cain, who killed his brother Abel (Genesis 4:8)--for murdering her and Paolo. Francesca was the aunt of Guido Novello da Polenta, Dante's host in Ravenna during the last years of the poet's life (1318-21). She was married (c. 1275) for political reasons to Gianciotto of the powerful Malatesta family, rulers of Rimini. Dante may have actually met Paolo in Florence (where Paolo was capitano del popolo--a political role assigned to citizens of other cities--in 1282), not long before he and Francesca were killed by Gianciotto.
Although no version of Francesca's story is known to exist before Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio--a generation or two after Dante--provides a "historical" account of the events behind Francesca's presentation that would not be out of place among the sensational novellas of his prose masterpiece, The Decameron. Even if there is more fiction than fact in Boccaccio's account, it certainly helps explain Dante-character's emotional response to Francesca's story by presenting her in a sympathetic light. Francesca, according to Boccaccio, was blatantly tricked into marrying Gianciotto, who was disfigured and uncouth, when the handsome and elegant Paolo was sent in his brother's place to settle the nuptial contract. Angered at finding herself wed the following day to Gianciotto, Francesca made no attempt to restrain her affections for Paolo and the two in fact soon became lovers. Informed of this liaison, Gianciotto one day caught them together in Francesca's bedroom (unaware that Paolo got stuck in his attempt to escape down a ladder, she let Gianciotto in the room); when Gianciotto lunged at Paolo with a sword, Francesca stepped between the two men and was killed instead, much to the dismay of her husband, who then promptly finished off Paolo as well. Francesca and Paolo, Boccaccio concludes, were buried--accompanied by many tears--in a single tomb.
Francesca's eloquent description of the power of love (Inf. 5.100-7), emphasized through the use of anaphora, bears much the same meaning and style as the love poetry once admired by Dante and of which he himself produced many fine examples.
Famous Lovers (Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen, Achilles, Paris, Tristan)
Physical beauty, romance, sex, and death--these are the pertinent elements in the stories of the lustful souls identified from among the "more than a thousand" such figures pointed out to Dante by Virgil (Inf. 5.52-69). Semiramis was a powerful Assyrian Queen alleged--by the Christian historian Orosius--to have been so perverse that she made even the vice of incest a legal practice. She was said to have been killed by an illegitimate son. Dido, Queen of Carthage and widow of Sychaeus, killed herself after her lover, Aeneas, abandoned her to continue his mission to establish a new civilization in Italy (Aeneid 4). Cleopatra, the beautiful Queen of Egypt, took her own life to avoid capture by Octavian (the future emperor Augustus); Octavian had defeated Mark Antony, who was Cleopatra's lover (she had previously been the lover of Julius Caesar). Helen, wife of Menalaus (King of Sparta) was said to be the cause of the Trojan war: acclaimed as the most beautiful mortal woman, she was abducted by Paris and brought to Troy as his mistress. The "great Achilles" was the most formidable Greek hero in the war against the Trojans. He was killed by Paris, according to medieval accounts (Dante did not know Homer's version), after being tricked into entering the temple of Apollo to meet the Trojan princess Polyxena. Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, and Iseult (Mark's fiancée) became lovers after they mistakenly drank the magic potion intended for Mark and Iseult. Mark shoots Tristan with a poisoned arrow, according to one version of the story popular in Dante's day, and the wounded man then clenches his lover so tightly that they die in one another's arms.
Lancelot (Guinevere and Gallehaut)
The story of Lancelot and Guinevere, which Francesca identifies as the catalyst for her affair with Paolo (Inf. 5.127-38), was a French romance popular both in poetry (by Chrétien de Troyes) and in a prose version known as Lancelot of the Lake. According to this prose text, it is Queen Guinevere, wife of King Arthur, who kisses Lancelot, the most valiant of Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. Francesca, by giving the romantic initiative to Paolo, reverses the roles from the story. To her mind, the entire book recounting this famous love affair performs a role similar to that of the character Gallehaut, a friend of Lancelot who helps bring about the adulterous relationship between the queen and her husband's favorite knight.
Stavvi Minòs orribilmente, e ringhia" (5.4)
Minos stands there, horrifyingly, and growls
"Galeotto fu 'l libro e chi lo scrisse: / quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante" (5.137-8)
a Gallehaut was the book and he who wrote it: / that day we read no more of it
What is the logical relationship between the vice of lust and its punishment in Dante's hell?
Why is Dante moved to tears after Francesca's description of love (5.100-7) and why does he finally fall "as a dead body falls" after her personal account of her intimate relationship with Paolo (5.127-38)?
The episode of Francesca and Paolo, the first in which Dante encounters someone punished in hell for their sins, presents a challenge: Dante-character is overcome by compassion for the lovers even as Dante-poet has damned them to hell in the first place. What are possible consequences of this apparent gap between the perspectives of the character and the poet who are both "Dante"?
From Dante's presentation of Francesca and Paolo, we are encouraged to consider the place of moral responsibility in depictions of love, sex, and violence in our own day. We can certainly discuss music, television, movies, and advertising (as well as literature) in these terms. Who is more (or less) responsible and therefore accountable for unacceptable attitudes and behavior in society: the creators and vehicles of such messages or the consumers and audiences?
Circle 3, canto 6
Gluttony
Gluttony--like lust--is one of the seven capital sins (sometimes called "mortal" or "deadly" sins) according to medieval Christian theology and church practice. Dante, at least in circles 2-5 of hell, uses these sins as part--but only part--of his organizational strategy. While lust and gluttony were generally considered the least serious of the seven sins (and pride almost always the worst), the order of these two was not consistent: some writers thought lust was worse than gluttony and others thought gluttony worse than lust. The two were often viewed as closely related to one another, based on the biblical precedent of Eve "eating" the forbidden fruit and then successfully "tempting" Adam to do so (Genesis 3:6). Based on the less than obvious contrapasso of the gluttons and the content (mostly political) of Inferno 6, Dante appears to view gluttony as more complex than the usual understanding of the sin as excessive eating and drinking.
Cerberus
A three-headed dog who guards the entrance to the classical underworld. In the Aeneid Virgil describes Cerberus as loud, huge, and terrifying (with snakes rising from his neck); to get by Cerberus, the Sybil (Aeneas' guide) feeds him a spiked honey-cake that makes him immediately fall asleep (Aen. 6.416-25). Look at Dante's related but very different version of Cerberus in Inferno 6.13-33. How has Dante transformed him to fit the role of guardian in the circle of gluttony? How does Cerberus himself shed light on Dante's conception of the sin? Verses 28-30, describing the actual experience of a dog intent on his meal, exemplify Dante's attention to the real world in his depiction of the afterlife.
Ciacco
The name "Ciacco"--apparently a nickname for the poet's gluttonous friend--could be a shortened form of "Giacomo" or perhaps a derogatory reference to "hog" or "pig" in the Florentine dialect of Dante's day. Dante, who certainly accepts the common medieval belief in the essential relationship between names and the things (or people) they represent, at times chooses characters for particular locations in the afterlife based at least in part on their names. "Ciacco" may be the first case of this sort in the poem. Independently of what Dante writes in Inferno 6, we unfortunately know very little of Ciacco's life. Boccaccio claims that, apart from the vice of gluttony (for which he was notorious), Ciacco was respected in polite Florentine society for his eloquence and agreeableness. Another early commentator (Benvenuto) remarks that the Florentines were known for their traditionally temperate attitude toward food and drink--but when they fell, they fell hard and surpassed all others in their gluttony.
Florentine Politics (1300-2)
Spring of 1300 is the approximate fictional date of the journey: we know Dante, born in 1265, is at the "half-way point" of life--age 35 based on the conventional life-cycle of 70 years--when the poem opens (Inf. 1.1). At this time, Florence was politically divided between two rival factions known as white and black guelphs. Ciacco (Inf. 6.64-72) provides the first of several important prophecies in the poem of the struggle between these two groups that will result in Dante's permanent exile from Florence (from 1302 until his death in 1321). The white guelphs--the "party of the woods" because of the rural origins of the Cerchi, their leading clan--were in charge in May 1300, when violent skirmishes broke out between the two parties. Although ring-leaders from both parties were punished by banishment (Dante, a white guelph, was part of the city government that made this decision), by spring of the following year (1301) most of the white guelphs had returned while leading black guelphs were forced to remain in exile. However, the tables were soon turned so that by 1302 ("within three suns" from the riots of 1300) six hundred leading white guelphs (Dante among them) were forced into exile. The black guelphs prevailed because they were supported by Charles of Valois, a French prince sent by Pope Boniface VIII ("one who tacks his sails") ostensibly to bring peace to Florence but actually to instigate the violent overthrow of the white guelph leadership.
Last Judgment
When Virgil tells Dante that Ciacco will not rise again until the "sound of the angelic trumpet" and the arrival of the "hostile judge" (Inf. 6.94-6), he is alluding to the Last Judgment. Also called the Apocalypse and the Second Coming of Christ, the Last Judgment in the medieval Christian imagination marks the end of time when God comes--as Christ--to judge all human souls and separate the saved from the damned, the former ascending to eternal glory in heaven and the latter cast into hell for eternal punishment. Scripturally based on Matthew 25:31-46 and the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse), this event is frequently depicted in art and literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, most famously in Michelangelo's frescoed wall in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The young Dante would have had ample opportunity to reflect on the Last Judgment from his observation of its terrifying representation on the ceiling of the Florentine baptistery. According to the accepted theology of Dante's day, souls would be judged immediately after death and would then proceed either to hell (if damned) or purgatory (if saved); this judgment would be confirmed at the end of time, and all souls would then spend eternity either in hell or in heaven (as purgatory would cease to exist). The Divine Comedy presents the state of souls sometime between these two judgments. In Inferno 6 we also learn with Dante-character that souls of the dead will be reunited with their bodies at the end of time. The suffering of the damned (and joy of the blessed) will then increase because the individual is complete and therefore more perfect (6.103-11).
"più non ti dico e più non ti rispondo" (6.90)
I tell you no more and I no longer answer you
Describe the contrapasso--the relationship between the vice and its punishment--for gluttony.
Look at lines 57, 76, and 90. How might Dante figuratively participate in the vice of gluttony?
