Dante's Inferno

Virgil announces the arrival of a monster: “Behold the beast with the pointed tail, that passes through mountains and pierces walls and armor! Behold the one that makes the whole world stink!” (1-3). He speaks of the monster Geryon, who has the face of a kindly man, the body of a serpent, the arms and paws of some hairy beast, and the sting of a scorpion. His hide is decorated with “knots and little wheels,” designs that Dante likens to those in a Turkish carpet (7-18).

Geryon beaches himself on the edge of the abyss, and Dante and Virgil make their way toward him. They pass another group of souls sitting in the burning sand and Virgil tells Dante to speak with them before they descend any further. Each of these souls, Dante sees, is wearing a sack around his neck, emblazoned with the arms of noble houses. These are the usurers, and they greet Dante with tales of inter-city competition and strife; the Paduan soul to whom he speaks is both spiteful and bestial, calling for the punishment of a still-living Florentine counselor as he licks his own snout like an ox.

Dante leaves this scene to find Virgil has negotiated their passage with Geryon. The two must climb astride the monster and allow him to fly them deeper into Hell. Virgil insists Dante sit in front so he will be safe from Geryon’s sting.

Dante is terrified and shakes like a man with a bad fever. But he puts on a brave face so as not to show himself up in front of Virgil and climbs aboard. Virgil joins him, comfortingly embracing him from behind, and Geryon takes flight.

Dante describes the terrifying descent they make, referencing Icarus and Phaethon—mythological transgressors who fell from the sky. Geryon makes a slow, spiraling descent into a terrible depth. Dante cannot see much in the dark, but feels the wind of flight on his face, hears wailing from below, and sees fires burning beneath them.

At last, they reach the bottom. Geryon deposits them and shoots off like an arrow.

Dante and Virgil have reached Malebolge, literally translated means the Evil Pockets. This is a section of Hell in which the simpler forms of fraud are punished in ten small sub-circles called bolgie—bolgia in the singular; these are little valleys that surround the central and deepest pit like moats.

In the first and second of these, Dante sees souls walking in concentric circles, some coming toward him and some going away; it reminds him of how the bridge to St. Peter’s during a busy Jubilee year is divided into two lanes of traffic. Demons flog these souls as they pass. Dante recognizes one soul as a Guelph nobleman, and calls out his name: Venedico Caccianemico. Caccianemico does not want to reply to him but is mysteriously compelled. He explains that he was a pander—or pimp—who prostituted his own sister.

Dante and Virgil do not descend into this pocket but cross a bridge over it. From there, Virgil points out the people walking the opposite direction of the panders: the seducers. Among them is the legendary Jason of Argonaut fame who deceived many women, among them Hypsipyle and Medea.

As they cross the bridge, a terrible stink assails Dante and Virgil. In the next bolgia, they find a pit of human excrement in which the sinners are so covered in filth they are unrecognizable. Dante identifies a man named Alessio Interminei. His actions and Dante’s description of them are mechanical and bestial: “And he again, beating his noggin: ‘I am submerged down here by the flatteries with which my tongue was never cloyed’” (124-26). Virgil also points out a character from a classical play: a prostitute named Thaïs, “scratching herself with her shitty nails, now squatting, now standing on her feet” (131-32), who famously flattered her clients.

The next bolgia, Dante explains, houses simoniacs: that is, holy men who exploited their religious positions for money. They are called simoniacs because of Simon Magus, a magician said to have tried to buy the power of healing from the Apostle Peter. Here, the rock walls are perforated with holes; Dante compares the holes to the baptismal font in Florence’s Baptistry, a portion of which he claims to have broken to rescue someone who was drowning in it (a mysterious passage that seems more likely to be metaphorically than literally true). From each of these holes emerge the legs of upside-down sinners, with their feet aflame. The legs wriggle in pain.

Dante points out a soul whose feet seem even wrigglier than most, and Virgil encourages him to go speak to him. In fact, Virgil picks Dante up like a child and carries him down into the bolgia to set him down next to the soul.

