Dante's Divine Comedy

• 1. How are the guardians of the Sixth Circle symbolically appropriate?

The Fallen Angels who guard this circle denied the power of God as the heretics defy the doctrines of the Church which elucidate God’s will. Both are in rebellion against God.

When Christ descended into Hell, these are the devils who resisted Him – unsuccessfully.

What is the significance of the Gate of Dis being made of iron?

Its iron gate corresponds to the Iron Age of mythology during which men fell into violent and deceptive practices. This is appropriate since those sins punished within the walls of Dis are those of violence and fraud.

What is the symbolic significance of Virgil’s inability to overcome the guardians alone?

THE FALLEN ANGELS are symbolically appropriate guardians of the Sixth Circle since they operate by both violence and fraud. Further, they are the first heretics in that they refused to believe that God was omnipotent. In fact, they once tried to prevent Christ from entering Hell at the first Gate (see Canto IV); of course, they failed.

The details about Virgil and Dante illustrate that the sins from this point onward cannot be overcome by human reason alone.

• 2. How do you interpret lines 1-3?

Dante is afraid – according to his own words, cowardly: having “That hue of cowardice which blanched /upon my countenance when I saw my leader turn.” He perceives fear in Virgil’s face, too, as his guide abruptly turns back toward him when the Fallen Angels depart behind the walls, though Virgil attempts to change his facial response: “I saw my leader turn, all the more swiftly checked it in his own.”

What is Virgil looking for in lines 4-6?

Though it is so dark, he strains to look for the help coming from on high.

Lines 7-9?

He seems to be saying, “we must win this fight unless (I did not understand what Beatrice told me) . . . No what she said must be true; but I wish the promised help from heaven would get here.”

Mark Musa: “because during his lifetime [Virgil] could not believe in the coming of Christ, so now he cannot believe in the coming of the angel – in spite of his having learned from Beatrice that the pilgrim’s journey is willed in Heaven.” In other words, Virgil, condemned to hell from not having faith, repeats that error even now.

Lines 10-15?

Dante thinks that Virgil may be afraid that they will be left in hell, in which case Dante would perish.

• 3. What does Dante’s question in lines 16-18 reveal about his state of mind and about his concern for his guide?

It seems that Dante wants to know what qualifies Virgil to be his guide. Has he made this journey before?

Does Virgil’s reply echo any similar account in the Old Testament?

Though Dante has created Virgil’s response with no story earlier told about Virgil, the idea of conjuring someone from the dead in order to overcome an enemy appears in 1 Samuel 28:3-25. There Saul asks the Witch of Endor to summon the spirit of Samuel from among the dead to learn how to deal with Philistines.

Though Virgil’s response, which explains that he once before made the journey all the way to the bottom of the pit of Hell, may offer some reassurance to Dante, Saul gained no encouragement from Samuel who tells Saul that God has departed from him. [Boccaccio was the first to offer this comparison.]

[Virgil’s story may be inspired by Lucan’s account in his Pharsalia of the Thessalian witch who summons the soul of a dead soldier at the behest of Sextus Pompeius to learn the outcome of the war between Caesar and Antony on one hand and the co-conspirators who assassinated Julius Caesar on the other. This episode may also be the source of the ability to see the future attributed to the souls Hell.]

• 4. The tercet constituted by lines 31-33 offers a) a powerful olfactory image, b) a geographical (hellographical, if you prefer) observation, and a line that has had seven centuries of critics trying to puzzle out its meaning. Explain each one, including its significance to the narrative.

The olfactory image is the exhalation of stinking odors from the Styx. This kind of imagery occurs frequently in the Inferno. Here it emphasizes the moral offensiveness of wrath in both its forms: anger externalized and anger internalized.

The Styx encircles Dis, serving as a kind of moat for the city. Indeed, Dante and Virgil required Phlegyas’s assistance with his boat to approach the walls of Dis. In addition, we learn a new epithet of Lower Hell: “city of woe.”

Though interpretations of line 33 abound, two seem preeminent. First, championed by Bocaccio, is that “ira” should be understood as referring to the righteous anger of the forces of God – namely, the angel who is now approaching rather than the wrath the travelers will encounter in the forces defending the City of Dis.