Circle 4, canto 7
Avarice and Prodigality
Avarice--greed, lust for material gain--is one of the iniquities that most incurs Dante's scornful wrath. Consistent with the biblical saying that avarice is "the root of all evils" (1 Timothy 6:10), medieval Christian thought viewed the sin as most offensive to the spirit of love; Dante goes even further in blaming avarice for ethical and political corruption in his society. Ciacco identifies avarice--along with pride and envy--as one of the primary vices enflaming Florentine hearts (Inf. 6.74-5), and the poet consistently condemns greed and its effects throughout the Divine Comedy. Dante accordingly shows no mercy--unlike his attitude toward Francesca (lust) and Ciacco (gluttony)--in his selection of avarice as the capital sin punished in the fourth circle of hell (Inferno 7). He viciously presents the sin as a common vice of monks and church leaders (including cardinals and popes), and he further degrades the sinners by making them so physically squalid that they are unrecognizable to the travelers (Inf. 7.49-54). By defining the sin as "spending without measure" (7.42), Dante for the first time applies the classical principle of moderation (or the "golden mean") to criticize excessive desire for a neutral object in both one direction ("closed fists": avarice) and the other (spending too freely: prodigality). Fittingly, these two groups punish and insult one another in the afterlife.
Plutus
Dante's Plutus, guardian-symbol of the fourth circle (avarice and prodigality), is--like other infernal creatures--a unique hybrid of sources and natures. Often portrayed as the mythological god of the classical underworld (Hades), Plutus also appears in some cases as the god of wealth. Dante neatly merges these two figures by making Plutus the "great enemy" (Inf. 6.115) in hell with a special relationship to the sin most closely associated with material wealth. Dante similarly combines human and bestial natures in his conception of Plutus (Inf. 7.1-15): he possesses the power of speech (though the precise meaning of his words--some sort of invocation to Satan--is unclear) and the ability to understand--or at least react to--Virgil's dismissive words, while at the same time displaying a distinctly bestial rage and probably animal-like features as well.
Fortuna
Consistent with his devastating indictment of sinful attitudes toward material wealth, Dante has a very strong and original idea of the role of fortune in human affairs (Inf. 7.61-96). Fortune is certainly a powerful force in earlier philosophy and literature, most notably in Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy. Dante claims to have read this Latin work, which was highly influential throughout the Middle Ages, in the difficult period following the death of his beloved Beatrice. Fortune, for Boethius, is represented as a fickle and mischievous goddess who delights in her ability to change an individual's circumstances--for better or ill--on a whim. It is far more constructive, according to Boethius (who has been unjustly deprived of his possessions, honors, and freedom), to ignore one's earthly status altogether and trust only in what is certain and immutable. Adverse fortune is ultimately better than good fortune because it is more effective in teaching this lesson.
Dante's Fortuna is also female but he imagines her as a "divine minister" (an angelic intelligence) who guides the distribution of worldly goods, just as God's light and goodness are distributed throughout the created universe. She is above the fray, immune to both praise and blame from those who experience the ups and downs of her actions. Much as Dante "demonizes" mythological creatures from the classical underworld, so he "deifies" in a positive sense the traditional representation of fortune. The ways of fortune, like the application of divine justice generally, are simply beyond the capacity of human understanding.
"volve sua spera e beata si gode" (7.96)
[Fortuna] turns her sphere and, blessed, she rejoices
Try to draw for yourself the punishment described in 7.22-35.
How is this punishment appropriate for the vices of this circle? Consider the relevance of Virgil's description of fortune in 7.70-96.
Circle 5, cantos 7-9
Wrath and Sullenness (7-8)
Like the fourth circle of hell, the fifth circle--presented in Inferno 7 and 8--contains two related groups of sinners. But whereas avarice and prodigality are two distinct sins based on the same principle (an immoderate attitude toward material wealth), wrath and sullenness are basically two forms of a single sin: anger that is expressed (wrath) and anger that is repressed (sullenness). This idea that anger takes various forms is common in ancient and medieval thought. Note how the two groups suffer different punishments appropriate to their type of anger--the wrathful ruthlessly attacking one another and the sullen stewing below the surface of the muddy swamp (Inf. 7.109-26)--even though they are all confined to Styx.
Dis (8-9)
Dante designates all of lower hell--circles 6 through 9, where more serious sins are punished--as the walled city of Dis (Inf. 8.68), one of the names for the king of the classical underworld (Pluto) and--by extension--the underworld in general. For Dante, then, Dis stands both for Lucifer and the lower circles of his infernal realm. It may be significant that Virgil--a classical poet who refers to Dis in his Aeneid--is the one who now announces the travelers' approach to Dis in the Divine Comedy. Details of the city and its surroundings in Inferno 8 and 9--including moats, watch towers, high walls, and a well guarded entrance--suggest a citizenry ready for battle.
Phlegyas (8)
The infernal employee who transports Dante and Virgil in his boat across the Styx (Inf. 8.13-24)--circle of the wrathful and sullen--is appropriately known for his own impetuous behavior. In a fit of rage, Phlegyas set fire to the temple of Apollo because the god had raped his daughter. Apollo promptly slew him. Phlegyas, whose own father was Mars (god of war), appears in Virgil's underworld as an admonition against showing contempt for the gods (Aen. 6.618-20). Megaera, one of the Furies, tortures a famished and irritable Phlegyas in Statius' Thebaid (1.712-15).
Filippo Argenti (8)
Apart from what transpires in Inferno 8.31-63, we know little of the hot-headed character who quarrels with Dante, lays his hands on the boat (to capsize it?), and is finally torn to pieces by his wrathful cohorts, much to Dante's liking. Early commentators report that his name--Argenti--derived from an ostentatious habit of shoeing his horse in silver (argento). A black guelph, Filippo was Dante's natural political enemy, but the tone of the episode suggests personal animosity as well. Some try to explain Dante's harsh treatment of Filippo as payback for an earlier offense--namely, Filippo once slapped Dante in the face, or Filippo's brother took possession of Dante's confiscated property after the poet had been exiled from Florence. Boccaccio, in his Decameron, highlights Filippo's violent temper by having the character throttle a man who had crossed him (Day 9, novella 8).
Fallen Angels (8)
Dante's fallen angels--they literally "rained down from heaven" (Inf. 8.82-3)--defend the city of Dis (lower hell) just as they once resisted Christ's arrival at the gate of hell. These angels joined Lucifer in his rebellion against God; cast out of heaven, they laid the foundation for evil in the world. Once beautiful, they are now--like all things infernal--transformed into monstrous demons.
Furies and Medusa (8-9)
With the appearance of the three Furies, who threaten to call on the Medusa, Virgil's credibility and Dante's survival certainly appear to be at risk. Virgil is exceptionally animated as he directs Dante's attention to the Furies (also called "Erinyes") and identifies each one by name: Megaera, Tisiphone, and Allecto. This is a moment in the journey when Virgil's legacy as the author of his own epic poem--in which he himself writes of such creatures as the Furies and the Medusa--is central to the meaning of Dante's episode. The Furies, according to Virgil's classical world, were a terrifying trio of "daughters of Night"--bloodstained with snakes in their hair and about their waists--who were often invoked to exact revenge on the part of offended mortals and gods. The Medusa, one of three sisters known as the Gorgons, was so frightening to behold that those who looked at her would turn to stone. Conventionally adorned with a head full of serpents, she was decapitated by the Greek hero Perseus. Representations of Perseus holding aloft the horrible head of the Medusa were common in the early modern period. A Renaissance sculpture of the scene, by Cellini, has for many years decked the Loggia in Piazza della Signoria, one of the main squares in Florence. The fact that the Furies and Medusa were commonly thought to signify various evils (or components of sin) in the Middle Ages, from obstinacy and doubt to heresy and pride, may help to explain the travelers' difficulties at the entrance to Dis.
Heaven's Messenger (9)
Although the arrival of the messenger from heaven--who rebukes the demons so that the travelers may enter Dis (lower hell)--was anticipated by Virgil (Inf. 8.128-30; 9.8-9), the precise identification of the powerful being is never made clear. Literally "sent from heaven" (Inf. 9.85), he supports both classical and Christian interpretations in his appearance and actions. As an enemy of hell who walks on water (Inf. 9.81) and opens the gates of Dis as Christ once opened the gate of hell (Inf. 8.124-30), the messenger is certainly a Christ-like figure. He also bears similarities to Hermes-Mercury, the classical god who--borne on his winged feet--delivers messages to mortals from the heavens. The little wand of the heavenly messenger (Inf. 9.89) recalls the caduceus, the staff with which Hermes-Mercury guides souls of the dead to Hades. Both Christ and Hermes were strongly associated with the kind of allegory Dante describes in Inferno 9.61-3--namely, the idea that deeper meaning is hidden beneath the surface-level meaning of words. See allegory.
Styx (7-8)
The Styx is a body of water--a marsh or river--in the classical underworld. Virgil describes it in his Aeneid as the marsh across which Charon ferries souls of the dead--and the living Aeneas--into the lower world (Aen. 6.384-416). Dante's presentation of the infernal waterways--and the topography of the otherworld in general--is much more detailed and precise (and therefore more realistic and recognizable) than the descriptions of his classical and medieval precursors. The Styx, according to Dante's design, is a vast swamp encompassing the fifth circle of hell, in which the wrathful and sullen are punished. It also serves a practical purpose in the journey when Dante and Virgil are taken by Phlegyas--in his swift vessel--across the marsh to the city of Dis. Note the effects of Dante's body--modeled on a similar scene in the Aeneid (6.412-16)--when he boards Phlegyas' craft (Inf. 8.25-30).
Harrowing of Hell (8)
The harrowing of hell is previously described in Inferno 4. Virgil now alludes to a specific effect of the harrowing--damage to the gate of hell--in noting the arrogance of the demons at the entrance to Dis (Inf. 8.124-7).
Theseus and Hercules (9)
The heavenly messenger pointedly reminds the demons at the entrance to Dis that Dante will not be the first living man to breach their walls. Theseus and Hercules, two classical heroes each with a divine parent, previously entered the underworld and returned alive. Hercules, in fact, descended into Hades to rescue Theseus, who had been imprisoned following his unsuccessful attempt to abduct Persephone, Queen of Hades. While the Furies express regret at not having killed Theseus when they had the chance (Inf. 9.54), the heavenly messenger recalls that Cerberus bore the brunt of Hercules' fury as he was dragged by his chain along the hard floor of the underworld (Inf. 9.97-9). In the Aeneid Charon tries to dissuade Aeneas from boarding his boat by voicing his displeasure at having previously transported Hercules and Theseus to the underworld (6.392-7).