Dante stands like a priest hearing confession and asks the soul to speak. The soul replies, “Are you already standing there, are you already standing there, Boniface?” (52-54). This soul is Pope Nicholas III, a famously corrupt pontiff; he refers to Dante’s enemy Boniface VIII, who was Pope during the time The Inferno was set. Virgil tells Dante to inform Nicholas he is not Boniface. Nicholas is being punished for selling Church offices and favors. Down below him in the rock is a whole chain of corrupt popes; when Boniface at last dies, he will go on top, and Nicholas will be forced even further down into the depths.

Dante delivers a little lecture to this inverted Pope, noting that Christ demanded no treasure from St. Peter before giving him the keeping of the Church. He tells Nicholas he is exactly the kind of corrupt leader predicted in the Book of Revelations—a Whore of Babylon leading a perversion of the church. Broadening his lament, he bemoans the Donation of Constantine: the document—now known to be falsified—in which the converted Emperor Constantine handed over earthly powers to the Church.

In response, Nicholas kicks and writhes even more. Virgil listens until Dante is done, and then, pleased with what he hears, sweeps him into a big bear hug and carries him back up the bank.

The fifth bolgia reveals a punishment as strange as it is horrible. Here, fortunetellers and diviners walk endlessly with their heads twisted completely around on their necks, so they always face away from the direction they are walking: “I saw our image so twisted that the tears of their eyes were bathing their buttocks down the cleft” (22-24). Dante weeps as he looks at their deformity. Virgil scolds him: Do not be a fool, this is not a place to have pity. Aside from the fact that it is wrong to try to resist God’s law by seeing what is not given to humans to see, there is no point in having compassion for souls who are eternally beyond change.

There are a lot of famous figures here: Amphiaraus, who predicted the outcome of a war against Thebes; Tiresias, the famous seer (also known for changing from a man to a woman and back again); and, importantly, Tiresias’s daughter Manto, whom Virgil points out for Dante’s special attention. Manto, he explains, founded Mantua, the city where he, Virgil, was born. Virgil gives a little geographical background on his region then describes how Manto settled in the swamps around Mantua; the city was built on her bones. Virgil also makes an odd note, saying Dante should discredit any other story he hears of Mantua’s foundation; exactly such a differing story appears in the Aeneid. Dante agrees he will cast aside any story that does not agree with the one that Virgil just told him.

Virgil points out more soothsayers to Dante, from famous fortunetellers to those everyday folks who tried to influence the future with spells. They carry on to the next bolgia.

In the next bolgia, a thick pitch that reminds Dante of Venetian boatyards boils and bubbles. At first, Dante cannot see anything but this black, gloopy tar. But Virgil points out a fearsome, winged devil running along the ridge of the stew. This devil is carrying a sinner over his shoulder, hooked through the Achilles tendons like a side of meat. He calls out to his comrades, the Malebranche—or Evil Claws—saying he brought them a political boss from Lucca: a barrator (or grafter)—one who sold government offices and political favors. He is going back for more: there are no end of barrators in Lucca, he exults. He flings the barrator into the pitch and flies away. When the barrator emerges again, butt-first, the other Evil Claws taunt him: “Here we do not show the Holy Face!” (48). They threaten him with sharp hooks. Dante watches the demons stab the barrator’s butt, likening them to a cook poking floating meat back down into a broth.

Virgil tells Dante to hide behind a rock while he handles the demons, reassuring him that he has the situation totally under control—he has dealt with these demons before. He boldly walks out to meet the Evil Claws, and they menacingly gather around him. Virgil greets them with courage and scorn. He speaks to one of their leaders, Malacoda—Evil Tail—and tells him to grant passage, by the will of Heaven. Disappointed, Evil Tail drops his hook and agrees, and Virgil calls Dante out from behind his rock. The devils, seeing him, lunge, and Dante, fearing they are not going to keep their promise, feels like a soldier surrounded by enemies. He adds, with comedic understatement, “I did not turn my eyes from their expression, which was not good” (98-99). He shrinks closer to Virgil as the demons debate whether they should shred him.

