Hell is presented as a cone-shaped chasm located beneath Jerusalem that formed as a result of Lucifer’s Fall from Heaven after his rebellion against God. Divided into nine circles and preceded by an ante-hell containing the neutrals, this is where the damned will remain for eternity, the sin and punishment worsening the further they are down the pit. The moral system of hell, illustrated by Virgil in Inf. XI, is derived mainly from Aristotele’s Etica Nicomachea. After Limbo, the place of the righteous who died without baptism, circles II to V contain the incontinent, namely, the lascivious, gluttons, avaricious and prodigal, wrathful and resentful. The sixth circle, set in the city of Dis, punishes the heretics, who were not included in Aristotle’s scheme. The violent occupy the seventh circle, divided into three rounds: those violent against others (murderers, cut-throats, plunderers), against themselves (those who committed suicide and spendthrifts), against God, nature and art (blasphemers, sodomites, usurers). The eighth and ninth circles, separate by the well of the Giants, are for the fraudulent, who caused greater offence to God because they made distorted use of reason, a gift reserved for human beings alone. The eighth circle is divided into nine bolgias, and is the place of punishment for those who tricked those who had no reason to trust them. In the ninth circle, clamped in the icy lake of Cocytus, are those who were fraudulent towards people who trusted them, subdivided into four concentric zones (Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea and Judecca), for traitors to family, country, guests and benefactors respectively. At the bottom, crushed in Lucifer’s three mouths, are Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Caesar, emblem of the Empire, and Judas, who betrayed Christ. In the various rounds, alongside the sinners who are subjected to the law of contrapasso which operates on the basis of analogy or contrast between sin and punishment, there are numerous mythological monsters acting as guards.
Inferno