Erichtho (9)
Dante's desire to know--with not-so-subtle implications--if anyone has previously made the journey from upper hell, say Limbo, down to lower hell is evidence of the mind games that he and Virgil occasionally play with one another during their time together (Inf. 9.16-18). Given the impasse at the entrance to Dis, Dante understandably wants to know if his guide is up to the task. Virgil's savvy response that, yes, he himself once made such a journey, is his way of saying: "Don't worry, I know what I'm doing!" Virgil's story, that he was summoned by Erichtho to retrieve a soul from the lowest circle of hell (Inf. 9.25-30), is Dante's invention. Dante the poet thus invents a story so that Virgil can save face and reassure Dante the character. The poet likely based this story on a gruesome episode from Lucan's Pharsalia (6.507-830): Erichtho, a blood-thirsty witch, calls back from the underworld the shade of a freshly killed soldier so he can reveal future events in the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. By making Virgil a victim of Erichtho's sorcery, Dante draws on the popular belief--widespread in the Middle Ages--that Virgil himself possessed magical, prophetic powers.
Allegory (9)
When Dante interrupts the narrative to instruct his (smart) readers to "note the doctrine hidden under the veil of strange verses" (Inf. 9.61-3), he calls upon the popular medieval tradition of allegorical reading. Commonly applied to the interpretation of sacred texts (e.g., the Bible), allegory--in its various forms--assumes that other, deeper levels of meaning (often spiritual) lie beneath the surface in addition to (or in place of) the literal meaning of the words. Allegory was also used to "moralize" (or Christianize) classical works, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses. The medieval Platonic tradition often allegorically interpreted texts according to a body of esoteric doctrine believed to originate with Hermes (hence "hermeticism").
"sotto 'l velame de li versi strani" (9.63)
under the veil of the strange verses
How would you describe Dante's behavior and attitude toward Filippo Argenti?
Why is this reaction, so different from Dante's earlier responses to Francesca and Ciacco, appropriate here?
Why is Virgil not able to overcome on his own the resistance of the demons at the entrance to Dis?
How might this relate to the teaching that is hidden "under the veil of the strange verses" (9.63)?
Circle 6, canto 10
Heresy
Dante opts for the most generic conception of heresy--the denial of the soul's immortality (Inf. 10.15)--perhaps in deference to spiritual and philosophical positions of specific characters he wishes to feature here, or perhaps for the opportunity to present an especially effective form of contrapasso: heretical souls eternally tormented in fiery tombs. More commonly, heresy in the Middle Ages was a product of acrimonious disputes over Christian doctrine, in particular the theologically correct ways of understanding the Trinity and Christ. Crusades were waged against "heretical sects," and individuals accused of other crimes or sins--e.g., witchcraft, usury, sodomy--were frequently labeled heretics as well.
Heresy, according to a theological argument based on the dividing of Jesus' tunic by Roman soldiers (Matthew 27:35), was traditionally viewed as an act of division, a symbolic laceration in the community of "true" believers. This may help explain why divisive, partisan politics is such a prominent theme in Dante's encounter with Farinata.
Set in a northern Italian monastery, Umberto Eco's best-selling novel The Name of the Rose (1980)--made into a film (1986) starring Sean Connery, Christian Slater, and F. Murray Abraham--provides a learned and entertaining portrayal of heretics and their persecutors only a few decades after the time of Dante's poem.
Farinata
Farinata cuts an imposing figure--rising out of his burning tomb "from the waist up" and seeming to "have great contempt for hell"--when Dante turns to address him in the circle of the heretics (Inf. 10.31-6). His very first question to Dante--"Who were your ancestors?" (10.42)-- reveals the tight relationship between family and politics in thirteenth-century Italy. As a Florentine leader of the ghibellines, Farinata was an enemy to the party of Dante's ancestors, the guelphs (before the ghibellines were defeated and the guelphs splintered into white and black factions). Although Farinata's ghibellines twice defeated the guelphs (in 1248 and 1260), the guelphs both times succeeded in returning to power--unlike the ghibellines following their defeat in 1266. Farinata's family (the Uberti) was explicitly excluded from later amnesties (he had died in 1264), and in 1283 he and his wife (both posthumously charged with heresy) were excommunicated. Their bodies were disinterred and burned, and the possessions of their heirs confiscated.
These politically motivated wars and vendettas, in which victors banished their adversaries, literally divided Florence's populace. While there is certainly no love lost between Dante and Farinata, there is a measure of respect. Farinata, called magnanimo--"great-hearted"--by the narrator (10.73), put Florence above politics when he stood up to his victorious colleagues and argued against destroying the city completely (10.91-3). What does it say about Dante, himself an exiled victim of partisan politics, to present Farinata as both a political enemy and a defender of Florence?
Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti
Whereas Farinata cuts an imposing figure, extending out of his tomb and towering above his interlocutor, Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti lifts only his head above the edge of the same tomb. A member of a rich and powerful guelph family, Cavalcante--like Dante's ancestors--was an enemy to Farinata and the ghibellines. To help bridge the hostile guelph-ghibelline divide, Cavalcante married his son (see Guido Cavalcanti below) to Farinata's daughter (Beatrice degli Uberti). While Farinata's primary concern is politics, Cavalcante is obsessed with the fate of his son (Inf. 10.58-72), whom Dante in another work calls his best friend. Cavalcante's alleged heresy may be more a matter of guilt by association with his son's world-view than a reflection of his own spiritual beliefs.
Guido Cavalcanti
Dante's best friend, Guido Cavalcanti--a few years older than Dante--was an aristocratic white guelph and an erudite, accomplished poet in his own right. Guido's best known poem, Donna me prega ("A lady asks me"), is a stylistically sophisticated example of his philosophical view of love as a dark force that leads one to misery and often to death. When Dante says that Guido perhaps "held in disdain" someone connected with his friend's journey (Inf. 10.63), he may simply mean that Guido did not appreciate Beatrice's spiritual importance (she died in 1290). Guido's father, in any case, takes this past tense to mean that his son is already dead, while Dante-character in fact knows that Guido is still alive at the time of the journey (April 1300). But he will not live much longer. Worse still, Dante himself is partly--if indirectly--responsible for the death of his best friend in August 1300. As one of the priors of Florence (June 15 - August 15, 1300), Dante joined in a decision to punish both parties--white and black guelphs--for recent fighting by banishing ring-leaders, one of whom was Guido Cavalcanti, of the two sides. Tragically, Guido fell ill--he likely contracted malaria--due to the bad climate of the region to which he was sent, and he died later that summer shortly after his return to Florence.
Epicurus
Epicurus was a Greek philosopher (341-270 B.C.E) who espoused the doctrine that pleasure--defined in terms of serenity, the absence of pain and passion--is the highest human good. By identifying the heretics as followers of Epicurus (Inf. 10.13-14), Dante condemns the Epicurean view that the soul--like the body--is mortal.
Frederick II
Apart from Farinata's mention of him here in the circle of heresy (Inf. 10.119), the emperor Frederick II was important to Dante as the last in the line of reigning Holy Roman Emperors. Raised in Palermo, in the Kingdom of Sicily, Frederick was crowned emperor in Rome in 1220. A central figure in the conflicting claims of the empire and the papacy, he was twice excommunicated--in 1227 and 1245-- before his death in 1250. In placing Frederick among the heretics, Dante is likely following the accusations of the emperor's enemies. Elsewhere Dante praises Frederick--along with his son Manfred--as a paragon of nobility and integrity (De vulgari eloquentia 1.12.4). Frederick's court at Palermo was known as an intellectual and cultural capital, with fruitful interactions among talented individuals-- philosophers, artists, musicians, scientists, and poets--from Latin, Arabic, Italian, Northern European, and Greek traditions. Frederick's court nourished the first major movement in Italian vernacular poetry; this so-called "Sicilian School" of poetry (in which the sonnet was first developed) contributed greatly to the establishment of the Italian literary tradition that influenced the young Dante.
Guelphs and Ghibellines
While the Florentine political parties of Dante's day were the white and black guelphs--the blacks more favorable to interests of the old noble class, the whites more aligned with the rising merchant class--Florence before Dante's childhood participated in the more general political struggle between guelphs and ghibellines on the Italian peninsular and in other parts of Europe. Derived from two warring royal houses in Germany (Waiblingen and Welf), the sides came to be distinguished by their adherence to the claims of the emperor (ghibellines) or the pope (guelph). The guelph cause finally triumphed with the death of Manfred--son of Emperor Frederick II--at the battle of Benevento (in southern Italy) in 1266. Until this time, Florence alternated between guelph and ghibelline rule, beginning--according to medieval chronicles--with a violent conflict between two prominent families and their allies in 1215: young Buondelmonte de' Buondelmonti, the story goes, was murdered by the Amidei clan on Easter Sunday after he broke his promise to marry an Amidei (as part of a peace arrangement) and married one of the Donati instead. This event came to be seen as the origin of the factional violence that would plague Florence for the next century and beyond.
Hyperopia
We learn from Farinata in Inferno 10 that the heretics--and apparently all the damned--possess the supernatural ability to "see" future events (Inf. 10.94-108). However, like those who suffer from hyperopia ("far-sightedness"), their visual acuity decreases as events come closer to the present. Because there will no longer be a future when the world ends (see Last Judgment), souls of the damned will have no external awareness to distract them from their eternal suffering.
che l'anima col corpo morta fanno" (10.15)
who make the soul die with the body
"forse cui Guido vostro ebbe a disdegno" (10.63)
to someone whom perhaps your Guido held in disdain
Explain the contrapasso based on Dante's conception of heresy as the denial of the immortality of the soul (10.15).
Why does Dante's use of the past tense in verse 63 ("held in disdain") cause Cavalcante such grief? And why is Dante then confused by this reaction?
How does Dante's treatment of his friend, Guido Cavalcanti, symbolically recall his relationship with Guido in real life?
Circle 7, cantos 12-17
Violence: Murder (12), Suicide (13), Blasphemy (14), Sodomy (15-16), Usury (17)
Virgil explains to Dante that sins of violence take three forms according to the victim: other people (one's neighbor), oneself, or God (Inf. 11.28-33). Those who perpetrate violence against other people or their property--murderers and bandits--are punished in the first ring of the seventh circle, a river of blood (Inferno 12). Those who do violence against themselves or their own property--suicides and squanderers (more self-destructive than the prodigal in circle 4)--inhabit the second ring, a horrid forest (Inferno 13). The third ring--inside the first two--is a barren plain of sand ignited by flakes of fire that torment three separate groups of violent offenders against God: those who offend God directly (blasphemers: Inferno 14); those who violate nature, God's offspring (sodomites: Inferno 15-16); and those who harm industry and the economy, offspring of nature and therefore grandchild of God (usurers: Inferno 17). Identifying the sins of these last two groups with Sodom and Cahors (Inf. 11.49-50), Dante draws on the biblical destruction of Sodom (and Gomorrah) by fire and brimstone (Genesis 19:24-5) and the medieval condemnations of citizens of Cahors (a city in southern France) for usury. Dante's emotional reactions to the shades in the seventh circle range from neutral observation of the murderers and compassion for a suicide to respect for several Florentine sodomites and revulsion at the sight and behavior of the lewd usurers.