Alternatively, some interpret “ira” as the righteous wrath Dante and Virgil must employ in order to enter the city (the viewpoint of most of the early commentators).

• 5. Consider lines 34-54. Dis seems to have four other guardians in addition to the Fallen Angels: one seen as a group, the other as a single entity. Describe them and explain how they contribute to the sins that lie within the walls of Dis. Explain the symbolism of the Furies.

Mythology presents the first three as the Furies or Erinyes (but also called the Eumenides by the playwright Aeschylus). In the Aeneid, they punish “crimes of blood. Aeschylus presents them as hounding murderers, especially murderers of relatives. In either case, they are “stained in blood” and “gartered with greenest hydras round their waists.” While confronting Dante and Virgil, they claw their chests with their nails, beat their breasts with their palms, and shriek loud enough to make Dante flinch.

As punishers of “crimes of blood,” they relate to the sins of violence, especially of violence against their neighbors.

They symbolize a guilty conscience—as they did in the Oresteia. They are embodiments of the haunting memory of realization of a bad or evil action.

In Greek mythology, Megara punished jealousy and betrayal, Alecto anger and betrayal, Tisiphone murderers. For Dante, they connect to the sins of violence against others and betrayal, punished in the Ninth Circle.

Explain the symbolism of the Medusa’s head.

The Furies bring out Medusa’s head to threaten Dante. As a victim of rape (by Neptune), she connects to the sins of violence and fraud that lie beyond the walls of Dis. Because of her power, she may symbolize despair, the opposite of hope and a denial of God’s merciful grace. Some interpret her as a symbol of heresy and others of the hardened will.

• 6. Lines 61-63 constitute the third apostrophe we have encountered. How do you interpret it. WARNING: Critics have argued about this since the time the Comedy first appeared.

This is an OPEN QUESTION. Iannucci interprets it as referring to the whole scene before the Walls of Dis and its parallelism to the Harrowing of Hell recast in a synthesis with Virgil’s account of Aeneas’s approach to Tartarus in the Aeneid. It also calls the reader to interpret the whole scene allegorically.

• 7. Consider lines 73-90. An epic simile runs from line 64-72. What is being compared in it?

The coming of the Heavenly Messenger is compared to the effects of a “headstrong gale.”

Do you find anything remarkable in lines 67-68, given that they were writing the Thirteenth Century?

Dante has accurately stated the science behind strong winds.

Another epic simile runs from line 75-80. What is being compared in it?

The fleeing of the souls in the Styx as the Heavenly Messenger approaches is compared to the fleeing of frogs from water that a snake has just entered. (Or, perhaps, those fleeing are the Fallen Angels themselves who recall Michael’s victory over them in the War in Heaven,)

What allusion to Christ does Dante incorporate into his description of the Heavenly Messenger? (line 81)

He “passed the waters of the Styx, dry shod,” evoking Christ walking on water.

Considering the Messenger’s mission, what identity among the angels might reasonably be attributed to him?

Since Michael leads God’s host against Satan and the Rebellious Angels in the War in Heaven (Revelation 12:7-9) and since the Messenger’s task is to face down those angels once again, it seems possible – even probable – that the Messenger is the archangel, Michael.

Still focusing on the Heavenly Messenger, what previous event first mentioned in Canto IV does his address to the Fallen Angels and his opening the Gate of Dis with virtually no effort recall?

The Harrowing of Hell

• 6. Describe the terrain and denizens of the Sixth Circle.

Dante sees a stretching plain filled with sarcophagi containing the souls of those who subscribed to various heresies suffering “the cruelest punishments and pain.” In an epic simile, he compares the site to two ancient Roman cemeteries. “Flames were sown among those open graves and fired them to so great a temperature that iron forged red-hot requires no more” but the degree of the heat varies according to the heresy. The slabs that should cover the sarcophagi are all open so that the lamentations from the souls inside are clearly heard. Every heretical sect has its own sarcophagus, so they are packed together within.

7. What do you make of line 132, given that hitherto the pair have always turned to the left in their spiral of descent?