Dante's Inferno, Cantos XXX thru XXXIV

Continuing on with the summary of Dante's Inferno.  First installment was here. Second installment here. Third installment here.  Fourth installment here.  Fifth installment here.  

The pilgrims continue on in the 10^th bolge of the Malebolge, where the sinners of counterfeiters reside, their flesh and bowels rotting away as they caused the body of society to rot.  They are still standing beside Griffolino and Capocchio, when suddenly another sinner, Gianni Schicchi, who impersonated a dead man to alter the real dead man’s will, grasped Capocchio, sunk his teeth in him, and dragged him away.  The pilgrims then encounter a man bloated with dropsy, Master Adam, a counterfeiter of the Florin, who now wishes to just have a drop of water.  He identifies the wretches who are about, speaking disparagingly of them, especially of Sinon, the Greek, who faked surrender to the Trojans so that he could persuade them to take in the Trojan Horse.  Sinon, insulted, strikes Master Adam, who strikes back and the two engage in slapstick violence on each other.  (Canto XXX)

The pilgrims proceed out of the Malebolge into a sort of interspace before reaching the pit of Cocytus where they hear a horn blast.  What at first appear to be towers of a city surrounding the pit are in fact a series of giants that protect it.  The first of the giants they pass is Nimrod, who tradition holds was the builder of the Tower of Babel and responsible for variety of the languages across the earth.  He can neither understand what you say nor speak coherently, but he does have a horn hanging from his neck.  Next is the giant Ephialtes, who joined in the attack to depose the Greek gods.  He is bound in chains.  Finally they arrive at Antaeus, who had faught and lost to Hercules, and Virgil conjures him to lift and place them down to the floor of Cocytus.  The two pilgrims holding on to each other are taken in the Giant’s hand and placed down below.  (Canto XXXI)

Dante has a look about him on Cocytus and finds a frozen world where souls are embedded in ice to the head.  Cocytus is divided into four parts but without any demarcation between them.  The souls are just in a different position to indicate four gradations of treachery.  The first is Caina, named after Cain, the killer of his brother Able.  This section is reserved for those that were treacherous against their family.  In Caina the sinners heads are tilted downward, and so the tears from their eyes freeze against the ground and lock their heads into a fixed position.  He comes across the Alberti brothers who in life were of opposite political parties, and killed each other.  He meets Camiciaone de’ Pazzi, who, treacherous in life, treacherously identifies several souls.  The then pilgrims cross over Antenora, the next section, named after the Trojan traitor Antenor, the place where traitors of homeland reside.  Here Dante stubs his foot against a soul and asks him who he is.  The soul refuses to answer but because he has mentioned the Battle of Monteparti, Dante tries to force him to squeal by pulling his hair out.  The screams from the soul cause a ruckus in which neighboring souls identify him as Bocca degli Abati, the Guelph who cooperated to give the Ghibellines the victory.  In retaliation, Bocca identifies all the other souls.  Finally the pilgrims see two souls frozen together, one gnawing on the brain of the other.  (Canto XXXII)

The soul gnawing on the brain of the other stops to tell his tale, wiping his mouth clean on the other’s hair.  He is Count Ugolino and the  other is Archbishop Ruggieri.  Ugolino had been a Pisan Ghibelline, but betrayed them by joining up with the Archbishop who was a Guelph.  Then in turn the two betrayed another Guelph Nino Visconti.  Finally the Archbishop betrayed Ugolino by locking him and his four sons in a tower and nailing the door shut so that they would starve to death.  Ugolino tells of the most piteous tale of how his four children offered themselves to be eaten to save the father.  But they all died.  With that Ugolino returns to gnawing on the Archbishop’s head.  The pilgrims move on to the third section of Cocytus, Ptolomea, the place where those who were treacherous to their guests reside, and where the souls heads are facing upward, so the tears freeze in a pool that shuts their eyes.  They meet Fra Alberigo, another friar from the Jovial Order, Alberigo had invited two of his relatives who he had had a dispute for dinner and had them slaughtered.  But Dante is surprised because he knows of Alberigo still to be alive.  Just when you might have thought Dante had run out of ideas, Alberigo explains that those that commit this heinous sin sometimes have their soul stripped out of their living body and sent to hell while their body lives on with a demon in it.  (Canto XXXIII)

The pilgrims advance to the final section of Cocytus, Judecca, named after Judas Iscariot, for those that betrayed just lords.  Virgil announces it by sardonically misquoting the Vexilla regis by stating the standards of the king of Hell advance.  “Behold Dis,’ he parodies the Ecco homo and Dante beholds Satan who is 2000 feet high, has three heads (a red, a yellow, and a black) each with a sinner in its mouth, Judas Isacriot and on each side the two Romans who betrayed Julius Ceasar, Brutus and Cassius.  Satan has six bat-like wings on his body impotently trying to gather flight but unable, and causing the wind that freezes Cocytus.  The souls in Judecca are completely submerged and frozen in place, so there is no way to identify anyone else.  Virgil says it is time to go, and so climbing down Satan, and being inverted when they reach his mid point, they enter a crevice in the rock (or is it ice?) that leads them out.  When they were inverted it meant they had passed to the southern hemisphere, where Dante imagines the gravity to have changed direction.  Through the underground passage they reach the exit and can now once again see the beauty of the stars.  (Canto XXXIV)