Headscratchers / The Divine Comedy

• If God is sincerely more love than Eldritch Abomination, and not trolling, why not destroy the souls of the damned and be done with it? It is a sham to have had such disgustingly vivid punishments happen for any finite time. Why stretch things out infinitely? A loving owner of a dog dying in agony would put their pet out of their misery.
  • Dante would probably be accused of heresy if he said Hell doesn't exist.
  • The Divine Comedy is a 700-year-old allegory about the soul's journey towards God, and Inferno is specifically an allegory for the soul learning to reject sin and its consequences. (Purgatorio and Paradiso are allegories for repenting from sin and journeying towards God, respectively.)
• Since Hell has a finite size, what happens if some section of it gets too full for anymore souls to fit in it?
  • The demons expand it?
  • It's physically underground. They just need to dig out some more space. Like a game of Dungeon Keeper without a map size limit.
  • Remembering that in the Heretics circle it's mentioned that each sarcophagus can contain an incredible amount of souls, it's safe to assume that it can keep as many souls as necessary.
  • The population is culled by angels periodically?
• Something I've seen mentioned in several commentaries and the like: In the Inferno part: being gay is considered a lot worse than just being lustful, as the lustful are in the 2nd circle and the gays are in the 3rd part of the 7th. When we get to the Purgatory part, there's also a place where excessively lustful people are punished, but here gay and straight people guilty of this have the exact same punishment in the exact same place. So, did Dante just change his mind midway through?
  • It appears that Purgatory’s structure is based on the vices per se rather than their results. Therefore, for example, there are no separate Purgatory terraces for violence, simony, theft, fraud, treachery etc., and souls who in Hell would have been in different places are grouped together here. The lustful are those who perverted God’s commandment of loving others, and here in Purgatory it doesn't matter that much which gender said "others" belonged to (the only difference between the punishment for the gay and the straight lustful appears to be the examples of lust they have to bear in mind — Sodom and Pasiphae respectively).
  • Sodomy doesn't necessarily mean gay sex; it just refers to any sex act that doesn't involve a penis going inside of a vagina. It also includes things like anal and oral sex, and thus there would also be straight people being punished here.
    • I'd also like to add that some people have pointed out that pederasty (sexual activity between an adult man and a boy) was common in Florence during Dante's time. And these same people have argued that the Florentine sodomites are actually in hell for being pedophiles, NOT for being gay. (So saying that these pedophiles are in hell for being gay and not for being pedophiles has some really bad implications.)
    • This, along with the fact that only the sins of incontinence have terraces on purgatory, forces the reader to contrast sodomy from homosexuality (see above). There is a terrace for lust and it has both straight and gay couples, but there is no terrace for violence, let alone sodomy. Therefore, it can be concluded that sodomy isn't the same thing as homosexuality; rather, it is something worse.
• Something I never got. Why, in Inferno, are there numerous characters from Greek Mythology, along with a few fictional characters, in Hell right along with people who really existed? And why don't the people in Hell find anything odd about this? (Imagine if you went to Hell and found, say The Joker down there with you. Wouldn't you say something like "What the..? You're real??" or something like that?)
  • Author Appeal, not to mention Greek Mythology is considered the home of creativity, comedy and tragedy. Dante, a poet and most well known fanfiction writer, would love to include things he like and not make anyone question it.
    • There is actually some Fridge Brilliance involved as to why Greek mythological figures are only seen in hell. They aren't in heaven because they are pagan.
  • Also, I don't know if this is just me, but I don't think I would be particularly bothered by someone being real or not if I was at the receiving end of any of the tortures in Hell
  • The answer is actually pretty simple, but requires a bit of complicated explanation. So the Papal State and the Holy Roman Empire viewed themselves as a continuation of the Roman Empire (that's why it's called the Holy Roman Empire despite it generally being based somewhere in what is now Germany). Meanwhile the Roman Empire (and the Roman Republic which came before it) viewed itself as a continuation of Classical Greece (also called Hellenistic Greece) which in turn viewed itself as a continuation of Ancient Greece (Mycanean Greece) in which the Iliad and Odyssey take place. Now the catch here is that the Romans (and by extension, the people of Italy) believed they were the descendants of the Trojans who escaped the Sack of Troy at the end of the Trojan war (See The Aeneid for more on that). Hell, Virgil, Dante's guide through the Inferno, is the author of The Aeneid. Anyway, the writer being an Florentine (Italy wasn't actually a thing yet. It wouldn't be for several centuries) who believes he is descended from the Trojans means that the Greek heroes who destroyed it are automatically going to be put in hell by the author. This is also why Diomedes and Ulysses (Odysseus) are in the Eighth Circle as opposed to a a lesser hell. They were the ones that came up with the Trojan Horse that got the Greeks inside Troy's walls.
