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dantes inferno - the Fourth circle of hell

illustration by gustave doré

Canto VII

The Fourth Circle is guarded by a figure Dante names as Pluto: this is Plutus, the deity of wealth in classical mythology. Although the two are often conflated, he is a distinct figure from Pluto (Dis), the classical ruler of the underworld. At the start of Canto VII, he menaces Virgil and Dante with the cryptic phrase Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe, but Virgil protects Dante from him.

Those whose attitude toward material goods deviated from the appropriate mean are punished in the fourth circle. They include the avaricious or miserly (including many "clergymen, and popes and cardinals"), who hoarded possessions, and the prodigal, who squandered them. The hoarders and spendthrifts joust, using great weights as weapons that they push with their chests:

Here, too, I saw a nation of lost souls, far more than were above: they strained their chests against enormous weights, and with mad howls rolled them at one another.

Then in haste they rolled them back, one party shouting out: "Why do you hoard?" and the other: "Why do you waste?"

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Discussion

matata 2y ago

Relating this sin of incontinence to the two that preceded it (lust and gluttony), Dorothy L. Sayers writes, "Mutual indulgence has already declined into selfish appetite; now, that appetite becomes aware of the incompatible and equally selfish appetites of other people. Indifference becomes mutual antagonism, imaged here by the antagonism between hoarding and squandering."

The contrast between these two groups leads Virgil to discourse on the nature of Fortune, who raises nations to greatness and later plunges them into poverty, as she shifts, "those empty goods from nation unto nation, clan to clan". This speech fills what would otherwise be a gap in the poem, since both groups are so absorbed in their activity that Virgil tells Dante that it would be pointless to try to speak to them – indeed, they have lost their individuality and been rendered "unrecognizable".