Depiction Of Nine Circles Of Hell In The Divine Comedy By Dante Alighieri

There are many religions that believe that there is an afterlife. After they die, they either go to heaven or hell. In the first book of The Divine Comedy, Inferno, written by Dante Alighieri, Dante believes that there are nine circles of hell. You will get placed into a certain circle depending on how bad your sin is. The higher, you are in hell, the severity of the punishment decreases. The deeper you are in hell, the severity of your punishment increases. Dante expresses his thought of how the afterlife works through the form of an epic poem. In the Inferno, Dante claims that there are nine circles of hell. You will get placed on a certain circle of hell depending on what you do. Each circle has a certain name. The first circle of hell is called Limbo. In Limbo, Charon ushers the sinner across the river Acheron. The sinner now enters Limbo. Limbo is a place of sadness without agony. The sinner finds a castle with seven walls, inside the castle, you will find the virtuous pagans, philosophers, authors, unbaptized children, and other people who are unable to meet the requirements of heaven. The sinner share's company with Virgil, Aristotle, Homer, and Caesar. The second circle of hell is called Lust. The sinner comes to a place that is fully dark and where it is super cold and windy. This circle is where all the lustful or anyone who are controlled by their hormones spends their afterlife in. Sinners who are in the 2nd circle are constantly feeling lustful. The punishment for the 2nd circle is that the sinners will have an unquenchable desire as a consequence for their sins. Down in this circle, you will meet Cleopatra and Helen of Troy. The third circle in hell is called Gluttony. In the third circle, the sinners will find themselves in the middle of rain that never stops. The rain is impure water. The gluttonous lay in this vile slush. The slush represents how the gluttonous are degrading themselves by always indulging in food, drinks, and worldly pleasures. All the gluttons are being watched cerberus. A cerberus is a canine monster that has three heads and has red eyes. The cerberus rips the damned open with his teeth and claws.

The fourth circle in hell is called Greed. In the fourth circle of hell, sinners will be next to the sinners who are punished for being greedy. They are divided into two groups: those who had an excess of unnecessary items, and those who simply spend their money on whatever they want. In this circle, the punishment for greed is that sinners would have to carry extremely heavyweight while pushing more weights with their chests. These two groups are being guarded by Pluto (Pluto is most like the ancient Greek ruler of hell). In this circle, you will dwell with clergymen, cardinals, and popes. The fifth circle in hell is called Anger. In the fifth circle of hell, this place is where the furious, bad-tempered, and angry people are punished. If you go down to the fifth circle, you will see the wrathful people spending eternity fighting a never-ending battle. Beneath the surface of the water, you will find the bad-tempered people gurgling water. The intensity of the punishment depends on the type of sin that they committed when they were alive. The sixth circle is called Heresy. This circle is also named “Satan’s wretched city.' Everywhere you go you will see fields full of distress and flaming tombs. This is where the heretics will spend their eternity in. If you fail to believe in God, you will join the rest of the people who failed to believe in God and not be offered any type of rest if they are doing something difficult. When you come down to this circle of hell, you will find three infernal Furies stained with blood, with female limbs, and the hair of serpents. The seventh circle is called Violence. Circle Seven consists of three different rings in the whole circle. The overall circle is guarded by the minotaur, who angrily snarls. Down into the outer circle, you will see murderers, assassins, tyrants, and war-mongers. The outer circle is guarded by centaurs who are armed with bows and arrows. The centaurs shoot at those who try to escape their consequence. In the middle ring, you will meet people who did suicide. People that committed suicide turned into trees and bushes which the harpies feast on. If you walk a little farther in the middle circle, you will find scorching sand. The scorching sand consists of those who committed violence against God. In this part, sinners are naked and they are getting showered with flakes of fire that rains down on them. They are also getting chased around by dogs. Also, the dogs tear the sinners into pieces. In the inner ring, are people who committed blasphemy and sodomites. They dwell in a desert that contains burning hot sand and continuous rain that burns your skin falling from the sky. As you get deeper towards the middle the more intense, the punishment will be. The eighth circle is called Fraud. Fraud is the second to worse sin a person can commit. This circle is where all the fraudulent people reside. How you reach this level is by the Geryon.

The Geryon is a flying monster with different aspects, nature, or faces. This can be compared to the fraudulent because the fraudulent can appear one way before you and act a different way in front of different people. Unlike the seventh circle, this circle is shaped like an amphitheater and contains ten circles within that big circle. All the circles connected by a bridge. In the first row, you will find prostitutes, pimps, and seducers getting whipped by demons that have horns. In the second row, you will find hypocrites, flatterers getting dipped in boiling tar by demons, also known as the Malebranche. In the third row, you will find everyone guilty of simony or simonists. Their punishment is that the simonists are put into a stone hole and their feet are constantly on fire. On the fourth row, you find fortune tellers, false prophets, and sorcerers. Their punishment is that they will roll around in human feces. As you get down deeper, you will see serpents wrapping around sinners. There is a chance that you may fuse with the snake. Some bodies are torn apart, human guts everywhere. When you arrive in this circle the first thing you would want to do is put your hands over your ears due to all the screams. We are now in the ninth circle of hell, it is the deepest level of hell. This is where you will see Satan because this is where he dwells. His wings never stop flapping which means that it produces a cold wind that can freeze water into ice. The way you enter this circle is you have to betray someone. You will see Judas Iscariot here because he betrayed Jesus of Nazareth to the Roman Empire just for some sheckles. This place has no source of light, no warmth. People here are frozen in ice. Their mouths and eyes are shut closed. In short, Dante Alighieri wrote Inferno and it shaped how his civilization had a view on the afterlife. They believed that God had judgment by differing degrees. The worse their sin is the worse the punishment is. You can see that in the previous paragraphs above. Each circle gets worse and worse. After Dante wrote this, people in this civilization tried their best to not go down into hell. This view of the afterlife varies from all the other civilizations. Usually, you don’t get placed into a certain circle. You either go to hell or heaven, it does not matter depending on the sin you commit.