8/11/2019 Outline of Dante's Inferno

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Vestibule: The uncommitted, the self-interested, those who took no side in the rebellion of angels

Pontius Pilate?

---Charon, the ferryman of Hades, carries the dead across the river Acheron---

First Circle: The virtuous pagans and un-baptized, sorrow without torment (limbo)

Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Ovid, Euclid, Cicero, Hector, Horace, Hippocrates

---Minos, the judge of the underworld---

The Wanton/Self-Indulgent Sins

Second Circle: The lustful, blown about by a raging wind

Helen of Troy, Paris, Achilles, Cleopatra

Third Circle: The gluttonous, entrenched in rain and mud, guarded by the 3-headed dog Cerebus

Fourth Circle: The prodigal and avaricious, pushing heavy weights, guarded by Plutus

---River Styx drains into a swamp---

Fifth Circle:The angry and wrathful, fighting in the swamp or lying sullenly beneath its surface

---Walls of the City of Dis, guarded by fallen angels, three furies, Medusa---

The Violent and Malicious Sins

Sixth Circle: The heretics, those who didnt believe in the afterlife, trapped burning in red hot tombs

Epicureans (soul dies w/ body)

Seventh Circle: The violent, guarded by the Minotaur

Outer ring: Violence against others, immersed in Phlegethon (a river of boiling blood)

Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun

Middle ring: Violence against self, transformed into bushes and trees devoured by harpies

Inner ring: Violence against God (blasphemers/sodomites/usurers), a hot dessert w/ raining fire

---Dante and Virgil descend a cliff on the back of the winged monster Geryon---

Eighth Circle: The fraudulent, separated into 10 Bolgias (pits) joined by bridges

1.

Panderers and seducers, marching in lines and whipped by demons

2.

Flatterers, drowning in excrement

8/11/2019 Outline of Dante's Inferno

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3.

Simoniacs (those who sold the holy office), buried head first in rock w/ their feet on fire

4.

Sorcerers/astrologers/false prophets, they walk w/ their heads twisted around backward

a.

Tiresias

5.

Corrupt politicians, swimming in a lake of boiling pitch, pursued by the Malebranche

6.

Hypocrites, burdened to walk around wearing heavy lead cloaks

a.

High Priest Caiaphas

7.

Thieves, bitten by reptiles and transformed into monsters

8.

False counselors, enveloped in individual flames

a.

Ulysses/Odysseus and Diomedes (for the Trojan Horse)

9.

Schismatics, repeatedly hacked to pieces by a sword-wielding demon

a.

Muhammad (for Islam), Ali (for Sunni/Shiite)

10.

Falsifiers (alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, imposters), suffering from different diseases

Ninth Circle: The treacherous, guarded by giants, separated into four rounds of Cocytus (frozen lake)

1.

Traitors to family, immersed in ice up to their chins (Cain)

2.

Traitors to community, also buried in ice (Antenor, from the Iliad)

3.

Traitors to guests, lying supine on the ice (Ptolemy, from 1 Maccabees)

4.

Traitors to lords, encapsulated in ice in distorted positions:

Satan in bondage, waist deep in ice, his flapping wings create a chilling wind, three faces and

mouths, e/ one chewing a different traitor (Brutus, Cassius, Judas Iscariot)