    • tldr: Dante had a historical hate boner for the Greek characters in the Trojan Cycle because they beat up his theoretical ancestors
• So everyone who told Julius Caesar to go invade Rome and turn it into a Dictatorship are all in the deeper pits of Hell... But Julius Caesar himself is only in Purgatory? Especially considering Treason is the worst Crime according to Dante, and Caesar's actions were clearly a form of Treason...
  • Dante's nationalism is in play here. Dante is Italian, and loved his Roman heritage.
  • Sadly, you both misread the part about Julius Caesar. First, his soul resides in Limbo because of his pagan beliefs. Second, Dante praised him for having turned Rome into an ideal State which would have eventually unified the known world's mankind. That's also the reason why Brutus and Cassius are chewed so viciously by Satan: according to Dante, they deliberately murdered Caesar out of personal gain with no regard to the benefits his rulership would have brought. The idea of them freeing Rome from Caesar's lust for power emerged long after the end of the Middle Ages.
    • I'm not talking about Brutus and Cassius, I'm talking about Curio who told Caeser to cross the Rubicon and start the Roman Civil War that would lead to Caeser's takeover. He's in the 8th Circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno for being a sower of Discord (there's also Aruns whose prophecy helped Caeser win but their in the 8th circle for Sorcery). And regardless of what Dante believed of Rome and Caeser, according to him, sin is sin and must be punished, and being a Traitor is worse then being a pagan and thus Caeser should be down there, not in Limbo. After all, if Rome were meant to be a dictatorship under Caeser, Rome would've always been a dictatorship, and the Caeser's would've been legitimate successors instead of having to take over without a civil war.
    • Many Medieval Europeans were nostalgic for Rome because Europe experienced a decline after the Roman Empire collapsed, and would not pick up again until the start of the colonial period. The mainstream idea at the time was that Julius Caesar was a rightful leader and that Brutus and Cassius were traitors. There were others involved with Julius Caesar's assassination, but they were largely ignored until later. The modern historical revisionist interpretation is that Julius Caesar was a dictator and that assassinating him was the only way to stop his overreach of power.
• The example Blasphemer is a guy from Greek Mythology who blasphemed against Zeus. Why would the Christian God care if someone blasphemes against a (presumably non-existent) pagan god?
  • As it’s not exactly the Ancient Greeks’ fault they didn’t know Christianity, as they lived long before Christ and had relatively little to do with Israel, I think the point is that they should have kept and respected their faith – it was false, but it was better than nothing. It’s like that with all non-Christian religions in the Comedy: Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law, is condemned in the ninth bolgia of the eighth circle for creating a schism in Islam (even though right next to him is Muhammad for creating Islam in the first place), and Saladin (though he actually fought Christians) is more or less okay in Limbo.
• What are the various monsters from Greek Mythology in Hell really supposed to be? Some kind of fallen angels/demons that have been turned into monsters as punishment?
  • It's possible. Some of these Greek mythological figures, such as Charon and Cerberus, are explicitly referred to as demons.
• Treachery against one’s kin condemns one to Caina, but Paolo Malatesta, who had an affair with his brother’s wife (betraying his own wife in addition to that), is much higher up in the second circle (Francesca might not count – it depends on whether one includes kin by marriage in the definition). Yes, Giovanni Malatesta who killed them will go to Caina, but we later see it’s perfectly possible for murderer and victim to end up in the same place (Branca Doria is in the ninth circle and his victim Michel Zanche is just barely above him in the Malebolge, while Ugolino and Ruggieri are frozen right next to each other). Maybe Dante implies that Paolo and Francesca are given a little reprieve because her marriage was purely political and loveless?
  • The implication seems to be you have to murder someone close to you, or cause it to happen (all of the traitors we learn about killed people, or caused their country/faction/whatever to get defeated badly, for the people in Antenora),So simple infidelity isn't enough to put you in the Ninth Circle.
• In Hell there are some areas that seem rather dangerous to the living, such as the river of boiling blood and the desert where it rains fire in the Seventh Circle, as well as the freezing cold in the Ninth. How is Dante in there so safely? Is the implication supposed to be that God made him invincible? And if so, why is he scared of some of the monsters in Hell, such as the Malebranche devils and the giants?