Although writers of classical Rome admired by Dante allowed--and even praised--suicide as a response to political defeat or personal disgrace, his Christian tradition emphatically condemned suicide as a sin without exception. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, warned that suicide violates the natural law of self-preservation, harms the community at large, and usurps God's disposition of life and death. Dante's attitude toward Pier della Vigna in Inferno 13 and his placement of famous suicides in other locations (Dido, for example, in circle 2) may suggest a more nuanced view.
Dante's inclusion of sodomy--understood here as sexual relations between males but not necessarily homosexuality in terms of sexual orientation--is consistent with strong theological and legal declarations in the Middle Ages condemning such activities for being "contrary to nature." In Dante's day, male-male relations--often between a mature man and an adolescent--were common in Florence despite these denunciations. Penalties could include confiscation of property and even capital punishment.
Usury was similarly condemned, particularly after it was equated with heresy (and therefore punishable by the Inquisition) at the Council of Vienne in 1311. Based on biblical passages--fallen man must live "by the sweat of his brow" (Genesis 3:19), Jesus' appeal to his followers to "lend, expecting nothing in return" (Luke 6:35)--medieval theologians considered the lending of money at interest to be sinful. Thomas Aquinas, based on Aristotle, considered usury--like sodomy--to be contrary to nature because "it is in accordance with nature that money should increase from natural goods and not from money itself." Forese Donati, a Florentine friend of Dante who appears in Purgatory 23-4, insinuated--in an exchange of insulting sonnets with the poet--that Dante's father was himself a usurer or moneychanger.
Minotaur (12)
The path down to the three rings of circle 7 is covered with a mass of boulders that fell--as Virgil explains (Inf. 12.31-45)--during the earthquake triggered by Christ's harrowing of hell. The Minotaur, a bull-man who appears on this broken slope (Inf. 12.11-15), is most likely a guardian and symbol of the entire circle of violence. Dante does not specify whether the Minotaur has a man's head and bull's body or the other way around (sources support both possibilities), but he clearly underscores the bestial rage of the hybrid creature. At the sight of Dante and Virgil, the Minotaur bites himself, and his frenzied bucking--set off by Virgil's mention of the monster's executioner--allows the travelers to proceed unharmed. Almost everything about the Minotaur's story--from his creation to his demise--contains some form of violence. Pasiphaë, wife of King Minos of Crete, lusted after a beautiful white bull and asked Daedalus to construct a "fake cow" (Inf. 12.13) in which she could enter to induce the bull to mate with her; Daedalus obliged and the Minotaur was conceived. Minos wisely had Daedalus build an elaborate labyrinth to conceal and contain this monstrosity. To punish the Athenians, who had killed his son, Minos supplied the Minotaur with an annual sacrificial offering of seven Athenian boys and seven Athenian girls. When Ariadne (the Minotaur's half-sister: Inf. 12.20) fell in love with one of these boys (Theseus, Duke of Athens: Inf. 12.16-18), the two of them devised a plan to slay the Minotaur: Theseus entered the labyrinth with a sword and a ball of thread, which he unwound as he proceeded toward the center; having slain the Minotaur, Theseus was thus able to retrace his steps and escape the labyrinth.
Centaurs (12)
The Centaurs--men from the waist up with lower bodies of horses--guard the first ring of circle 7, a river of blood in which the shades of murderers and bandits are immersed to varying depths. Armed with bows and arrows, thousands of Centaurs patrol the bank of the river, using their weapons to keep the souls at their allotted depth (Inf. 12.73-5). In classical mythology, the Centaurs are perhaps best known for their uncouth, violent behavior: guests at a wedding, they attempted--their lust incited by wine--to carry off the bride and other women; a fierce battle ensued, described by Ovid in all its gory detail (Met. 12.210-535), in which the horse-men suffered the heaviest losses. Two of the three Centaurs who approach Dante and Virgil fully earned this negative reputation. Pholus, whom Virgil describes as "full of rage" (Inf. 12.72), was one of the combatants at the wedding. Nessus, selected to carry Dante across the river in hell, was killed by Hercules--with a poisoned arrow--for his attempted rape of the hero's beautiful wife, Deianira, after Hercules had entrusted the Centaur to carry her across a river (Nessus avenged his own death: he gave his blood-soaked shirt to Deianira as a "love-charm," which she--not knowing the shirt was poisoned--later gave to Hercules when she doubted his love [Inf. 12.67-9].) Chiron, the leader of the Centaurs, enjoyed a more favorable reputation as the wise tutor of both Hercules and Achilles (Inf. 12.71).
Harpies (13)
The Harpies--foul creatures with the head of a woman and body of a bird--are perched in the suicide-trees, whose leaves they tear and eat--thus producing both pain and an outlet for the accompanying laments of the souls (Inf. 13.13-15; 101-2). Harpies, as Dante-narrator recalls (Inf. 13.10-12), play a small but noteworthy role in Aeneas' voyage from Troy to Italy. Newly arrived on the Strophades (islands in the Ionian sea), Aeneas and his crew slaughter cattle and goats, and they prepare the meat for a sumptuous feast. Twice the horrid Harpies--who inhabit this island after being driven from their previous feeding location--spoil the banquet by falling upon the food and fouling the area with repugnant excretions. The Trojans meet a third attack with their weapons and succeed in driving away the Harpies. However, Celaeno--a Harpy with the gift of prophecy--in turn drives away the Trojans when she announces that they will not accomplish their mission in Italy without suffering such terrible hunger that they are forced to eat their tables (Aen. 3.209-67). The Trojans in fact realize that their journey is over when they eat the bread--that is, the "table"--upon which they have heaped other food gathered from the Italian countryside (Aen. 7.112-22).
Pier della Vigna (13)
Like Dante, Pier della Vigna (c. 1190 - 1249) was an accomplished poet--part of the "Sicilian School" of poetry, he wrote sonnets--and a victim of his own faithful service to the state. With a first-rate legal education and ample rhetorical talent, Pier rose quickly through the ranks of public service in the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, from scribe and notary to judge and official spokesman for the imperial court of Frederick II. But his powers appear to have exceeded even these titles, as Pier claims to have had final say over Frederick's decisions (Inf. 13.58-63). While evidence of corruption casts some doubt on Pier's account of faithful service to the emperor, it is generally believed that he was indeed falsely accused of betraying Frederick's trust by envious colleagues and political enemies (Inf. 13.64-9). In this way, Pier's story recalls that of Boethius, author of the Consolation of Philosophy, a well known book in the Middle Ages (and a favorite of Dante's) recounting the fall from power of another talented individual falsely accused of betraying his emperor. Medieval commentators relate that Frederick, believing the charges against Pier (perhaps for plotting with the pope against the emperor), had him imprisoned and blinded. Unable to accept this wretched fate, Pier brutally took his life by smashing his head against the wall (perhaps of a church) or possibly by leaping from a high window just as the emperor was passing below in the street.
Pier's name--Vigna means "vineyard"--undoubtedly made him an even more attractive candidate for Dante's suicide-trees. As an added part of the contrapasso for the suicides, the souls will not be reunited with their bodies at the Last Judgment but will instead hang their retrieved corpses on the trees (Inf. 13.103-8).
Capaneus (14)
A huge and powerful warrior-king who virtually embodies defiance against his highest god, Capaneus is an exemplary blasphemer--with blasphemy understood as direct violence against God. Still, it is striking that Dante selects a pagan character to represent one of the few specifically religious sins punished in hell.
Dante's portrayal of Capaneus in Inferno 14.43-72--his large size and scornful account of Jove striking him down with thunderbolts--is based on the Thebaid, a late Roman epic (by Statius) treating a war waged by seven Greek heroes against the city of Thebes. Capaneus' arrogant defiance of the gods is a running theme in the Thebaid, though Statius' description of the warrior's courage in the scenes leading up to his death reveals elements of Capaneus' nobility as well as his contempt for the gods. For instance, Capaneus refuses to follow his comrades in a deceitful military operation against the Theban forces under the cover of darkness, insisting instead on fighting fair and square out in the open. Nevertheless, Capaneus' boundless contempt ultimately leads to his demise when he climbs atop the walls protecting the city and directly challenges the gods: "come now, Jupiter, and strive with all your flames against me! Or are you braver at frightening timid maidens with your thunder, and razing the towers of your father-in-law Cadmus?" (Thebaid 10.904-6). Recalling the similar arrogance displayed by the Giants at Phlegra (and their subsequent defeat), the deity gathers his terrifying weapons and strikes Capaneus with a thunderbolt. His hair and helmet aflame, Capaneus feels the fatal fire burning within and falls from the walls to the ground below. He finally lies outstretched, his lifeless body as immense as that of a giant. This is the image inspiring Dante's depiction of Capaneus as a large figure appearing in the defeated pose of the blasphemers, flat on their backs (Inf. 14.22).
Brunetto Latini (15)
One of the most important figures in Dante's life and in the Divine Comedy, Brunetto Latini is featured among the sodomites in one of the central cantos of the Inferno. Although the poet imagines Brunetto in hell, Dante-character and Brunetto show great affection and respect for one another during their encounter in Inferno 15.
Brunetto (c. 1220 - 1294) was a prominent guelph who spent many years living in exile in Spain and France--where he composed his encyclopedic work, Trésor ("Treasure": Inf. 15.119-20)--before returning to Florence in 1266 and assuming positions of great responsibility in the commune and region (notary, scribe, consul, prior). Such was Brunetto's reputation that chroniclers of the time praised him as the "initiator and master in refining the Florentines." While Brunetto's own writings--in terms of quality and significance--are far inferior to Dante's, he was perhaps the most influential promoter in the Middle Ages of the essential idea (derived from the Roman writer Cicero) that eloquence--in both oral and written forms--is beneficial to society only when combined with wisdom.
We understand from this episode that Brunetto played a major--if informal--part in Dante's education, most likely as a mentor through his example of using erudition and intelligence in the service of the city. Apart from the reputed frequency of sexual relations among males in this time and place, there is no independent documentation to explain Brunetto's appearance in Dante's poem among the sodomites. Brunetto was married with three--perhaps four--children. Many modern scholarly discussions of Dante's Brunetto either posit a substitute vice for the sexual one--linguistic perversion, unnatural political affiliations, a quasi-Manichean heresy--or emphasize a symbolic form of sodomy over the literal act (e.g., rhetorical perversion, a failed theory of knowledge, a proto-humanist pursuit of immortality).
