Nine Circles of Hell
Dante's Inferno: A Detailed Guide to the Nine Circles of Hell
“Inferno” takes us on a harrowing journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil.
Ante-Inferno
In the Ante-Inferno, reside the souls of those who lived without fame, committing neither good nor evil deeds. They do not enter either Hell or Heaven but eternally remain in the Ante-Inferno, pursued by mosquitoes and wasps, while their wounds are washed with blood and tears.
Imagine a desolate landscape with no features as far as the eye can see. The sky is heavy and gray, casting a pale light on the barren earth. The earth is strewn with jagged stones, and the feet of lost souls wandering aimlessly are sharp and unforgiving.
These souls, known as “neutrals,” drift through the Ante Inferno in a state of constant instability. They are doomed to neither hellish torment nor heavenly bliss, but are forever stuck in obscurity. Their faces express resignation and emptiness, reflecting the futility of their existence.
A dark cloud looms over their heads, casting dancing shadows on the landscape. Swarms of wasps and hornets descend from these clouds, their cries filling the air with an incessant cacophony. As harbingers of suffering, these insects relentlessly stalk the souls below, inflicting pain without respite as they sting.
Lost souls realize their fate, and a sense of foreboding and despair overwhelms them. They wander in search of meaning and purpose, but find only emptiness and misery. Ante Inferno is a stark reminder of the consequences of a life without virtue or vice, doomed to eternal obscurity on the edge of hell.
The First Circle: Limbo
Limbo is the resting placeofthe unbaptized andofthe virtuous pagans whowereinnocentbutdid not accept Christ. This circle ismorepeacefulthanthe others and ishometogreat ancient poets, philosophers, and heroes wholivednoble lives but were born before the advent of Christianity.
Limbo is portrayed as a gloomy but natural fortress, shrouded in twilight and devoid of the suffering inherent in the lower world. Here the soul does not experience physical pain, but rather existential punishment.
Dante places many of the great poets, philosophers, and heroes of antiquity in this circle. Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil (Dante’s guide through hell and purgatory), and others reside here. These inhabitants, celebrated for their significant contributions to human knowledge and culture, lived at a time when Christianity was not yet established and widespread.
The Void reflects Dante’s intellectual and cultural respect for antiquity, connecting Christian theology to the classical tradition. It emphasizes the complex nature of justice and divine mercy as represented by medieval Christian thought, and presents a space where honor and tragedy coexist, separated from God’s love but spared from the harsh punishments reserved for those who commit egregious transgressions against God’s law.
The Second Circle: Lust
Here, the souls of those who were overcome by lust are punished. They are forever blown about by violent storms, without hope of rest. This punishment symbolizes their lack of self-control to the winds of passion.
Upon entering the second circle, Dante meets Minos. Minos is the judge of hell, who decides the fate of souls by coiling the bodies of certain times with his tail. This image emphasizes the theme of judgment and the inevitable consequences of one’s actions.
The souls in this circle are caught in a violent storm, the fierce winds twisting and turning them in all directions. This ongoing suffering symbolizes their lack of self-control in earthly life and their inability to follow the winds of passion. Just as they allowed their actions to be dictated by their desires, so now they are forever driven by the power of the storm, with no hope of rest or respite.
The punishment for lust symbolizes the medieval understanding of sin, and the punishment in the afterlife reflects the nature of sin itself. The storms that perpetually plague lustful souls directly reflect the chaotic, aimless, and uncontrollable nature of their desires.
The Third Circle: Gluttony
The gluttons reside here, lying in a vile slush produced by ceaseless, foul, icy rain – a fitting symbol for their overindulgence in life. Cerberus, the monstrous three-headed dog, oversees their punishment.
When you enter the Third Circle, the environment is markedly different from the previous circles. It is a gloomy and disgusting environment, dominated by incessant, dirty, freezing rain pouring down from a dark, overcast sky. This incessant downpour turns the ground into a vile slush, symbolizing the debauchery and waste that results from gluttony. The perpetrators are submerged in this vile muddy water, sinking and squirming, unable to get out of the sludge that represents their excessive appetites.
This ghastly spectacle is watched by Cerberus, the monstrous dog from classical mythology, whom Dante reinterpreted as the patron god of gluttony. Cerberus represents unquenchable hunger, each of his three heads violently tearing, tormenting, and howling at the soul. Its presence reinforces the theme of gluttony and serves as a symbol of uncontrolled appetite that leads souls to destruction.
The punishment of the souls of gluttons in this circle is a direct reflection of their sins. Just as they indulged in a life of unrestricted living, they are now immersed in a disgusting mixture symbolizing the excesses and wastefulness of their gluttony. The incessant freezing rain exacerbates their suffering and represents the cold numbness of sin that robs one of the capacity for warmth and connection.
The Fourth Circle: Greed
In this circle, the avaricious and the prodigal roll weights around in opposite directions, shouting insults at one another. Their actions reflect their behavior in life – hoarding and squandering their fortunes.