Evil Tail quells his demons, and tells Virgil and Dante that if they want to pass, they are going to have to take an unusual path because the next bridgehas crumbled—a consequence of the earthquake after the Crucifixion, like the earlier landslide. He is sending some demons toward the pass anyway, he says, and they will show Dante and Virgil the way. He calls their colorful names: “Love Notch, come here, and Little Big Dragon, Big Pig with his tusks, and Scratching Dog, and Butterfly and crazy Ruby Face” (121-23). He commands them to check for surfacing barrators, and to lead the pilgrims to the bridge.

Dante smells a rat and begs Virgil not to trust this dubious escort. Virgil waves off Dante’s worries, telling him the demons are just putting on a show for the barrators in the pitch. They set out together—but only after the demons have stuck their tongues out to Evil Tail in a leering salute, and Evil Tail has seen them off with a trumpet-y fart.

Dante has seen plenty of impressive martial sights, he says—knights riding to battle, cities overrun, tourneys and jousts—but he has never seen such a strange salute as this expedition began with. He marvels, with a touch of dark comedy: “We were walking with the ten demons. Ah, fierce company! but in church with the saints, in the tavern with the gluttons” (13-15).

As they walk, he focuses on the pitch, where he sees sinners sticking up their snouts up like frogs to get some brief relief from the burning. One is too slow to go back under when the demon Scratching Dog comes near, and the demon snags him by his filthy hair and drags him out, swinging him in the air like a hunted otter. Dante asks Virgil to figure out the name of this hapless soul. The dangling soul tells them he was a Navarrese barrator, an underling who sold offices; meanwhile, Big Pig tears at him with his tusks. Dante asks Virgil to ask the Navarrese man if there are any Italians under there, and the man says yes, he was just alongside one; he is interrupted by a demon ripping a muscle out of his arm with a hook. He stares in horror at his wound as he lists Italians under the pitch, mostly corrupt political figures, head of local governments.

If you can distract the demons from ripping me up anymore, the Navarrese man says, he can call as many Italians as Dante likes. The demons snarl that this sounds like a trick so the soul can escape. One, Harlequin, decides he is going to have a contest with the Navarrese man: He will give him a chance to get away and see if he is quick enough. Unfortunately for Harlequin, the man is quick and Harlequin himself gets his wings snared in the pitch. He and another demon start grappling in the muck, and the other demons all hold out their hooks to try to extract their cooked-through comrades.

With the demons thus distracted, Dante and Virgil make their way alone. Dante is thinking of one of Aesop’s fables, “The Frog and the Rat,” which resembles the scene that just played out between soul and demons. This old story of treachery reawakens his earlier fears that the demons intend to betray him and Virgil—especially now that the demons are angry and humiliated. He tells Virgil his worries, and Virgil agrees; he advises they run down the bank to the next bolgia.

While Virgil is still speaking, the demons appear, flying toward them with evil on their minds. Virgil scoops Dante up in his arms “like a mother who is awakened by the noise and sees the flames burning close by; who takes up her son and flees, caring more for him than for herself, not stopping even to put on her shift,” and leaps down the bank of the next bolgia (37-42). Luckily, the laws of Hell forbid the demons from leaving their own territory, so Virgil and Dante are safe when they reach the bottom.

Here, they find people walking in golden robes—or robes that appear golden. But bone-crushingly heavy lead lines these shining cloaks. Again, one of the souls recognizes Dante by his accent and asks who he is; Dante answers he is a Florentine, and asks the same question of the hooded figure. He is Catalano, one of the “Jolly Friars,” a notoriously corrupt religious order. Dante is about to lay into him but is distracted by the sight of a man staked to the ground, crucified. Catalano explains that this is Caiaphas, the priest who counselled it was only sensible that one man (Christ) should be crucified to keep the Jewish population at large safe. The souls in the leaden robes—the hypocrites—eternally walk over him.