Geryon (16-17)
Geryon, merely described in Virgil's Aeneid as a "three-bodied shade" (he was a cruel king slain by Hercules), is one of Dante's most complex creatures. With an honest face, a colorful and intricately patterned reptilian hide, hairy paws, and a scorpion's tail, Geryon is an image of fraud (Inf. 17.7-27)--the realm to which he transports Dante and Virgil (circles 8 and 9). Strange as he is, Geryon offers some of the best evidence of Dante's attention to realism. The poet compares Geryon's upward flight to the precise movements of a diver swimming to the surface of the sea (Inf. 16.130-6), and he helps us imagine Geryon's descent by noting the sensation of wind rising from below and striking the face of a traveler in flight (Inf. 17.115-17). By comparing Geryon to a sullen, resentful falcon (Inf. 17.127-36), Dante also adds a touch of psychological realism to the episode: Geryon may in fact be bitter because he was tricked--when Virgil used Dante's knotted belt to lure the monster (Inf. 16.106-23)--into helping the travelers. Dante had used this belt--he informs us long after the fact (Inf. 16.106-8)--to try to capture the colorfully patterned leopard who impeded his ascent of the mountain in Inferno 1.31-3.
Suggestively associated with the sort of factual truth so wondrous that it appears to be false (Inf. 16.124), Geryon is thought by some readers to represent the poem itself or perhaps a negative double of the poem.
Phlegethon (12, 14)
Literally a "river of fire" (Aen. 6.550-1), Phlegethon is the name Dante gives to the river of hot blood that serves as the first ring of circle 7: spillers of blood themselves, violent offenders against others are submerged in the river to a level corresponding to their guilt. Dante does not identify the river--described in detail in Inferno 12.46-54 and 12.100-39--until the travelers have crossed it (Dante on the back of Nessus) and passed through the forest of the suicides. Now they approach a red stream flowing out from the inner circumference of the forest across the plain of sand (Inf. 14.76-84). After Virgil explains the common source of all the rivers in hell, Dante still fails to realize--without further explanation--that the red stream in fact connects to the broader river of blood that he previously crossed, now identified as the Phlegethon (Inf. 14.121-35).
Polydorus (13)
If Dante had believed what he read in the Aeneid, Virgil would not have had to make him snap one of the branches to know that the suicide-shades and the trees are one and the same--this, at least, is what Virgil says to the wounded suicide-tree (Inf. 13.46-51). Virgil here alludes to the episode of the "bleeding bush" from Aeneid 3.22-68. The "bush" in this case is Polydorus, a young Trojan prince who was sent by his father (Priam, King of Troy) to the neighboring kingdom of Thrace when Troy was besieged by the Greeks. Polydorus arrived bearing a large amount of gold, and the King of Thrace--to whose care the welfare of the young Trojan was entrusted--murdered Polydorus and took possession of his riches. Aeneas unwittingly discovers Polydorus' unburied corpse when he uproots three leafy branches to serve as cover for a sacrificial altar: the first two times, Aeneas freezes with terror when dark blood drips from the uprooted branch; the third time, a voice--rising from the ground--begs Aeneas to stop causing harm and identifies itself as Polydorus. The plant-man explains that the flurry of spears that pierced his body eventually took the form of the branches that Aeneas now plucks. The Trojans honor Polydorus with a proper burial before leaving the accursed land.
Old Man of Crete (14)
Dante invents the story of the large statue of an old man--located in Mount Ida on the Island of Crete--for both practical and symbolic purposes ( Inf. 14.94-120). Constructed of a descending hierarchy of materials--gold head, silver arms and chest, brass midsection, iron for the rest (except one clay foot)--the statue recalls the various ages of humankind (from the golden age to the iron age: Ovid, Met. 1.89-150) in a pessimistic view of history and civilization devolving from best to worst. Dante's statue also closely recalls the statue appearing in King Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the Bible; this dream is revealed in a vision to Daniel, who informs the king that the composition of the statue signifies a declining succession of kingdoms all inferior to the eternal kingdom of God (Daniel 2:31-45). That the statue is off-balance--leaning more heavily on the clay foot--and facing Rome ("as if in a mirror") probably reflects Dante's conviction that society suffers from the excessive political power of the pope and the absence of a strong secular ruler.
Phaethon and Icarus (17)
As he descends aboard Geryon through the infernal atmosphere, Dante recalls the classical stories of previous aviators (Inf. 17.106-14). Phaethon, attempting to confirm his genealogy as the son of Apollo, bearer of the sun, took the reins of the sun-chariot against his father's advice. Unable to control the horses, Phaethon scorched a large swath of the heavens; with the earth's fate hanging in the balance, Jove killed the boy with a thunderbolt (Ovid, Met. 1.745-79; 2.1-332). Daedalus (see Minotaur above), to escape from the island of Crete, made wings for himself and his son by binding feathers with thread and wax. Icarus, ignoring his father's warnings, flew too close to the sun; the wax melted and the boy crashed to the sea below (Met. 8.203-35). So heartbroken was Daedalus that he was unable to depict Icarus' fall in his carvings upon the gates of a temple he built to honor Apollo (Aen. 6.14-33).
Experiencing flight for the first, and presumable only, time in his life--aboard a "filthy image of fraud," no less--Dante understandably identifies with these two figures whose reckless flying led to their tragic deaths.
Uomini fummo, e or siam fatti sterpi" (13.37)
We were men and are now made into stumps
"ingiusto fece me contra me giusto" (13.72)
it made me unjust against my just self
"Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?" (15.30)
Is it you here, ser Brunetto?
"m'insegnavate come l'uom s'etterna" (15.85)
you taught me how one becomes eternal
"la faccia sua era faccia d'uom giusto" (17.10)
his face was the face of a just man
Why is there a concentration of hybrid creatures in this region?
Note how Dante's use of anaphora in the opening description of the forest (Inf. 13.1-9--more evident in the Italian) reinforces his conception of suicide. Look at this passage and other language and imagery in canto 13: how do they contribute to Dante's conception of suicide and the suicidal state of mind?
Do you see evidence of Dante's participation in this idea of suicide?
Capaneus' continued defiance of Jove in hell draws a harsh response from Virgil, who explains to Dante that this unabated rage only adds to the blasphemer's punishment (Inf. 14.61-72). What do you think? Could Virgil be wrong and Capaneus actually gain a measure of satisfaction from his contempt in the afterlife? Or does the logic of hell require only punishment and suffering?
What are the implications of Dante's attitude toward the sodomites in cantos 15-16?
We learn in canto 16 that Dante once thought to capture the leopard (1.31-43) with a cord, which he now gives to Virgil to summon Geryon (16.106-14), the "image of fraud" (17.7). What connections do you see among Geryon, the cord, and the leopard? How might this new information help us to interpret the three animals--the leopard, the lion, and the she-wolf--from canto 1?
What does Dante's presentation of the usurers tell us about his attitude toward money and economics?
Circle 8, subcircles 7-10, cantos 24-30
More Fraud: Theft (24-5), Fraudulent Rhetoric (26-7), Divisiveness (28), Falsification (29-30)
Included among Virgil's catalogue of fraudulent offenses in Inferno 11 are theft, falsifying, and "like trash" (59-60)--the sins that are punished in the final four ditches of circle 8. With the thieves appearing in the seventh pit and the falsifiers in the tenth, the "like trash" must by default fill up ditches eight and nine. Divisive individuals--sowers of scandal and discord--are tormented in the ninth ditch, and the shades punished in the eighth pit (hidden within tongues of fire) are traditionally thought of as "evil counselors," based on the damnation of Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. 27.116). A more accurate description, consistent with both the contrapasso of the tongue-like flames and the Ulysses episode in Inferno 26 as well as with Guido's appearance in Inferno 27, might be the use of rhetoric--understood as eloquence aimed at persuasion--by talented individuals for insidious ends. Rhetoric, according to a classical tradition familiar to Dante, is essential for civilized life when used wisely. However, eloquence without wisdom--far worse even than wisdom without eloquence--is an evil that can "corrupt cities and undermine the lives of men" (Cicero, De inventione 1.2.3).
Dante appropriately defines the concept of contrapasso in his presentation of divisive shades, the most clear-cut manifestation of a logical relationship between the offense and the punishment: as they divided institutions, communities, and families in life, so these figures are physically--and repeatedly--sliced apart for eternity in hell (Inf. 28.139-42). The contrapasso for the thieves, on the other hand, is arguably the most conceptually sophisticated of the poem. The tenuous hold on one's identity--with dramatic transformations of human and reptilian forms--suggests that no possession, no matter how personal, is safe in the realm of theft. Slightly less subtle is the contrapasso for the falsifiers, whose corrupting influence--on metals (alchemists), money (counterfeiters), identity (imposters), and truth (liars)--is reflected in their diseased bodies and minds in the tenth and final pit of circle 8, the realm of fraud.
Vanni Fucci (24-5)
Vanni Fucci, the thief who is incinerated (after receiving a snakebite) and then regains his human form (like the Phoenix rising from the ashes [Inf. 24.97-111]), was a black guelph from Pistoia, a town not far from rival Florence. He admits--grudgingly--to having stolen holy objects (possibly silver tablets with images of the Virgin Mary and the apostles) from a chapel in the Pistoian cathedral, a confession he certainly did not offer when another man was accused of the crime and very nearly executed before the true culprits were identified. Vanni subsequently gave up an accomplice, who was executed instead. Dante says he knew Vanni as a man "of blood and anger" (Inf. 24.129; he in fact committed numerous acts of violence, including murder), qualities on full display in Inferno 24 and 25: he first gets back at his interlocutor by announcing future political events--for example, exiled Pistoian black guelphs joining with exiled Florentines to overthrow and banish the white guelphs of Florence in 1301--personally painful to Dante (Inf. 24.142-51); immediately after this symbolic "screw you!" to Dante, the thief actually gives God the proverbial finger (he makes "figs"--signifying copulation--by placing his thumb between the forefinger and middle finger of each hand) (Inf. 25.1-3). No wonder Vanni Fucci takes the prize as the shade most arrogant to God in Dante's experience of hell (Inf. 25.13-15).
Cacus (25)
Cacus is the angry Centaur who seeks to punish Vanni Fucci in the pit of the thieves. Dante presents this horse-man as an elaborate monster, with snakes covering his equine back and a dragon--shooting fire at anyone in the way--astride Cacus' human shoulders (Inf. 25.16-24). Virgil explains that Cacus is not with the other Centaurs patrolling the river of blood in the circle of violence (Inferno 12) because he fraudulently stole from a herd of cattle belonging to Hercules, who brutally clubbed Cacus to death (28-33). In the Aeneid Virgil portrays Cacus as a half-human, fire-breathing monster who inhabits a cavern--under the Aventine hill (near the future site of Rome)--filled with gore and the corpses of Cacus' victims. Cacus steals Hercules' cattle--four bulls and four heifers--by dragging them backwards into his cavern (in order to conceal evidence of his crime). When Hercules hears the cries of one of his stolen cows, he tears the top off the hill and, to the delight of the native population, strangles Cacus to death (Aen. 8.193-267). The account of Hercules using his massive club to kill Cacus--instead of strangulation--appears in Livy's History of Rome (1.7.7) and Ovid's Fasti (1.575-8).