In The Fourth Circle . the souls of greedy people are divided into two conflicting groups: those who have accumulated possessions and those who have squandered them. These damned souls are forced to perform the cis-priori task of forever pushing heavy weights with their chests and rolling them in different directions. Accusations of wastefulness and counter-accusations of avarice collide, illustrating the senseless conflict arising from opposing approaches to wealth.
The heavy weights symbolize the burden of their greed, both the physical wealth they have accumulated or squandered and the spiritual weight of their sin. The endless and futile struggle with this load reflects their desire for ever greater wealth and the empty pursuit of an earthly life consumed by reckless abandonment of wealth. Their punishment is a direct consequence of their life’s deeds, a vivid embodiment of the principle of contrapazo, where the nature of the crime directly determines the manner of punishment.
The knave is a mythological figure associated with wealth, guarding the fourth circle. His presence emphasizes the theme of greed and the spoiling of wealth. The interaction between the greedy and the prodigal in this circle functions as a critique of materialism and the moral bankruptcy that can result from an unbalanced relationship with wealth.
The Fifth Circle: Wrath and Sullenness
The river Styx runs through this circle, where the wrathful fight each other on the surface, and the sullen lie beneath the water, withdrawn, “singing” a gurgling hymn of despair. This punishment reflects their inner anger and passive-aggressiveness in life.
Upon reaching the Fifth Circle, Dante encounters the wrathful on the surface of the Styx. These souls are embroiled in endless, violent conflict with one another, striking, biting, and tearing at each other in a ceaseless display of fury. This tumultuous scene represents the outward manifestation of anger—uncontrollable, destructive, and self-perpetuating. The wrathful are so consumed by their rage that they continue to act out their aggression in the afterlife, unable to find peace or release from their own violent tendencies.
Beneath the surface of the river, in stark contrast, lie the sullen. These souls chose, in life, to withdraw into their bitterness, nursing their grievances in silence rather than expressing their discontent. In Hell, their punishment is to remain submerged in the Styx, their voices forever drowned out by the murky waters. They emit a continuous, gurgling chant of despair, a distorted echo of their sullen attitudes in life. This eerie hymn is symbolic of their passive-aggressive anger, internalized and never resolved, now manifesting as an eternal lament.
The river Styx itself, a classical symbol of the boundary between the living world and the underworld, here becomes a physical representation of the isolating and enveloping nature of anger. For both the wrathful and the sullen, the Styx is a prison of their own making, reflecting their inability to move beyond their anger and find peace.
The Sixth Circle: Heresy
Here, heretics are trapped in flaming tombs. This circle punishes those who disbelieved in the immortality of the soul, symbolizing the eternal death they chose by denying life after death.
Upon entering the Sixth Circle, Dante is confronted with a landscape markedly different from the preceding circles. The air is thick with the heat of open graves, where flames encase the heretics, confining them within fiery tombs. These tombs are sealed until the Final Judgment, at which point they will close forever, signifying the permanent separation of the heretics from the divine grace of God. The imagery of fire and entombment vividly reflects the heretics’ spiritual defiance and the resulting divine judgment.
The punishment of being encased in flames within tombs mirrors the heretics’ denial of the soul’s immortality. Just as they rejected the concept of a spiritual existence beyond physical death, so are they locked away from the sight of God, experiencing a form of death that mirrors their beliefs—eternal separation from the divine presence. The fiery tombs symbolize both the light of understanding that heretics rejected and the perpetual agony of being cut off from the divine source of all truth and life.
The Seventh Circle: Violence
This circle is divided into three rings for those who were violent against their neighbors, themselves, and God, nature, or art. The punishments vary from immersion in a river of boiling blood to transformation into thorny bushes eaten by Harpies.
First Ring: Violence Against Neighbors
The outermost ring is a horrific landscape where souls are immersed in a river of boiling blood, the Phlegethon, to a depth corresponding with the severity of their sins. Those who were violent against their neighbors, committing acts such as murder or tyranny, find themselves submerged in this river. Centaurs, creatures that are half-man and half-horse, patrol the banks of the Phlegethon, armed with arrows to shoot any of the damned who attempt to rise above their designated level in the boiling blood. This punishment symbolizes the bloodshed the sinners caused in life, now eternally engulfed by the blood they spilled.
Second Ring: Violence Against Oneself
The middle ring of the Seventh Circle is reserved for those who committed suicide or destroyed their own lives through substance abuse. These souls are transformed into gnarled, thorny bushes and trees. Harpies, the mythological creatures with the body of a bird and the face of a woman, feast upon these branches, causing pain both from the mutilation and the reminder of their violent acts against themselves. This ring starkly represents the violence the damned inflicted upon their own bodies, now denied human form and subjected to continuous torment.