  • Dante mentions that the vapour coming out of the Phlegeton forms a shield which blocks the flames from reaching Dante and Virgilio. As for the monsters, it's for one of these three reasons: Virgil steps in and calms them down (Charon, Minos, Cerberus, the Minotaur), the monsters are rendered powerless (the Furies, the Malebranche and Ephialtes, who can't oppose divine will) or they just don't notice them at all (Satan).
  • In Canto II of Inferno, Virgil tells Dante that Virgin Mary, St. Lucia, and Beatrice will protect him while they travel through hell. They probably had some supernatural method to protect Dante's body so that he wouldn't get physically harmed by any of those dangerous things in hell. (Either that, or I'm just overanalyzing things.) Also to be completely honest, Dante's version of hell (ESPECIALLY once you get to the City of Dis) would be absolutely terrifying in real life, so realistically I wouldn't blame him for being scared (I know for certain I would be scared too). (Fortunately, it's only an allegory so therefore it's 100% fictional and not something to worry about.)
• In Purgatorio it's revealed that repenting with your literal last breath means you go to Purgatory instead of Hell. That said, why does Dante assume Ugolino didn't repent? He was trapped in the tower for days before he starved and would have to know he was going to die. It's hard to believe he didn't think to repent the whole time (unless he didn't believe in Hell, which he have no reason to believe.) They also meet someone in Purgatory who died violently before she could repent but was giving a last chance to do so and avoid Hell. Considering Francesca and Paolo died violently, are we supposed to believe they got a chance to repent as well but said no and went to Hell?
  • It looks like yes, in Dante's opinion, Ugolino didn't repent despite everything he went through. As for those who died by violence, it's not dying before they could repent (one can't repent after death), it's dying before giving proper fruit of repentance (good works etc.) and/or without receiving the Sacrament. Those in Purgatory who died by violence all died in a properly virtuous state: even Buonconte repented in his earthly life, though it was his life's last minute. Paolo and Francesca, however, were killed midway through, ahem, committing the sin of lust. It's the same logic as applied by Hamlet when he decides to wait until his uncle is completely unprepared for death and then slay him, to make sure he doesn't go to Heaven.
• Why is Usury (a financial crime and method of fraud) in the Seventh Circle (Violence) instead of one of the Malebolge?
  • Virgil explains in the tenth Canto that usury is to consider a violence against nature. What Dante calls usurers are what we today call capitalists: they get their money by using money they already have, subverting the nature of work itself, which is based (in Dante's worldview) on the concrete results of a work (for example, you get money as a tailor by selling the clothes you made).
  • The book describes Usury as an act of violence against the economy, or something along those lines. They are the people in the Seventh Circle closest to the entrance to the Eighth, which is probably not a coincidence.
  • Usury is violence against art. Just like how blasphemy is violence against God and sodomy is blasphemy against nature. Dante called nature the child of God and art the grandchild of God. That is why all three of them are punished in the same area.
• Why does the giant Nimrod have a trumpet with him? He's from The Bible originally, so does it explain there?
  • It's a hunting horn. Nimrod was the Biblical prototype of the Egomaniac Hunter (if you're US-American, think of that old Bugs Bunny Nimrod joke from the 40's).
  • The horn is specifically a reference to Genesis 10:9, where Nimrod was referred to as "a mighty hunter before the Lord".
• If the punishments are supposed to get worse as you go down the Circles of Hell, why does it sometimes not seem like it? Being trapped in a burning hot coffin or getting boiled in blood sounds way worse than being stuck in a pit full of shit or having one's head on backwards.
  • The further a soul is from God, the more it suffers. What the damned physically feel is only part of the torment they endure.
    • Limbo could not be further away, yet no suffers there.
    • Limbo is only the first circle of hell. Its only punishment is that all of its inhabitants spend all of eternity grieving the lack of God's presence.
  • The thing is that not only do sorcerers have their heads twisted backwards, it also causes them immense pain which makes them cry until they are blind and then the tears drip on their asscheeks.
• Why are EvilSorcerers and the like put in the fraud section of Hell? Is the implication supposed to be that Dante thought magic was fake and they were just fooling people to obtain fame and money?
  • That and the fact they wanted to fool divine will by pretending to predict the future (soothsayers) or shape nature on their whim (sorcerers in sensu stricto).
• Why is alchemy considered fraud? Did Dante think it was impossible, and that the "alchemists" were really just ripping people off by pretending they could turn iron into gold or whatever?