Ulysses and Diomedes (26)
Appearing in a single yet divided flame in the eighth pit of circle 8 are Ulysses and Diomedes, two Greek heroes from the war against Troy whose joint punishment reflects their many combined exploits. Dante would have known of these exploits not from Homer's poetry--as the Iliad (recounting the Trojan War) and the Odyssey (telling of Ulysses' ten-year wandering before returning home to Ithaca) were not available to him--but from parts and reworkings of the Homeric story contained in classical and medieval Latin and vernacular works. Virgil, who writes extensively of Ulysses from the perspective of the Trojan Aeneas (Aeneid 2), now as Dante's guide lists three offenses committed by Ulysses and Diomedes: devising and executing the stratagem of the wooden horse (an ostensible gift that--filled with Greek soldiers--occasioned the destruction of Troy); luring Achilles--hidden by his mother, Thetis, on the island of Skyros--into the war effort (for which Achilles abandoned Deidamia and their son); and stealing the Palladium--a statue of Athena which protected the city of Troy--with the help of a Trojan traitor, Antenora (Inf. 26.58-63).
That Virgil is the one to address Ulysses--the "greater horn" of the forked flame (85)--is itself noteworthy. On the one hand, this may simply reflect a cultural affinity between Virgil and Ulysses, two men from--in Dante's view--the ancient world. On the other hand, Virgil's appeal to Ulysses based on whether he was "deserving" of Ulysses in his "noble lines" rings false (Virgil in fact has nothing good to say about the Greek hero in the Aeneid)--so false that some think Virgil may be trying to trick Ulysses by impersonating Homer!
Blissfully ignorant of the Odyssey--and either ignorant or dismissive of a medieval account in which Ulysses is killed by Telegonus, son of the enchantress Circe--Dante invents an original version of the final chapter of Ulysses' life, a voyage beyond the boundaries of the known world that ends in shipwreck and death. However, the voyage itself may or may not be implicated in Ulysses' damnation. Certainly, Ulysses' quest for "worth and knowledge" (120) embodies a noble sentiment, one consistent with Cicero's praise of Ulysses as a model for the love of wisdom (De finibus 5.18.49). Conversely, Ulysses' renunciation of all family obligations (94-9) and his highly effective use of eloquence to win the minds of his men (112-20) may be signs that this voyage is morally unacceptable no matter how noble its goals. You be the judge.
Ulysses, in any case, represents an immensely gifted individual not afraid to exceed established limits and chart new ground. Sound familiar? It is perhaps appropriate that Dante prefaces the presentation of Ulysses with a self-reflective warning not to abuse his own talent (Inf. 26.19-24).
Guido da Montefeltro (27)
Whereas Virgil addresses the Greek hero Ulysses in Inferno 26, Dante himself inquires of Guido da Montefeltro--a figure from Dante's medieval Italian world--in Inferno 27. Guido (c. 1220-98), a fraudulent character who may himself be a victim of fraud, immediately reveals the limits of his scheming mind when he expresses a willingness to identify himself only because he believes (or claims to believe) that no one ever returns from hell alive (Inf. 27.61-6). T. S. Eliot uses these lines in the Italian original as the epigraph to his famous poem about a modern-day Guido, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":
S'i' credesse che mia risposta fosse
a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa fiamma staria sanza più scosse;
ma però che già mai di questo fondo
non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero,
sanza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
If I thought my answer was
to someone who might return to the world,
this flame would move no more;
but since from this depth it never happened
that anyone alive returned (if I hear right),
without fear of infamy I'll answer you
Note how the double s's imitate the hissing sound of the speaking flame.
Similar to Ulysses, Guido was a sly military-political leader--more fox than lion--who knew "all the wiles and secret ways" of the world (Inf. 27.73-8). He was a prominent ghibelline who led several important military campaigns in central Italy. In the 1270s and the early 1280s he scored decisive victories over guelph and papal forces before suffering defeat in 1283 at Forlí (in Romagna). Excommunicated, he later captained the forces of the Pisan ghibellines against Florence (1288-92); in 1296 Pope Boniface VIII rescinded the excommunication as part of a political strategy to remove the dangerous Guido from the scene. Thus Dante relates how Guido, unlike Ulysses, made an attempt--at least superficially--to change his devious ways when he retired from his active warrior life to become a Franciscan friar (Inf. 27.67-8; 79-84). In a previous work, Dante praises Guido's apparent conversion as a model for how the virtuous individual should retire from worldly affairs late in life (Convivio 4.28.8); Dante certainly uses Guido's story for a very different purpose here in the Inferno. Now the poet calls into question Guido's pretense to a pious life at the same time that he strikes another blow against the pope he loves to hate: Boniface induces Guido to provide advice for destroying the pope's enemies--a broken promise of amnesty for the Colonna family--in exchange for the impossible absolution of this sin even before Guido commits it (85-111).
Mohammed and Ali (28)
Consistent with medieval Christian thinking, in which the Muslim world was viewed as a hostile usurper, Dante depicts both Mohammed--the founder of Islam--and his cousin and son-in-law Ali as sowers of religious divisiveness. One popular view held that Mohammed had himself been a cardinal who, his papal ambitions thwarted, caused a great schism within Christianity when he and his followers splintered off into a new religious community. Dante creates a vicious composite portrait of the two holy men, with Mohammed's body split from groin to chin and Ali's face cleft from top to bottom (Inf. 28.22-33).
According to tradition, the prophet Mohammed founded Islam in the early seventh century C.E. at Mecca. Ali married Mohammed's daughter, Fatima, but a dispute over Ali's succession to the caliphate led, after his assassination in 661, to a division among Muslims into Sunni and Shi'ite.
Still very much part of the collective memory in Dante's world were the crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries, in which Christian armies from Europe fought--mostly unsuccessfully and with heavy losses on all sides--to drive Muslims out of the "holy land" (Jerusalem and surrounding areas). In the Middle Ages, Islam had great influence in Europe in terms of both culture--particularly in medicine, philosophy, and mathematics--and politics (e.g., complete or partial Muslim control of Spain from the 8th through 15th century).
Bertran de Born (28)
Dante selects a troubadour poet--Bertran de Born--for the defining example of contrapasso, the logical relationship between the sin and its punishment in hell (Inf. 28.139-42). Because he allegedly instigated a rift between King Henry II of England and his son, the young prince Henry, Bertran is now himself physically divided: he carries his decapitated head, which--though separated from the body--inexplicably manages to speak (Inf. 28.118-26).
Bertran (c. 1140 - c. 1215) was a nobleman of a region--mostly contained in southern France--famous for the production of Provençal literature, in particular the first lyric poems written in a vernacular romance language. Most of these poems speak of love but others deal with moral or political themes. In the case of Bertran, Dante likely had in mind the following verses, in which the troubadour celebrates the mayhem and violence of warfare:
Maces, swords, helmets--colorfully--
Shields, slicing and smashing,
We'll see at the start of the melee
With all those vassals clashing,
And horses running free
From their masters, hit, downtread.
Once the charge has been led,
Every man of nobility
Will hack at arms and heads.
Better than taken prisoner: be dead.
(trans. James J. Wilhelm, Lyrics of the Middle Ages [Garland: New York & London, 1990], p. 91)
Master Adam and Sinon the Greek (30)
Adam and Sinon--counterfeiter and liar, respectively--trade blows and then an escalating series of verbal barbs that illustrates the hostile attitude of shades toward one another in lower hell (Inf. 30.100-29). Adam was probably an Englishman who plied his illicit trade in late thirteenth-century Italy by manufacturing florins--the prestigious medieval currency of Florence--each containing only twenty-one of the standard twenty-four carats of gold. Sinon, a Greek participant in the Trojan War known to Dante from Virgil's Aeneid (2.57-198), earned his place in the pit of the falsifiers for telling a devastating lie: claiming to have escaped from his Greek comrades before they left Troy (he says they planned to sacrifice him in return for a safe voyage home), Sinon convinces the Trojans that the Greeks built the large wooden horse to placate the goddess (Athena) whose statue Ulysses and Diomedes had stolen from Troy. The Trojans believe Sinon and think to protect Troy by bringing the horse inside the city walls; this enables the Greeks (hidden inside the horse) to accomplish by fraud--destroy Troy--what they failed to do by force alone.
Incarnational Parody (25)
The second transformation of the thieves, in which a human and a six-legged serpent fuse into a grotesque new form that is "neither two nor one" [né due né uno] (Inf. 25.69), is likely meant to be understood as a parody of the incarnation. This doctrine, established at the Council of Chalcedon (451 C.E.) after years of acrimonious debate among theologians, states that Christ is both human and divine, with each nature complete in its own right. Christ, who--along with the Virgin Mary--is never named in the Inferno, therefore comprises "two natures in one person." It is only natural for this theologically correct formulation to be parodied in hell, perhaps by the hybrid creatures (e.g., Minotaur, Centaurs, Harpies) as well as by the thieves joined in a form that is "neither two nor one." Look for other examples of incarnational parody in the Inferno.
Lucan and Ovid (25)
Lucan and Ovid are two of the elite group of poets in Limbo--the others are Homer, Horace, and Virgil--who honor Dante by welcoming him as one of their own (Inf. 4.100-2). Here Dante interrupts his extraordinary description of a mutual transformation of natures--a man and a reptile exchanging forms--to brag that his verses surpass those of Lucan and Ovid, who wrote merely of uni-directional transformations (Inf. 25.94-102). Lucan, for example, tells how Sabellus--a soldier fighting in the Roman civil war--liquefies into a small pool of gore after being bitten by a snake in the Libyan desert, and how another unfortunate soldier, Nasidius, falls victim to a serpent's venom as his body swells into a featureless mass (Pharsalia 9.761-804). Ovid's Cadmus, brother of Europa and founder of Thebes, is transformed into a serpent at the end of his life for slaying a dragon sacred to Mars, and Arethusa is a nymph transformed into a fountain (by Diana) to avoid the amorous advances of Alpheus, a river-god in human form who then reverts to his watery nature; he thus succeeds in merging with Arethusa before the earth opens up and she plunges into the cavernous underworld (Metamorphoses 4.571-603 and 5.572-641).