Third Ring: Violence Against God, Nature, or Art
The innermost ring punishes those who were violent against God (blasphemers), nature (sodomites), and art (usurers). The landscape here is a desolate plain of burning sand, showered with flakes of fire raining down from the sky. Blasphemers are stretched out on the sand, sodomites wander in groups, and usurers sit hunched, all suffering under the relentless fire. This punishment reflects the sterility and destructiveness of their sins—just as they rejected the natural order and divine authority, they are now exposed to a barren, fiery wasteland that mirrors their defiance and desolation.
The Eighth Circle: Fraud
Known as Malebolge, the Eighth Circle is divided into ten bolgias or ditches, each punishing different forms of fraud. The landscape is filled with demons, who ensure that the deceitful are tormented by fittingly ironic punishments.
The Eighth Circle of Hell. Unlike the previous circles, which deal with more general categories of sin, the Eighth Circle is subdivided into ten bolgias (ditches or pouches), each designed to punish a specific form of deceit. The intricate structure of Malebolge reflects the multifaceted nature of fraud, highlighting the ingenuity and malice behind acts of deception. This circle is populated by demons, who serve as the executors of the punishments, ensuring that each sinner receives a fate befitting their crimes.
Overview of the Bolgias
Bolgia 1: Panderers and Seducers – Here, sinners are whipped by demons as they march in endless lines. This punishment reflects their manipulation of others in life, now eternally driven by force in return for their coercive deeds.
Bolgia 2: Flatterers – They are submerged in a river of excrement, symbolizing the filth of their flattery and insincere praise.
Bolgia 3: Simoniacs – These are the individuals who bought or sold ecclesiastical pardons or offices. They are planted headfirst into rock with their feet aflame, mirroring their corrupt dealings with the Church.
Bolgia 4: Diviners, Astrologers, and Magicians – Their heads are twisted backward, forcing them to walk backward for eternity. This punishment symbolizes the distortion of their attempt to see forward into the future.
Bolgia 5: Grafters – These corrupt politicians and public officials are submerged in boiling pitch, representing the sticky, hidden nature of their corruption, with demons tormenting anyone who emerges.
Bolgia 6: Hypocrites – They walk in circles, wearing heavy lead cloaks gilded on the outside, reflecting the discrepancy between their outward appearance and inner corruption.
Bolgia 7: Thieves – Serpents bind and burn them, and some are even transformed into serpents themselves. This chaos represents the thieves’ disruptive impact on the social order.
Bolgia 8: Evil Counselors – They are hidden within individual flames, symbolizing the burning nature of their deceitful advice.
Bolgia 9: Sowers of Discord – A demon continually wounds them, after which their bodies heal, only to be cut again. This mirrors their role in life, where they tore apart what should have remained whole.
Bolgia 10: Falsifiers – This includes alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, and imposters, afflicted with various diseases. Their physical decay reflects the corruption and falseness they spread.
The Ninth Circle: Treachery
The final circle is a frozen lake where traitors are imprisoned in ice, fitting their cold-hearted betrayal in life. The most famous residents include Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius, who are chewed eternally by Satan himself, trapped at the center of Hell.
Situated at the very bottom of Hell, this circle is a stark, frozen wasteland where traitors are condemned to an eternity of imprisonment within a lake of ice, known as Cocytus. The choice of ice as the medium of punishment reflects the sinners’ cold-hearted betrayals, symbolizing the chilling absence of love and the freezing over of all human warmth and compassion that treachery entails.
This final circle is divided into four concentric rings or zones, each named after a figure emblematic of the type of betrayal it punishes:
Caina – Named after Cain, who murdered his brother Abel, this zone punishes traitors to their kin. The damned are trapped up to their necks in the ice, unable to move, their faces twisted by the bitter cold.
Antenora – Named after Antenor of Troy, who was believed to have betrayed his city to the Greeks, this area is for those who betrayed their country or party. These souls are also encased in ice, but unlike in Caina, they may bend their necks, symbolizing the slightly less personal nature of their betrayal.
Ptolomea – Named after Ptolemy, who invited guests to a banquet only to kill them, violating the sacred bond of hospitality. Here, traitors to guests and hosts are immersed so that only half their faces are above the ice. They cannot weep for their tears freeze, sealing their eyes shut.
Judecca – Named after Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, this innermost zone punishes traitors to their lords and benefactors. The souls are completely encased in ice, contorted and immobilized, the most severe form of punishment for the most grievous betrayal.
At the center of Cocytus, and thus the very center of Hell, resides Satan, a monstrous figure with three faces, each chewing on a notable traitor. Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Christ, is in the most prominent position, suffering the greatest punishment as he is chewed headfirst by Satan’s central mouth. Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Julius Caesar, symbolize political betrayal and are chewed eternally in the left and right mouths, respectively. Satan himself is trapped in the ice, flapping his great wings in a futile attempt to escape, which only serves to freeze him further in place, illustrating the self-defeating nature of treachery.