  • Neither. Alchemy was a recognized science in the Middle Ages, but, just like modern pseudosciences, some people exploited their customer's ignorance to sell useless concoctions, superpowers or plain "fool's gold".
• Why is Epicurus in the Sixth Circle (heretics) rather than Limbo? He died hundreds of years before Christianity even existed, so how can he be a heretic?
  • It has to do with atheism and the denial of an afterlife, rather than general Christian heresies. This is why their punishment is to be trapped in burning graves, rendering them effectively dead. So with that being said, there don't seem to be any atheists in Limbo (all of the people Dante encountered in Limbo were followers of some sort of non-Christian religion; most of them were pagans but a few Muslims were also included). This is evident with the line about Epicurus and his followers "[w]ho with the body mortal make the soul", and Epicureanism rejects the existence of supernatural forces. This worldview directly opposes Christianity, and another important thing to remember is back during this time period, being an atheist was considered a VERY bad thing.
• Why is King Minos (who is basically a demon lord) in charge of judging the damned? Isn't God supposed to be the one who does that?
  • I don't know why exactly, but it's a reference to how he was one of the judges of Hades in the original Greek myths. Maybe God appointed him to judge the damned, as certain other Greek mythological characters (such as Cerberus and the centaurs) appear as staff members in hell. The implication is that they were real and they went to hell after they died, but not as punishment (aka not in the same way damned souls are).
• We do know that some traitors (namely those who betray guests) go to the ninth circle before dying and then have their body taken over by a demon. Can other traitors (family, country, and benefactors) have this same fate, or is this unique to Ptolomea?
  • Probably not for the first two kinds of traitors (against family and country) since Dante considered them less severe sins. As for traitors against benefactors, probably yes since Dante considered them even worse. As they are all trapped beneath the ice he obviously can't ask them.
    • (Yeah I know we're talking about a 700-year-old work of fiction but I actually understand the logic behind the way Dante ordered the different levels of treachery. Family = involuntary and equal, country = involuntary and unequal, guests = voluntary and equal, and benefactors = voluntary and unequal.)
• Were heaven and hell planned out beforehand or were they just made the way they are as people died and went to the afterlife? And how and why was purgatory chosen to be on that mountain? Also what will become of Earth and the purgatory mountain after the end of time? (Or am I overthinking everything, due to the fact that The Divine Comedy itself is just an allegory?) I mean, it is already known that heaven always existed and that hell and purgatory formed when Satan fell. Were things just kind of improvised on as more people died?
• Will Satan eventually figure out that Cocytus could thaw out and he could escape if he stopped flapping his wings, or is he too stupid to realize that?
• Can heaven get crowded, or does it have an infinite size?
• How does heresy fit in with Dante's whole philosophy of sin? Virgil explains at one point that there are three kinds of sin: incontinence (weakness, not Potty Failure), violence, and fraud. It doesn't seem to fit into any of those categories. Going by the circle it's in (6) he seems to have considered it worse than incontinence, but not as bad as violence and fraud, but that still doesn't explain it.
  • I have heard alternate explanations that list the sins as incontinence, malice, and fraud/bestiality (as in savagery, not sex acts with animals). This explanation makes more sense imo, since it includes a clear category for heresy (incontinence = lust, gluttony, greed, and wrath/sullenness, malice = heresy and violence, bestiality = fraud and treachery; also note that limbo isn't included here because it is not Hell Proper).
• When the Malebranche devils are chasing Dante and Virgil why do they give up after they cross into the next bolgia? they have wings, so why can't they just fly over?
  • Either divine forces prevented the Malebranche from attacking Dante and Virgil, or they were too preoccupied with their job with keeping corrupt politicians in the boiling pitch.
• How do the Malebranche devils patrol the entire 5th bolgia? At one point we are told that the 10th bolgia is about 11 miles in circumference (which would be about 3 and a half miles in diameter), and that the 9th Bolgia is twice that size. Extrapolating from that the 5th bolgia is 112 miles across, about the size of a small sea. How are only 12 devils supposed to guard the whole thing? There could be thousands more "off camera", but nothing in the poem even hints at this.
  • It's actually the diameter, not the circumference. This means that the ninth bolgia is 22 miles across, and the fifth bolgia is 66 miles across. The first bolgia is 110 miles across, and each descending one is 11 miles smaller.