Note how Dante's language suggests that he is the actual creator of this mutual transformation and not merely an observer who later describes what he saw. What might this imply about Dante's participation in the realm of theft?
Elijah's Chariot (26)
In the eighth pit of circle 8, Dante compares the flames that conceal the shades of the damned to the chariot that carried the prophet Elijah to the heavens (Inf. 26.34-42; 4 Kings 2:11-12). As "he who was avenged by bears" (26.34)--that is, Elisha: two bears killed the boys who had mocked him (4 Kings 2:23-4)--could only follow Elijah's ascent by watching the fire-ball high in the sky, so Dante sees the flames but not the human forms they envelop.
Eteocles and Polynices (26)
Dante compares the twinned flame concealing the shades of Ulysses and Diomedes to the divided flame that rose from the funeral pyre containing the corpses of Eteocles and Polynices (Inf. 26.52-4). These twin brothers were sons of Jocasta and Oedipus, who prayed that Eteocles and Polynices would be forever enemies after they forced him to abdicate and leave Thebes. This prayer-curse came to fruition when Eteocles refused to give up power (the brothers had agreed to take turns ruling Thebes): Polynices enlisted the aid of King Adrastus of Argos, thus initiating the war of the "Seven against Thebes" (see Capaneus). After the brothers killed one another in combat, their bodies were placed together in a single pyre but their mutual hatred, even after death, was such that the rising flame divided in two (Statius, Thebaid 12.429-32). Consider the implications of this story for imagining the relationship between Ulysses and Diomedes in hell, now concealed within a single yet divided flame.
"Togli, Dio, ch'a te le squadro!" (25.3)
Here you are, God, I point them at you!
"Vedi che già non se' né due né uno" (25.69)
Look how already you're neither two nor one
"fatti non foste a viver come bruti" (26.119)
you weren't made to live like beasts
"ed eran due in uno e uno in due" (28.125)
and they were two in one and one in two
"Così s'osserva in me lo contrapasso" (28.142)
thus you observe in me the contrapasso
How do the transformations of the thieves relate to their sin?
How is Dante the poet participating in the sin of theft?
What differences and similarities do you see between Ulysses (26) and Guido (27)? Why are they both punished as tongues of fire in the same ditch?
Why does Dante take Ulysses' story so personally (see 26.19-24)?
How do you understand the contrapasso for the falsifiers (29-30)--that is, why does their punishment consist of diseased bodies and minds?
Circle 9, cantos 31-34
Treachery: Caina (32), Antenora (32-3), Ptolomea (33), Judecca (34)
Dante divides circle 9, the circle of treachery--defined in Inferno 11 as fraudulent acts between individuals who share special bonds of love and trust (61-6)--into four regions. Caina is named after the biblical Cain (first child of Adam and Eve), who slew his brother Abel out of envy after God showed appreciation for Abel's sacrificial offering but not Cain's (Genesis 4:1-17); condemned to a vagabond existence, Cain later built a city (named after his son, Henoch) that for certain Christian theologians--notably Augustine (City of God, book 15)--represented the evils of the earthly city. In the circle of the lustful, Francesca identified her husband (Gianciotto)--who murdered her and Paolo (Gianciotto's brother)--as a future inhabitant of Caina (Inf. 5.107). Dante's attention is here drawn to two brothers, the ghibelline Napoleone and the guelph Alessandro, who murdered one another because of a dispute over their inheritance (Inf. 32.55-60).
The second region, designated for political traitors, is named for the Trojan prince Antenora. While the classical sources--notably Homer's Iliad--present Antenora in a positive (or at least neutral) light as one in favor of returning Helen to the Greeks for the good of Troy, medieval versions--histories, commentaries, and romances--view him as a "treacherous Judas" who plots with the Greeks to destroy the city. Dante places in this region those who betrayed their political party or their homeland.
In the third zone of circle 9 suffer those who betrayed friends or guests. Ptolomea is named after one or both of the following: Ptolemy, the captain of Jericho, honored his father-in-law, the high priest Simon Maccabee, and two of Simon's sons with a great feast and then murdered them (1 Maccabees 16:11-17); Ptolemy XII, brother of Cleopatra, arranged that the Roman general Pompey--seeking refuge following his defeat at the battle of Pharsalia (48 B.C.E.)--be murdered as soon as he stepped ashore. Dante displays his abhorrence of such crimes by devising a special rule for those who betray their guests: their souls descend immediately to hell and their living bodies are possessed by demons when they commit these acts (Inf. 33.121-6).
Judecca, named after the apostle who betrayed Jesus (Judas Iscariot), is the innermost zone of the ninth and final circle of hell. The term also hints at a manifestation of Christian prejudice--which Dante certainly shares--against Judaism and Jews in the Middle Ages: it alludes to the names--Iudeca, Judaica--for the area within certain cities (e.g., Venice) where Jews were forced to live, apart from the Christian population. Together with Judas in this region of hell are others who, by betraying their masters or benefactors, committed crimes with great historical and societal consequences. Completely covered by the ice--like "straw in glass"--the shades are locked in various postures with no mobility or sound whatsoever (Inf. 34.10-15).
Giants (31)
The Giants physically connect circles 8 and 9: standing on the floor of circle 9--or perhaps on a ledge above the bottom of hell--the upper halves of their huge bodies tower over the inner edge of circle 8. From a distance, in fact, Dante initially mistakes the Giants for actual towers (Inf. 31.19-45). Anticipating the even larger figure of Lucifer, Dante's Giants--drawn from both biblical and classical stories--are archetypal examples of defiant rebels. Nimrod, described in the Bible as a "stout hunter before the Lord" (Genesis 10:9), was viewed as a Giant in the medieval tradition that Dante follows. According to the biblical account, people in the region ruled by Nimrod--Babylon and other cities in the land of Sennaar--plan to build a tower that will reach to heaven; God shows his displeasure by scattering the people and destroying the unity of their language so they will no longer understand one another's speech (Genesis 11:1-9). Dante, following tradition, places the blame for this linguistic confusion on Nimrod, whose own language is now as incomprehensible to others as their languages are to him (Inf. 31.67-9; 76-81). In his physical description of Nimrod, Dante reinforces the association of the Giants with the ruinous consequences of pride: 1) comparing the size of Nimrod's face to the pine cone at St. Peter's in Rome (Inf. 31.58-60), Dante perhaps means to draw an unflattering parallel with the current pope, Boniface VIII; 2) the word Dante uses--perizoma--to convey how the inner bank of circle 8 covers the lower half of the Giants' bodies like an "apron" (Inf. 31.61-2) is an unusual word (of Greek origin) likely familiar to Dante's readers from a biblical verse describing the shame of Adam and Eve following their disobedience in the Garden of Eden: "And the eyes of them both were opened: and when they perceived themselves to be naked, they sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves aprons [perizomata]" (Genesis 3:7).
In their passage from circle 8 to circle 9, Dante and Virgil view two other Giants, both from the classical tradition. Ephialtes was one of the Giants who fought against Jove and the other Olympian gods (Inf. 31.91-6). Ephialtes and his twin brother Otus (they were sons of Neptune and Iphimedia, wife of the giant Aloeus), attempted to scale Mount Olympus and dethrone the gods by stacking Mount Pelion on top of Mount Ossa in Macedonia (Aen. 6.582-4); they were killed, according to Servius' well known medieval commentary on the Aeneid, with arrows shot by Apollo and Diana. Note Ephialtes' reaction to Virgil's statement that another Giant--Briareus--has an even more ferocious appearance (Inf. 31.106-11). Like the other Giants who challenged the gods, Ephialtes is immobilized by chains in Dante's hell. Antaeus, who can speak, is probably unfettered because he was born after his brothers waged war against the gods. He is therefore able to lift Dante and Virgil and deposit them on the floor of the ninth and final circle of hell (Inf. 31.130-45). To secure this assistance, Virgil entices Antaeus with the prospect of continued fame (upon Dante's return to the world) based on the Giant's formidable reputation. Here Dante's source is Lucan, who recounts how Antaeus, a fearsome offspring of Earth whose strength was replenished from contact with his mother, feasted on lions and slaughtered farmers and travelers around his cavernous dwelling in North Africa until he met his match in Hercules. The hero and the Giant engaged in a wrestling contest, which Hercules finally won by lifting Antaeus off the ground and squeezing him to death (Pharsalia 4.593-653). The Giant's fatal encounter with Hercules is recalled not by Virgil in his plea for Antaeus' help (Inf. 31.115-29) but by the narrator (31.132). Virgil, however, is sure to reiterate Lucan's suggestion that the Giants might in fact have defeated the gods had Antaeus been present at the battle of Phlegra (31.119-21; see also Inf. 14.58).
Bocca degli Abati (32)
Dante certainly feels no remorse for kicking a shade hard in the face once he learns the identity of the political traitor (Inf. 32.73-8). The offended shade immediately piques Dante's interest by alluding to Montaperti (near Siena), site of the legendary battle (1260) in which Florentine guelphs were routed by ghibelline forces that included, among exiles from Florence, Farinata degli Uberti. The shade's identity remains concealed, even as Dante tries to elicit it by tearing out chunks of his hair, until another traitor in the ice calls out the wretch's name: Bocca promptly lives up to his name (bocca means "mouth") by identifying the informer along with four other traitors to political party or homeland (Inf. 32.112-23). Bocca degli Abati belonged to a ghibelline family that remained in Florence after other ghibellines were banished in 1258 for their role in a foiled plot. Pretending to fight on the side of the guelphs (as part of the cavalry), Bocca betrayed his guelph countrymen at a decisive moment in the battle--as German mercenary troops attacked in support of the Tuscan ghibellines--by cutting off the hand of the guelph standard-bearer. Demoralized by Bocca's treachery and the loss of their flag, the guelphs panicked and were roundly defeated.
Ugolino and Ruggieri (32-3)
There is perhaps no more grisly scene in all the Inferno than Dante's depiction of Ugolino eating the back of Ruggieri's head like a dog using its strong teeth to gnaw a bone (Inf. 32.124-32; 33.76-8). Ugolino's story, the longest single speech by one of the damned, is Dante's final dramatic representation in the Inferno of humankind's capacity for evil and cruelty. Aimed at explaining the scene of cannibalism in hell, Ugolino's story is all the more powerful because the speaker makes no attempt to exonerate himself of the crime--political treachery--for which he is condemned to eternal damnation. He instead wishes to defame his enemy and elicit compassion from his audience by recounting the brutal manner in which he and his innocent children were killed.