Virgil asks Catalano how they can get out of this bolgia, and Catalano tells them they can go to the bridge the demons said was impassable: It is actually a perfectly climbable heap of rocks now. Virgil is dismayed that the demon lied to him and angrily stalks off; Dante affectionately follows: “my leader walked off with great strides, his face a little disturbed with anger; so I left the burdened ones, following the prints of his dear feet” (145-48).

This canto begins with a long, lyrical simile. Dante evokes early spring, when there is still frost on the ground in the mornings, and a peasant goes out and think his fields have frozen over, only to find the sun has melted the frost so he can take his sheep to pasture. This is just how Dante felt, he says, when he saw Virgil at first looking so upset, and then recovering.

By the time they reach the landslide they must climb, Virgil is smiling again, and helps Dante climb the rubble, sometimes carrying him and sometimes pushing him from behind. Nevertheless, Dante is exhausted when they get to the top, and Virgil gives him a pep talk: “one does not gain fame,” he says, “sitting on down cushions” (47). Reinvigorated, Dante gets back to his feet.

They climb along a narrow, steep ridge. From below, Dante can hear angry voices. He wants to know what is going on down there and asks to descend; Virgil agrees, praising him for his virtuous request.

Climbing down into the seventh bolgia, Dante sees a strange sight: a pit of snakes of such variety it puts any earthly snake-filled desert to shame. Among the snakes, naked souls run. Snakes tie their hands behind their backs or writhe around their groins like loincloths. As Dante watches, a snake pounces on one soul and bites him at the nape of his neck. “Neither 'O' nor 'I' has ever been written so fast as he caught fire and burned and was all consumed, falling, to ashes,” Dante recounts (100-02). But once the soul burns to dust, it gathers itself up and forms into a human again—like a very unhappy phoenix groaning in horror to find itself right back in the same predicament.

Questioned by Virgil, this soul introduces himself: “Bestial life pleased me, not human, mule that I was; I am Vanni Fucci the beast” (124-26). He goes on to explain he is here because he stole sacred silver from a church—a crime for which others took the blame. He spitefully tells Dante even more bad news about what is going to happen to Florence: There will be more infighting between the White and Black Guelphs, and the result will not go in Dante’s favor.

This, then, is the bolgia of theft. Vanni Fucci completes his cruel speech by making an obscene gesture at the heavens, cursing God. “From then on,” Dante says, “snakes have been my friends, because one of them wrapped itself around his neck, as if to say ‘I will not let him say more’” (4-6). Dante shakes his head at Pistoia, Vanni Fucci’s home city, wondering why it does not burn itself up rather than continue so full of wretched thieves like Vanni Fucci—who was, Dante said, the most appallingly prideful soul he saw in all of Hell.

A centaur, Cacus, gallops by, dripping with snakes; Virgil explains he is not with the other centaurs, shooting the souls in Phlegethon, because he stole Hercules’ cattle.

Three more spirits come by; Virgil hushes Dante and encourages him to watch as a six-legged snake launches itself at one of them and wraps itself around him in a hideous, grotesquely sexual embrace. It melts into him until they are an awful hybrid, like two colors of wax melted together. The resultant beast lurches away.

The next of the three souls is attacked by a black snake that bites him at his navel. Black smoke begins to billow from the bite. Dante takes a moment here to toot his own horn: what he is about to describe has no match even in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he says. As the soul stares in horror, the snake gradually changes into a man as the soul changes into a snake. The soul’s legs fuse, his arms shrivel, his skin hardens; meanwhile, the snake’s tail turns into a penis, and legs shoot out below it. When the transformation is over, a man and a snake depart, but the one has become the other. The snake that has become a man rushes off to do more mischief, seeking to attack a man named Buoso (presumably Buoso Donati, a member of a powerful Italian family). The remaining soul Dante recognizes as Puccio Sciancato, a well-known Italian thief; he is the only one Dante does not see transform.