• Minor headscratcher, but in Canto 32 there's a line when Dante first enters Antenora there's a line about him seeing "a thousand faces made doglike by the cold" What does "doglike" mean in this context? Some translations say "purple" instead, which makes more sense (as frostbite does sometimes make skin turn purple), but the original italian word is "Cagnazzi", which does indeed mean "doglike", so the question remains.
  • I checked the online Treccani dictionary. It turns out this is indeed an archaic word for "purple" and it originally had the meaning of "dog-looking", namely "beastly, hideous".
• What makes somebody end up in the fourth circle of hell as a spendthrift being forced to push boulders out of the circle vs end up in the seventh circle of hell as violent against their possessions being chased by black dogs? What is the difference between the two?
  • The implication seems to be that the people in the seventh circle deliberately ruined their lives and wasted all their money (as it's for the violent against self, after all), whereas the people in the fourth are more guilty of succumbing to to the temptation of greed (since circles 2-5 are incontinence).
• What happens if someone who goes to Purgatory is guilty of all seven of the Seven Deadly Sins? Do they have to spend a part of their sentence on each seperate terrace or what?
  • They'll just have to go through all seven terraces in order.
• Does Satan have no choice but to chew on Brutus, Cassius, and Judas? Or could he spit them out if he wanted? Granted, he probably wouldn't want to, since then he doesn't have someone to take out his frustration on. Relatedly, did Satan have three heads before he became evil?
  • Dante only chose Judas, Brutus, and Cassius because he personally believed they were the three worst people to ever exist (although these are odd choices for modern readers). Judas because he betrayed Jesus, and Brutus and Cassius because they assassinated Caesar (Dante LOVED Rome, just in case you couldn't tell already). Also Satan doesn't have three heads; he actually only has one head with three faces. This, along with his three pairs of wings, is supposed to be a mockery of the Trinity because he was cast out of heaven for trying to overthrow God. Who knows? He most likely always had three faces and six wings.
• Why do the neutral people get punished so severely (as in, it's implied they have it even worse than the people in Hell)? Wouldn't it make more sense for there to be some kind of medium place for them? Or maybe just put them in Limbo, as that's already the mediocre afterlife in the poem.
  • Consider the historical context. The Divine Comedy was written during the war between the Black and White Guelphs. Also the difference between Limbo and the Vestibule is that Limbo is for good people who were never cleansed of the original sin, while the Vestibule is for people who did absolutely nothing in life. The former is the least severe part of hell (their only punishment is that they grieve the fact that they are forever denied of God's presence). While the latter consists of those who were rejected by heaven and rejected by hell. Because these people stood for nothing in life, they are forced to spend all of eternity chasing after nothing in one tiny area.
    • Some modern examples of this would be quotes like "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.", "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.", and "If nine people sit down at a table with one Nazi without protest, there are ten Nazis at the table". While all of these quotes concern modern concepts that didn't exist in Dante's time, these sentiments are similar to the ones behind the Vestibule's entire existence.
• Is Cerberus really called The Great Worm in the poem? and if so, why is that?
  • Italian here. Cerberus is called “Il grande vermo” (the great worm) to point out his monstrous nature. A modern paraphrase of the poem “translates” this part as “Cerbero, il grande animale mostruoso” (Cerberus, the big monstrous animal)
• What is the logic behind the order of the circles of incontinence (2-5)? Ok, wrath is closest to violence (the next category of sin), so it kind of make sense it would be considered the worst, but why is lust considered the least bad? and why is greed considered worse than gluttony (given that it's one circle down)?
  • This specific ordering, along with the way purgatory is structured, is based off of how some theologians at the time organized the Seven Deadly Sins from least to most serious. Pride was considered to be the worst of the serious because it was the first sin ever committed and was specifically committed by Satan, while lust was the least serious of the seven because it was considered to be a form of corrupted love which was a natural function as well as being the only sin that animals can also commit.
• Why is Caiaphas in the bolgia for hypocrites and not the one for evil counselors? He's in Hell for talking Pontius Pilate into crucifying Jesus, which seems to fit "evil counsel" to a tee.
• Why do most of the fallen angels seem to live in the Sixth Circle? They are all guilty of the same sin as Satan himself (betraying God), so why aren't they in Judecca along with him?
  • Not only is Satan is in Judecca, but his fall created the hole in Earth that became hell. He is the ultimate traitor because he was first sinner, and he specifically committed the ultimate sin: treachery against God. Also it is possible that the reason many of the fallen angels guard the walls of Dis is related to the fact that the City of Dis itself symbolizes the point where sins stop being the result of incontinence and start being the result of malice and fraud.

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