Count Ugolino della Gherardesca earned his place in Antenora--the realm of political traitors--for a series of betrayals against Pisa and her political leadership. Dante mentions only the reputed act of treason that eventually led to Ugolino's downfall: in an effort to appease hostile and powerful guelph forces in Tuscany, Ugolino ceded Pisan castles to Florence and Lucca in 1285 (Inf. 33.85-6). However, early commentators and chroniclers describe other--even more damning--examples of shifting allegiances and betrayals in the long political life of Count Ugolino. Born into a prominent ghibelline family in Pisa, Ugolino switched to the guelph side following their ascendancy in Tuscan politics and tried to install a guelph government in Pisa in 1274-5. Unsuccessful in this attempt, he was imprisoned and later exiled. In 1284, several years after his return, Ugolino led Pisan forces in a naval battle against rival Genoa; despite his defeat, Ugolino was elected podestà (political head) of Pisa and his guelph grandson, Nino Visconti, soon joined him in power as "captain of the people." It was in this period that Ugolino, out of political expediency, ceded the Pisan castles to Lucca and Florence, a decision that caused a rift between him and his grandson and between their guelph followers. Taking advantage of resurgent ghibelline fortunes in Tuscany, Ugolino connived with the Pisan ghibellines, led by the Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini; Ugolino agreed to ghibelline demands that his grandson Nino be driven from the city, an order that was carried out--with Ugolino purposefully absent from the city--in 1288. The traitor, however, was then himself betrayed: upon Ugolino's return to Pisa, Ruggieri incited the public against him (by cleverly exploiting Ugolino's previous "betrayal of the castles") and had the count--along with two sons (Gaddo and Uguiccione) and two grandsons (Anselmo and Brigata)--arrested and imprisoned. They were held in the tower for eight months until, with a change in the ghibelline leadership of Pisa, it was decided to nail shut the door to the tower and to throw the key into the Arno. They starved to death, as Dante's Ugolino recalls, in a matter of days (Inf. 33.67-75).
Fra Alberigo (33)
Dante cleverly tricks a shade into revealing his identity by making a devious deal (Inf. 33.109-17): if he doesn't relieve the traitor's suffering (by removing ice--frozen tears--from the traitor's face) in exchange for this information, Dante says he should be sent to the very bottom of hell! Dante thus learns that the soul of Fra Alberigo is in hell even as his body is still alive on earth in 1300, the year of the journey (he is thought to have died in 1307). Drawing Dante's attention to the shade of Branca Doria (who will actually live another twenty-five years), Alberigo explains that the souls of those who betray their guests descend immediately to Ptolomea as their bodies are possessed by demons (Inf. 33.124-47). Fra Alberigo, of the ruling guelph family of Faenza (near Ravenna), was a Jovial Friar--a religious order established with the goal of making peace (in families and cities) but soon better known for decadence and corruption. A close relative, Manfred, plotted against Alberigo for political power; as a result of this dispute, Manfred struck Alberigo, whose cruel response well earned him a place among the traitors in hell. Pretending that the altercation was forgotten, Alberigo invited Manfred and his son to a sumptuous banquet; when, at the end of the meal, the host gave the signal ("Bring the fruit!"), armed servants emerged from behind a curtain and slaughtered the guests, much to the delight of Alberigo.
Lucifer (with Brutus, Judas, & Cassius) (34)
Lucifer, Satan, Dis, Beelzebub--Dante throws every name in the book at the Devil, once the most beautiful angel (Lucifer means "light-bearer") then--following his rebellion against God--the source of evil and sorrow in the world, beginning with his corruption of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). Dante's Lucifer is a parodic composite of his wickedness and the divine powers that punish him in hell. As ugly as he once was beautiful, Lucifer is the wretched emperor of hell, whose tremendous size (he dwarfs even the Giants) stands in contrast with his limited powers: his flapping wings generate the wind that keeps the lake frozen and his three mouths chew on the shade-bodies of three arch-traitors, the gore mixing with tears gushing from Lucifer's three sets of eyes (Inf. 34.53-7). Lucifer's three faces--each a different color (red, whitish-yellow, black)--parody the doctrine of the Trinity: three complete persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) in one divine nature--the Divine Power, Highest Wisdom, and Primal Love that created the Gate of Hell and, by extension, the entire realm of eternal damnation. With the top half of his body towering over the ice, Lucifer resembles the Giants and other half-visible figures; after Dante and Virgil have passed through the center of the earth, their perspective changes and Lucifer appears upside-down, with his legs sticking up in the air. Consider the implications of visual parallels between Lucifer and other inhabitants of hell.
Eternally eaten by Lucifer's three mouths are--from left to right-- Brutus, Judas, and Cassius (Inf. 34.61-7). Brutus and Cassius, stuffed feet first in the jaws of Lucifer's black and whitish-yellow faces respectively, are punished in this lowest region for their assassination of Julius Caesar (44 B.C.E.), the founder of the Roman Empire that Dante viewed as an essential part of God's plan for human happiness. Both Brutus and Cassius fought on the side of Pompey in the civil war. However, following Pompey's defeat at Pharsalia in 48 B.C.E., Caesar pardoned them and invested them with high civic offices. Still, Cassius continued to harbor resentment against Caesar's dictatorship and enlisted the aid of Brutus in a conspiracy to kill Caesar and re-establish the republic. They succeeded in assassinating Caesar but their political-military ambitions were soon thwarted by Octavian (later Augustus) and Antony at Philippi (42 B.C.E.): Cassius, defeated by Antony and thinking (wrongly) that Brutus had been defeated by Octavian, had himself killed by a servant; Brutus indeed lost a subsequent battle and took his life as well. For Dante, Brutus and Cassius' betrayal of Julius Caesar, their benefactor and the world's supreme secular ruler, complements Judas Iscariot's betrayal of Jesus, the Christian man-god, in the Bible. Judas, one of the twelve apostles, strikes a deal to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver; he fulfills his treacherous role--foreseen by Jesus at the Last Supper--when he later identifies Jesus to the authorities with a kiss; regretting this betrayal that will lead to Jesus' death, Judas returns the silver and hangs himself (Matthew 26:14-16; 26:21-5; 26:47-9; 27:3-5). Suffering even more than Brutus and Cassius, Dante's Judas is placed head-first inside Lucifer's central mouth, with his back skinned by the devil's claws (Inf. 34.58-63).
More Giants (Briareus, Tityus, Typhon) (31)
Although Dante and Virgil do not visit them, three more towering Giants are named in Inferno 31. Briareus, whom Virgil describes as equal in size to--but even more terrifying than--Ephialtes (Inf. 31.103-5), appears in Virgil's epic as a monster said to have one hundred arms and hands, with fire burning in his fifty mouths and chests; he thus wielded fifty shields and swords to defend himself against Jove's thunderbolts (Aen. 6.287; 10.565-8). Statius merely describes Briareus as immense (Thebaid 2.596). Repeating Lucan's coupling of Tityus and Typhon as Giants inferior to Antaeus (Pharsalia 4.595-6), Virgil appeals to Antaeus' pride by "threatening" to go to them if Antaeus will not provide a lift down to circle 9 (Inf. 31.124-6). Tityus is well represented in classical literature as a Giant whose attempted rape of Latona (mother of Apollo and Diana) earns him a gruesome fate in the underworld: a vulture continuously feeds on Tityus' immortal liver (Aen. 6.595-600; Met. 4.457-8). Typhon was struck down by Jove's lightning bolts and, depending on the version, buried under Mount Etna in Sicily (and thus causing occasional volcanic eruptions: Met. 5.318-58) or under the Island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples (Aen. 9.715-6).
Cocytus (32-4)
Dante calls circle 9, a frozen lake, Cocytus (from Greek, meaning "to lament"). One of the rivers in the classical underworld, Cocytus is described by Virgil as a dark, deep pool of water that encircles a forest and into which pours sand spewed from a torrid whirlpool (Aen. 6.131-2; 6.296-7; 6.323). In the Vulgate (the Latin Bible), Cocytus designates the valley (or torrent) of death that receives the wicked, even--and especially--those who have prospered in the world (Job 21:33).
sì che l'un capo a l'altro era cappello" (32.126)
so that one head to the other was a hat
"Poscia, più che 'l dolor, poté 'l digiuno" (33.75)
then, stronger than grief was my hunger
"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle" (34.139)
we then emerged to see again the stars
Why is a frozen lake an appropriate place for the punishment of traitors in the lowest circle of hell? Describe the general contrapasso for treachery.
The Giants and Lucifer are proud figures who appear divided, with only the top halves of their bodies visible to Dante and Virgil. Similarly, half the bodies of Cassius, Judas, and Brutus are inside Lucifer's massive jaws. Count Ugolino, on the other hand, is doubled with his mortal enemy, Archbishop Ruggieri. Can you think of other divided or doubled figures entangled in Dante's infernal web of pride?
Envy is the other capital sin not assigned a specific circle or region in Dante's hell. Do you see evidence of envy in the final circle of hell? in previous circles?
Find examples of Dante's "participation" in these cantos describing the circle of treachery.
Why do you think stelle--"stars"--is the last word of all three parts of the Divine Comedy?
Changing Values
As a relatively privileged European man of the late Middle Ages, Dante certainly shares - despite his intellect and imagination - many views that we moderns might rightly consider unenlightened. These could include religious and ethnic intolerance, a reductive attitude toward women, and a heterosexist understanding of love and sexuality. In some respects - for instance, his advocacy of the empire (and opposition to more democratic, republican ideas) - he could be considered reactionary even for his own time and place.
While we might think of ourselves as enlightened, open-minded people today, what might our descendants say about us a century or two from now?
What specific issues or attitudes do you think will change so much in the future that our current views may come to be seen as "medieval"?
Content Sources:
Icon images created by Suloni Robertson from her own paintings.
Copyright © Suloni Robertson 2002-2004. All rights reserved.
Other images in the Danteworlds site are taken from the following works:
Blake: Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake.
London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922. Reproduction and use courtesy of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
Botticelli: Drawings by Sandro Botticelli for Dante's Divina Commedia; reduced facsimiles after the originals in the Royal museum, Berlin, and in the Vatican library. London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1896.
Doré: Dante's Inferno, Translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the Original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré. New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.
Flaxman: Compositions of John Flaxman, Sculptor, R. A., from the Divine Poem of Dante Alighieri, Containing Hell, Purgatory and Paradise; engraved by Thomas Piroli. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807.
Vellutello: Dante con l'espositioni di Christoforo Landino, et d'Alessandro Vellutello; unknown artist. Venice: Gio. Battista, & Gio. Bernardo Sessa, fratelli, 1596. Reproduction and use courtesy of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
All commentary written by Guy P. Raffa.
Copyright © Guy P. Raffa 2002-2004. All rights reserved
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